Presley hits Reeves on welfare fraud through Southern Miss donors, but Reeves calls foul

Brandon Presley is calling on his opponent, incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, to return just shy of $1.7 million in campaign contributions that Presley said are from people connected to the state's welfare scandal.

However, the Reeves campaign said the Democrat is painting with far too broad a brush in who is considered to be involved.

Presley held a news conference outside of the governor's mansion in Jackson on Monday where he repeated familiar lines about Reeves' supposed ties to the $77 million welfare fraud scheme, which occurred within state departments overseen by his predecessor, fellow Republican Phil Bryant, while Reeves was lieutenant governor.

"We've heard that Tate Reeves has based his entire career on being a numbers guy, a numbers guy, he brags about being a numbers guy," Presley said. "When he ran for lieutenant governor, he said a watchdog is exactly what I'll be. And we know he's never been a watchdog. He's been a lapdog. A lapdog for lobbyists. A lapdog for special interests. A lapdog for the moneyed interest in Mississippi. If Tate really wants to be a watchdog, if he really wants to show his teeth as a watchdog, he would return the nearly $1.7 million from individuals who had benefited from the largest public corruption scandal in state history."

According to documents provided by the Presley campaign, that $1.7 million in campaign contributions comes primarily from people who also donated to organizations affiliated with the University of Southern Mississippi.

Reeves campaign communications director Clifton Carroll said Monday that it is wrong to view people who have donated to the university or supported its athletics as involved in the fraud.

"Now, Brandon Presley is trying to say any supporter of Southern Miss must be disavowed," Carroll said in a statement. "These are the mental gymnastics he has to do to tie Tate Reeves to this scandal from before his time in office. The bad actors in this case have been sued by the Reeves administration, and calling all Southern Miss supporters corrupt is offensive and, frankly, exactly what you’d expect from a campaign run by the DNC not Mississippians."

The university's athletic foundation is a defendant in the civil case where the Department of Human Services is seeking to recover funds that were intended to go to some of the state's poorest families through the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. Instead, $77 million in funds were used on other special projects, including $5 million on a volleyball facility at the university, which the state is seeking to be repaid in the lawsuit.

The state's complaint, which added the university's athletic foundation to the lawsuit, directly mentioned one of the most famous Golden Eagles in history, Pro Football Hall of Fame Quarterback Brett Favre. Favre has voluntarily repaid more than $1 million he received for speaking engagements which he allegedly never performed. Favre is also accused by the state of helping funnel the funds for the athletic foundation, but he denies wrongdoing.

Of the roughly $1.7 million in Reeves campaign contributions cited by Presley, about $1.2 million are from individuals affiliated with the university. Those include more than a dozen large donors to the university's foundation, a past president and board members of the athletics foundation, a former president of the university and Favre's wife. Also included are Capitol Resources PAC, a political action committee that lobbies on behalf of USM, and individuals associated with it.

The documents distributed by Presley's campaign included a graph showing an increase in donations to the Reeves campaign by large USM donors at the end of 2018, less than a year after two payments were made from the state for the volleyball facility. The spike also coincides with Reeves gearing up for his first run for governor in 2019.

The $1.7 million did include $8,500 from two individuals directly involved in the fraud, Nancy and Zach New. Nancy New donated $2,500 to Reeves between 2017 and 2019, while her son Zach donated $6,000 in 2019. The pair, who ran an education nonprofit and school together, both pleaded guilty to criminal charges last year.

Reeves promised in 2020 to give away campaign contributions from anyone found to have been involved in the "apparent criminal schemes."

“I can tell you right now, anything they gave to the campaign is going to be moved to a separate bank account,” Reeves said in 2020. “Anything they gave the campaign will be there waiting to be returned to the taxpayers and help the people it was intended for. If that doesn’t happen, the money will go to a deserving charity.”

Despite that pledge, and the News pleading guilty last year, Reeves had not given away the funds from the News as of his most recent campaign finance reports. When asked, Reeves has told members of the media that his campaign is holding onto the money until all criminal and civil cases are complete.

Presley said Monday that Reeves' campaign could easily afford to lose $8,500 when its total war chest measures in the millions.

"The reason that he's not given back the 8,000 is that it leads to a domino effect that leads to 1.7 million," Presley said. "Y'all have to be asking yourself, why wouldn't he give back the $8,000? Why would you not just give it back, get the issue off the table? The truth is if he begins to give it back, he's got to give back 1.7 million."

Other individuals included in the list include a businessman and real estate developer who was a potential investor in Prevacus, a medical startup supported by Favre that pledged to find new treatment for concussions. According to texts published by Mississippi Today, the businessman met with Favre to discuss building a Prevacus drug trial site and manufacturing plant on a development he and Bryant had worked on together. The New Orleans-based businessman has donated more than $270,000 to Reeves.

It also includes donations from individuals that are affiliated with a marketing firm that cut advertisements for retired professional wrestler Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr.

Neither the businessman, nor the marketing agency and those donors affiliated with it, are defendants in the state's civil case to recoup lost funds. The list also includes Bryant's campaign, the consulting firm where he works, and an individual affiliated with it. Byrant has not been named or charged either.

Reeves had a total war chest of about $9.4 million at the end of July.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Brandon Presley takes on Tate Reeves on welfare fraud, campaign donors