Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves must be concerned about the fallout over the frontage road to his suburban neighborhood that stalled after it got significant media attention.
The anticipated Republican nominee for governor next year is certainly acting like he’s worried. When a politician starts cherry-picking someone’s words and leaving out the full context, that’s a good sign that something’s amiss.
On Thursday, Reeves held a press conference to supposedly show that he had been exonerated of any self-serving behavior in the decision — since short-circuited — of the Mississippi Department of Transportation to construct a $2 million frontage road that would give his Rankin County gated community and a neighboring one easier access to Lakeland Drive.
Reeves pulled part of a sentence from a 2½-page-letter that Melinda McGrath, the head of MDOT, wrote him the day before. Her letter came in response to his request for amplification regarding comments that she reportedly made to the Clarion Ledger about getting political pressure from the Senate to build the road, even though MDOT’s own engineers felt it was unnecessary.
Reeves tried to use that partial sentence of McGrath’s — “I have never indicated any inappropriate, unacceptable, or unlawful communication with a member of the Legislature” — to support his contention that the Jackson newspaper’s reporting was inaccurate. If, however, the sentence is read to its end, McGrath takes no issue with the accuracy of the reporting. Nor does she claim she was misquoted.
Besides this weak attempt at spin, Reeves also neglected to note that — contrary to his assertion that he was largely out of the loop — McGrath says that the lieutenant governor and/or his staff had been informed of the proposed road and the other options being considered in response to the local homeowners’ complaint that getting to Lakeland Drive from their neighborhood was dangerous.
When Jim Hood announced that he was conducting an investigation to see if any elected officials used their position to try to profit personally from the frontage road, it sounded like an attempt by the Democratic attorney general to jab at his probable opponent in next year’s governor’s race.
Certainly that’s part of the mix. But Reeves’ failed attempt to twist what McGrath said would suggest the matter merits a close look. To borrow from Shakespearean wisdom, when someone protests too much about an alleged non-story, there’s probably something to the story.
