Published: May 27, 2007 10:21 pm            

Bryant stumps for lieutenant governor’s post

State Auditor Phil Bryant was in Meridian last week to talk about the upcoming elections and his campaign to be the next lieutenant governor.

Bryant, a Republican, will face Charlie Ross in the Aug. 7 primary. The winner will face James R. “Jamie” Franks in the November election.

Here are excerpts from the interview with The Meridian Star’s Editorial Board.



The Meridian Star: Tell us where you are in the campaign and what you have been doing in the past few weeks?



Phil Bryant: We’ve been campaigning all over the state and most recently we had a fund raiser in Hattiesburg with some young Republicans. We are trying real hard to get the 18 to 30-year-old crowd involved in politics.

We feel really good about where we are in the campaign with a little over two months left to go. We have offices opened in four cities: Jackson, Hattiesburg, one on the Coast and one in DeSoto County. We’ve been opening offices and getting county chairmen and starting grassroots in the 15 primary counties, which we believe will mean victory in the Republican primary. Lauderdale County is one of those counties.





The Star: What is the difference in this statewide races and your previous races?



Bryant: It is more intense. It is so much faster. Running for state auditor is exciting and it’s the same geography but nowhere near the intensity, and it just continues to grow. We have so many people calling wanting signs, bumper stickers and push cards. We get hundreds of requests a week for speaking engagements, but that is all good.

The best thing is that I get to speak about broader issues. After 10 years as state auditor and five years in the Legislature, thinking about the state, doing performance audits and looking at financial conditions and seeing the ebb and flow of the budget process, and to now be able to say I am really am prepared to go to that next step.



The Star: Talk about the race with Charlie Ross. What are some strengths that you see you have over him?



Bryant: I don’t want to make this personal. We are Republicans and good friends and I’ve known Charlie for 10 years, and I want to be careful not to say anything disparaging.

Our differences: I think being state auditor gives you a real universal look at government. I remember being in the Legislature and seeing portions of bills, and I really didn’t know a lot of times how it affected county supervisors or school superintendents, and being state auditor gives you a universal view of how those appropriations work and what if they are not there.

For a while, Republicans abandoned the field of supporting public education. We just said we’re not going to do it, we’re not advocates of public education and it was the worst thing we ever did. It was dumb. Now, when Gov. Haley Barbour said it was the No. 1 priority at the State of the State address and said we are going to fully fund education now and into the future, all of a sudden Republicans are saying, ‘Me too.’ Well there wasn’t a lot of ‘me too’ there for a while when those of us Republicans were supporting public education.

That has been a sea change in where our party is at. It is going to affect everyone of us. Now that it’s OK for Republicans to be advocates of public education, you are going to see us even at the local level start taking a more active role.

Being able to see that history as a legislator and state auditor and the evolution of the Republican party and how the decisions are made at the Capitol affect cities and counties, I think is a real advantage.



The Star: Ross has challenged you to a debate, where do things stand with that?



Bryant: We have three debates scheduled. One with the Mississippi Press Association, the Mississippi Department of Education’s Annual Teacher Conference and the Mississippi Subcontractors Association. And we have accepted about 11 different speaking engagements where Charlie will speak and then I will speak.

We’re going to go to debates that we feel are independently managed. I’m not going to debate perhaps where he wants us to because of a lot of different features. One of the things I’ve always believed is that when you are ahead in a race, you try to stay ahead. We think that what we are doing is going to keep us ahead in the race.



The Star: Charlie Ross, in an interview with The Star, talked a lot about abortion and the rights of Mississippians to have guns. What are some of your platform issues and do you see those as important to the state?



Bryant: Issues dealing with the economy are what is important. People don’t come up to me and say they are worried about the government taking away their guns. That’s not the burning issue.

People are excited about Toyota. They see the future as being brighter than ever. We need skilled trained workers, we need properly educated and trained workers. These are the issues that people talk to me about.

People also are interested in issues like illegal immigration. One thing I get admonished about more than anything is people saying not to forget about the illegal immigration issue.

In Feb. 2006, we released a report that said illegal immigration is costing the state more than $25 million a year, and it had clear suggestions to the Legislature about what could be done to stop that. I went to the Legislature and asked for a bill to be introduced to help slow that down because they are coming here for jobs. I said if we slow those jobs down then they will stop coming here. We are the only state in the Southeast that has no legislation dealing with illegal immigration.

Mississippi per capita has the fastest growing rate of illegal immigration in the country. It’s 145 percent growth. Hurricane Katrina brought a lot of temporary workers in, but it is ridiculous for us to sit here and do nothing about it.

One of the things I proposed in Tupelo is a marriage summit. We are going to find out what the government to do to help. In 1991, I campaigned on doing away with the marriage penalty and we eventually did. Before that you could live together cheaper than if you were married.

First, we need to convince parents that it would be a good thing if they got married, and then convince them to try and stay together. If we can encourage marriages and families to stay together, I think drug addiction, the crime problem and the spousal abuse that you see will start to reduce.

I believe when there is no father in the home, no family structure, it is tough for children to pull themselves out of that.





The Star: As lieutenant governor, would you support eliminating the grocery tax and increasing the cigarette tax. Would you take up that torch?



Bryant: No. I looked at it and I don’t think the numbers would work. If you do away with all the sales tax on food and depend on the sales tax from tobacco, what I believe is that after about two years, we would be short on revenue. The state depends heavily on sales tax as do municipalities. If we were short on revenue, then it would be up to the Legislature to raise taxes.





The Star: Talk about your relationships with legislators and if you believe that will benefit you as lieutenant governor.



Bryant: In my five years as legislator and 10 years as state auditor, I worked closely with them. But, there is a good and a bad side to that. There is not going to be a ‘good ole boys’ club in the Senate where we all sit around and decide who gets what. That’s not the way it will work. There are well-defined laws, there are rules and I would appoint chairman who would be independent and hopefully have a cross section of thinking in those chairmanships.

I’m more inclusive and would have many voices involved in the decision-making process.

        

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