Shad White, the state auditor who spoke in McComb last week, has got to be one of the leading candidates for governor, even though he has not officially said he’s running.
This was the third time I’ve heard him speak, and he checks all the boxes. Smart and funny guy, very comfortable speaking in public, good ideas about how to improve Mississippi and its government, and a record of success in his six years as auditor.
And yet. Long pause. Deep breath.
In the last year or so, maybe for a little longer, White has undergone a transformation from Shad the Genial Rhodes Scholar to a guy that’s ready and willing to rebuke or insult people who make him mad.
Some examples:
• After criticism from Bill Crawford, whose weekly column runs in the Enterprise-Journal, White called him an aging white liberal who didn’t care about the prevalence of DEI in Mississippi because it didn’t involve Crawford’s kids. Which I guess means the opinions of anyone whose kids are grown don’t matter.
• Testifying to a Senate committee, he got into an argument with a senator and threatened to sue him for defamation.
• In his book about the welfare scandal, he dissed potential opponent Lynn Fitch, the attorney general, with the nickname “Lazy Lynn.”
• And recently, according to Mississippi Today, he published contact information about an Ole Miss employee and advised avoiding a Lucedale business because of their opinions that he disliked.
White is entitled to do all this, but I don’t see how it helps him if he decides to run for governor in 2027.
It all makes him look petty and mean-spirited, and that rarely helps politicians. Donald Trump is an obvious exception, but there aren’t many like him, and for good reason.
White is one of three Republican candidates I would consider voting for in the 2027 governor’s race, but that list of digs and insults gives me pause.
If he runs on what he talked about Wednesday, he will have a tall enough hill to climb. He thinks the state is wasting up to $800 million a year, which is more than 10% of general fund spending. And he wants universities to get rid of majors that he believes don’t help Mississippi’s economy.
Should he win the governor’s race — this assumes he will decide to run — he’s going to need the help of a lot of powerful people in Jackson to tackle wasteful spending and sacred cows at universities. How do you do that if you’re insulting others?
My guess is that some adviser in his office or in his political circle has told him he needs to start mocking his critics so he’ll stand out in what may be a crowded Republican primary.
This is lousy advice. We all know White, like Gov. Tate Reeves before him, is the smartest person in any room. What’s the benefit of lowering himself to the trash talk of others?
Does such behavior suit a potential future governor? We may soon find out.
n n n
I would like to thank two groups who gave me the opportunity to discuss the newspaper and website recently.
Two weeks ago I spoke to retirees at St. Andrew’s Mission, where the chicken and dumplings were excellent. And last Thursday a group of about 10 homeschool students and six parents came in for a tour of the Enterprise-Journal building.
Both groups asked good questions and seemed to see that the immediacy of news transmission provided by websites is a big advantage over newspapers, which take time to print and deliver.
I do miss giving those building tours. Student visits to the Enterprise-Journal were frequent 20 or 30 years ago but very rare now. You can guess that talking about my job is not difficult for me.
I told the teens in the office Friday that they were going to see massive changes during their lifetime — things that people my age cannot even imagine. Who among us, for example, ever thought we would one day get most of our information from a telephone in our pocket?
