This was just emailed in and it looks bogus. I doubt the Log Cabin Republicans are getting involved in the Mississippi Republican Primaries. Smells like someone is up to some dirty tricks. The letter is not mentioned on their website: LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS
And the signature and the name of the executive director do not match.
We don’t appreciate this kind of dirty, nasty, underhanded politics so we are here to call this out, that’s why blogging can be a force for good. If this letter is in fact fake and if anyone else received this please let us know.
Good spot up for Senator Doug Davis who drew a primary challenge on August 2nd. We like Doug and think this ad will help him secure re-election in his DeSoto County based seat.
With 2 really high quality ads. Produced by: Dresner Wickers Associates
“JT”
ROM Overall Grade: A+
“On Day One”
ROM Overall Grade: B
We really like these ads, certainly stronger in the production department than Lucien Smith. “JT” is the strongest of the 2 ads by far with extra points for creativity and we like the gag about not using a high priced media consultant when they are using one of the highest priced firms in the business, although i would say they got their moneys worth here, the ads are sharp, crisp, well written, lighted and executed.
With the exception of Max Phillips’ spots these would be the biggest surprise hits so far in the 2011 races.
Interested to see what Lee Yancey comes up with, right now Lynn is certainly leading in the air war if she can afford to keep them on the air.
**Update 7/28** Max Phillips was endorsed by the Clarion Ledger: READ HERE
The Neshoba County fair coverage seemed to be uneventful with all candidates staying civil AP COVERAGE HERE
Alan Lange the very accurate and respected handicapper at YallPolitics picked Max Phillips to win in a close race with Cindy Hyde-Smith running second READ HERE
Cindy Hyde-Smith was endorsed by outgoing Ag Commissioner Lester Spell
There are 2 active campaigns, Max Phillips and Cindy Hyde-Smith who look ready to duke it out for the Republican nod on August 2nd.
The amount of emails and traffic from our original post on this race received leads us to believe that there is a lot more interest in this race than most political insiders might think.
A breakdown of where the race stands right now:
Campaign finance numbers have pulled close to equal with Max Phillips continuing to hold a slight edge.
After exhaustive conversations with everyone who would speak to us off the record about the race (GOP county officers, local officials, Tea Party reps, Republican hacks and a couple lobbyists) our notes revealed common themes and phrases, the most common of those are as follows:
Cindy Hyde-Smith: is actually somewhat despised by the grass-roots because they resent the fact that she changed parties only to run for this office, she is essentially a Democrat in a Republican primary, but was an early Jackson Lobbyist favorite who was fading fast until she infused her campaign with $40,000 personal contribution and pulled in some money from Labor Unions. Hyde-Smith seems to have the support of Democrats, Lobbyists and Labor Unions but we don’t see any Republican groups supporting her right now and have a hard time imagining any Conservative backing someone who was in the same party as Barack Obama only 6 months ago, has only been in elected office as a Democrat and voted for the beef plant.
***Updated*** Cindy Hyde-Smith released her ad today 7/15/11
not too shabby really, for a normal Commissioner of Ag candidate it’s par for the course, it does some tricks to hide the fact that Cindy was not born on a farm, says “born in a Christian household” and that her daughter will be “a 5th generation farmer” and she calls herself a Republican which is a recent development but we digress.
***Updated Again*** After further review we feel that Cindy Hyde-Smith should be chastised for this screen shot, it it blatantly misleading, her father was a truck driver and not a farmer, this is trying to be too cute and this screen shot is a lie, decide for yourself:
The above statement is false and misleading
ROM Overall Grade D- for attempting to mislead voters into thinking she is a farmer.
****ANOTHER UPDATE****
This video was emailed to us from a well known Mississippi politico apparently someone is not too happy about Cindy Hyde-Smith and her resume inflation, so much so that they made a little video about it.
Max Phillips: Grassroots favorite and Tea-Party backed candidate who’s campaign stumbled and failed to gain momentum out of the gate has apparently righted the ship has put some money in the bank and has been quickly gaining establishment backing and winning back early Hyde-Smith backers.
And in the biggest news out of this race in cycles Max Phillips has just released his first campaign advertisement. (you heard it right folks a real TV ad in an Ag Commissioners race) We did not expect to see anything substantial out of either campaign until the last week or so.
It can be viewed here:
The ad is surprising if not shocking in how good it is for Ag commissioner candidate, it’s very funny, has great visuals, real talking points and even has a subtle highlight of the difference between the candidates (Cindy Hyde-Smith does not seem like the type to get her boots dirty). It looks to be as well produced as anything around the state right now.
If Max Phillips can raise enough money to keep this on the air he may be able to win this without a runoff. If nothing else this is going to force Cindy’s hand. We will see what she can come back with. (*update* we have seen and it is posted above… Yawn)
ROM Overall Grade: A+
This race should be an easy one to call although it’s far from over, electing a Democrat who is funded by labor union money in Republican primary to this office would truly be an embarrassment to Conservatives across the state. ROM pulls the trigger in it’s first race of the year and officially endorses Max Phillips for Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce in the August 2nd Republican Primary.
-ROM
***Updated*** Dr. Dannie Reed is still around, we had not seen a sign or an ad or a piece of mail or a strong fundraising report so we mistakenly assumed that he was not pursuing the race with real vigor he dropped by and added a comment so we felt obliged to include it in the post out of equal time/fairness or whatever.
From Rep Dannie Reed: “That (sic) is Dr. Dannie Reed, Doctorate of Agriculture Real Experience (sic) , servicing and developing farmers and Ag. as a County Agent. Elected Twice as a Republican, never lost, unoposed (sic) second race. But worked every day and not a lobbyist . The people will see who is the best,”
Lucien Smith who has out=raised his 2 opponents Lynn Fitch and Lee Yancey for the office of State Treasurer has earned the luxury of being on TV first. (Lynn, Lee and Lucien what are the odds really?)
His ad can be seen here:
Initial thoughts: While the script is well written and says the right things (except for starting with Haley, I think that takes away a chance to introduce the candidate immediately), but the production value is mid-range at best, the audio is good but the visuals leave something to be desired, the scenes look to be poorly lighted and we are not a big fan of the graphics.
Strong effort, and good message but a bit of a fumble on the execution by whatever media team put this together.
ROM: Overall Grade C+ (B+ for Message and C- for production)
Please note we may be a little hard here on Lucien but we expect a lot.
On February 3, 2011, Captain Libby Lytle was waiting on a driver to pick up a vehicle involved in a no driver’s license citation on the southbound side of Highway 6, parked on the Whirlpool side. While waiting, idly, she testified to seeing a black Mercedes traveling westbound well below the minimum 35 mile per hour speed limit, and thought it was driver looking for the person needing a ride.
Lytle said she knew something else was going on when the Mercedes came to a stop on the shoulder to the ramp exiting to Coliseum Drive, and a man later determined to be Harold Morgan, got out of the vehicle and began walking.
Lytle radioed for back-up to check out the suspect while she waited for a driver to arrive for the no license citation. Once she arrived on scene with Morgan she found a belligerent suspect who threatened to have her job because he worked for the governor. Research has revealed Morgan is currently the director of a Republic Political Action Committee for the election of Sam Smith in the 55th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives in Vicksburg.
Lytle testified that Morgan said he was not the driver of the vehicle, but then later said the transmission was out. DUI officer David Sabin arrived on scene, and continued questioning Morgan.
“It was obvious from the moment we met he was intoxicated,” Sabin said.
On the video played from Sabin’s dashboard camera showed Sabin giving a disheveled and unsteady Morgan a chance to admit he was in fact driving the Mercedes.
“How did you know the transmission if you weren’t driving?,” Sabin is heard asking on the video. “Unless your car has wings you drove it there.”
Morgan refused his opportunity to blow into the breathalyzer, and was arrested for DUI refusal, expired registration, and driving while license suspended based on a previous DUI conviction.
The judge found Morgan guilty of DUI and expired registration, but threw out the DWLS charge because the previous DUI charge is under appeal. Morgan paid twice the $1,086 fine to keep his license valid until the appeal is heard.
Will Ricky keep Howie on the payroll? Should we even care? the jury is still out.
This new ad from Billy Hewes has us totally entertained, I am not sure if you can even call it a negative ad when there is a chihuahua in it. Anyway the production value looks really good and the message, although Tate Reeves probably does not like it will probably be somewhat effective.
Regardless of our feelings about this race we love ads and we REALLY LOVE attack ads.
Seems like our hard partying friend Ricky Dombrowski just can’t get it together, last night he was late filing his periodic campaign finance report , it was due by 5:00 PM to the Secretary of States office but it did not arrive by fax until 1:28 AM on March 11th from Election Impact Group (a one man “group” consisting of Howie Morgan) according to the fax time stamp printed on the top of his report (LINK) (due to the photo we recently posted (LINK) we can only speculate as to what he was doing up so late). One would think that someone running for Secretary of State, the office that is in charge of this kind of thing might know that.
So we took a look around and found out that Ricky seems to have a problem getting things in on time, most notably Ricky Dombrowski was late paying his taxes for THREE YEARS IN A ROW (among other things, more on that later), see the below article from the Sun Herald Archives:
QUOTE: “Shoot, I hate it more than anybody because I’m an elected official and it gets written up in the paper if I don’t pay them,” he said. “. . .The point is, they get paid.” — Gulfport Councilman Ricky Dombrowski, on being late paying his taxes for the third year in a row.
Sun Herald, The (Biloxi, MS)
August 19, 2003 Page: A2
2 COUNCIL MEMBERS LATE WITH TAXES SAVANT, DOMBROWSKI WILL PAY THEM
Author: MIKE CUMMINGS/THE SUN HERALD
GULFPORT — Gulfport City Councilmen Ricky Dombrowski and Kim Savant are late in paying their property taxes for a third consecutive year, records show.
Savant currently is behind $6,204 on three properties.”They’re my commercial properties,” he said. “They’ll be paid before the first of the year. They always are.”
Last year, Savant was late paying $453 for a single property. He was behind $2,711 for a climate-controlled warehouse in 2001. Two years ago, Dombrowski was late paying $4,179 on four properties. He was behind $3,170 on two properties last year. The current list shows Dombrowski has a tax liability of $4,597 on five properties, including his West Gulfport glass shop.
“I don’t have the money to pay it,” Dombrowski said, adding that he will pay the tax charges plus any penalties once he has the money.
He said his glass business is owed about $40,000 from customers. He said he made a decision to pay off his suppliers but hold off on paying some of his property taxes until he had the money to cover them.
“It’s not a great business decision, but it’s not a bad business decision,” he said.
Dombrowski said he also is trying to sell the beachfront water slide he owns and could use the proceeds to cover the delinquent taxes.
“Shoot, I hate it more than anybody because I’m an elected official and it gets written up in the paper if I don’t pay them,” he said. “. . .The point is, they get paid,”
The taxes, for the year 2002, were due Feb. 1. The delinquent properties are scheduled to be auctioned on Aug. 25. But property owners have two years to reimburse (with interest) anyone who pays the balance and retain their property.
Councilman Billy Hewes also is listed this year for a tax liability of $1,016.54 for a property on Klein Road, but he said he sold the property more than a year ago.
“Apparently, they haven’t gotten it converted at the courthouse yet,” he said.
—Mike Cummings
(EMPHASIS ADDED)
Sounds like a great candidate for Secretary of State.
April 30 campaign finance reports were due today, generally these are the best indicator of who will win primaries for the statewide races as campaigns begin spending money very shortly, the April 30 reports are generally close to the high water mark for a primary campaign, many campaigns will raise more cash in the next 2 months but generally it gets harder as most have picked the low hanging fruit by now.
Cash on Hand is really all that matters so it is all we are reporting here:
***Update*** if you are a conservative you should be voting for Max Phillips today.
Here at ROM we love the smaller statewide races and Commissioner of Ag is no different. In 2011 we have a 3 way primary for the Republican nomination that will decide who replaces our good friend Dr. Lester Spell who is retiring.
The candidates are:
Max Phillips: (WEBSITE) who should be considered the clear front runner having run close campaigns for this office twice before. Most know Max as a soft-spoken and humble guy who has dedicated his life to improving Agriculture in Mississippi and is a long time Republican. This race is likely his to lose because of his built in Name ID advantage and will depend almost 100% on how much money Max is able to raise to hold off a late charge from one of the other 2 challengers.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith: (WEBSITE) is the new favorite of the “inside Jackson crowd” and has the slickest website (possibly not what you want to be if you are running for Ag Commissioner) but it could boost her fund-raising. We had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Hyde-Smith not long ago when she was a Democrat State Senator and we were happy to hear the news when she recently changed parties. Mrs. Hyde-Smith may in the end find that it would have been in her best interest to stay a Democrat instead of vying for the Republican nomination as GOP primary voters do not often look kindly upon those who were members of Barack Obama’s party less than a year ago.
Rep. Dannie Reed: (WEBSITE) a State Rep from northeast MS, who was in this race very early (even willing to challenge Dr. Lester Spell) who could parlay a geographic base into run up the middle and force a runoff, still relatively unknown it will be interesting to see if he can put some money into the bank and truly make this a 3 way race.
ROM is reserving judgment on this race until we see more finance reports but word on the ground from our grassroots people is that most folks are going with Max Phillips, and some of the big hitters are starting to follow. Here at ROM we are currently leaning towards Phillips but hey we are only 88.6 percent in picking MS races.
Anyway, this is one to watch as we get deeper into primary season.
Right of Mississippi 
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