The GOP Governor Appointing His Big Donors to State Positions

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When Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves lifted the last of his state’s minimal COVID restrictions on April 30, 2021, the 2023 election was far from the thoughts of most of his constituents.

But not Reeves.

He was fresh off a private flight to a fundraiser where lobbyists were eager to write his political operation checks. And the person who provided that flight—a $12,500 in-kind contribution—was a powerful businessman in the state whose son had been handpicked to advise Reeves’ COVID “Restart Mississippi” economic committee.

That flight, in addition to another flat $12,500 same-day contribution from the same businessman, would go on to account for $25,000 of the approximately $1.4 million the Reeves campaign has banked from his own government appointees, along with their immediate family members and associates, according to The Daily Beast’s review of Mississippi campaign finance filings.

That analysis expands on recent reporting from Mississippi Today, which identified a number of Reeves appointees who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the die-hard conservative’s campaign.

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The news comes as Reeves finds himself in a surprisingly tight race for the ruby-red state’s top office. A Mississippi Today/Siena College poll released last month showed that a little more than 1 out of every 5 likely Republican primary voters actually preferred Reeves’ Democratic opponent, Brandon Presley—with Reeves clocking 70 percent support from his own party.

The Reeves campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Shelby Wilcher, press secretary for the governor’s office, told The Daily Beast “it’s not a surprise” that some of Reeves’ appointees are also donors.

“He has a lot of supporters across the state, so it’s not a surprise that some appointees may have also donated to his campaign,” Wilcher said, noting that Reeves divines appointments “solely based on the appointee’s qualifications.”

(William Symmes, an attorney who in 2021 landed a slot on the Mississippi Community College Board after making a small contribution to Reeves’ 2020 bid, previously told Mississippi Today that he got the position because of his close ties to Reeves.)

The campaign filings, however, underscore the extent of the longstanding, incestuous high-dollar network that has been keeping the increasingly beleaguered incumbent afloat, both politically and financially.

For instance, one Reeves backer—Doug Hederman, another Restart committee member who made an in-kind contribution to Reeves’ 2015 campaign for lieutenant governor—not only doubles as a Reeves appointee; he’s also an employee. His family company, Hederman Brothers, has received nearly $50,000 for work it has done for the Reeves campaign to date this year. The campaign has paid another Hederman family member nearly $250,000 for campaign consulting in 2023 alone, state records show.

The private fundraising flight, however, came at the expense of longtime Reeves supporter William Yates, Jr, who founded Yates Construction, a multibillion-dollar outfit headquartered in Philadelphia, Mississippi. His son, William Yates III, now the CEO, was appointed to the “Restart Mississippi” advisory board in 2020.

Since then, the two Yates men—along with the elder Yates’ wife, Nancy—have poured $70,000 into Reeves’ 2023 election efforts, campaign filings show. When Yates III was appointed, he, his company, other Yates executives, and an associated PAC had already donated around $110,000, the Mississippi Free Press reported at the time.

The report found that, combined, Restart advisers and their immediate corporate and political networks had supplied more than $760,000 to Reeves since 2008, when he was state treasurer. The donor-appointee network has since fanned hundreds of thousands of dollars at Reeves, state filings show, including the contributions identified in the Mississippi Today report and another previously unreported $400,000.

Mississippi is one of 11 states that allows individuals to contribute unlimited amounts of money to candidates for state office, while simultaneously ranking 49th economically and in the bottom quartile for income equality.

All the same, Restart advisers sit on a range of committees. They include the gaming commission, the state lottery, the worker’s compensation commission, the community college board, and the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees—something of a crown jewel when it comes to gubernatorial appointments.

The gaming commission features Reeves’ largest individual donor, Franc Lee, who was appointed in 2021, Mississippi Today reported. That commission oversees the gambling industry, a key revenue stream for the state. Lee made his bones running a consumer loan financing company that settled a federal sex discrimination lawsuit in 2017, after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the company with unlawfully firing a transgender employee.

And Reeves may have wanted Lee to have a friend. In March, the governor appointed another campaign megadonor to the gaming commission: Kent Nicaud, president and CEO of Gulfport Memorial Hospital. Nicaud has donated upwards of $100,000 to Reeves, Mississippi Today reported, with $41,000 of that total coming the year before his appointment.

Nicaud’s wife, however, had by that point already landed a gig in the Reeves administration, as a judge on the state’s workers compensation commission. Their son has additionally tossed $36,000 Reeves’ way since 2018, when Reeves launched his first gubernatorial bid.

In April, Nicaud’s hospital joined a political exodus from the Mississippi Hospital Association. A number of health care institutions left the fold when they caught wind of a $250,000 donation that MHA’s PAC gave to Reeve’s opponent, Presley, who has been rallying voters around a promise of a long-stalled Medicaid expansion in the state.

The University of Mississippi Medical Center was the first to jump ship, on April 28, and Nicaud’s Memorial Hospital bowed out of the consortium three days later, Mississippi Today reported in May. State filings show that the Mississippi Hospital Association PAC gave Reeves $50,000 two days after that report.

Restart members have also continued their largesse in the face of media scrutiny.

Mississippi Guv Denies He’s a Secret Fan of Medicaid Expansion

For instance, Mississippi Community College Board appointee Johnny McRight donated $50,000 in the years ahead of receiving his sinecure, Mississippi Today reported in March. Five days after being named in that report, McRight, who runs an agricultural services company, cut Reeves another $30,000 check, according to campaign finance records.

The same holds for poultry magnate Joe Sanderson, who had sourced $265,000 for Reeves before he was appointed chair of the Restart committee, according to the Mississippi Free Press’ 2020 review of campaign filings. Sanderson has scratched together another $50,000 since then, half of it last year. And Colby Lane, onetime deputy chief of staff to Reeve ally and former GOP Gov. Haley Barbour, was reported to have given the governor’s campaign $16,000 ahead of his 2020 Restart appointment; he’s since contributed another $35,000, state records show.

Barbour’s own board selections show significant overlap with Reeves’ stable—their appointees have at least five members in common, including Sanderson, who sat on the former governor’s Hurricane Katrina recovery committee. But Barbour also holds a unique position in the campaign finance filings.

After leaving the governor’s mansion, Barbour founded BGR Group, a federal lobbying powerhouse. And while he has so far accounted for at least $3,500 to Reeves’ re-election campaign personally, he’s also cast a wider net.

State filings indicate that BGR played host to the April 2021 fundraiser Reeves attended via donor jet, at a cost of about $3,000 for catering services on April 22. While it’s difficult to tell whether the fundraiser was a net gain for any of the participants, filings show that Barbour donated personally twice that month, with BGR’s PAC chipping in another $1,500 on April 15.

Four other BGR members gave a combined $7,500, bringing the lobbying shop’s total individual monetary contributions at the time to $12,500—the exact amount of Yates’ in-kind flight, and the same sum Yates had donated personally. (Reeves’ campaign statements also show an April 20 gift exactly double that size—$25,000—from Tallahassee’s Robert Sheets, CEO of Government Services Group.)

The Reeves campaign also bought a $400 Southwest Airlines ticket on April 15, the day of the BGR PAC donation; state filings show that the purchase was refunded the next month.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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