Word: mississippis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Last week, in an effort to persuade members of the Mississippi House of Representatives--an even more independent and covetous body--to ratify the Senate's succession amendment, Finch flexed his political muscles. State representatives went off the record to journalists to say they faced intense pressure and even threats from Finch's supporters in the representatives' districts and threats to trim state payrolls of friends and relatives of legislators opposing succession. Finch's henchmen, the representatives complained, had begun assembling information on every lawmaker: their bankers, their drinking and social habits, their credit and business affairs and their private...
...Mississippi House had amassed too much power over the decades to be toppled in two weeks. The members stood up to Finch's intrepid challenge, and the amendment died in committee. Several days prior to the vote Finch had apparently called off his dogs. In a press conference after the vote Finch forewarned ominously, "Just because some of the prophets of gloom and doom say it can't be done...if it's the people's will, it is going to be done." As soon as Finch capitulated, the Jackson press corps began speculating that the entire escapade...
...FAILURE of the Mississippi House to ratify the amendment has indeed stirred up a hornet's nest. The members of the House blatantly defied the will of the people personified in Cliff Finch, and the "people" want revenge. After the Mississippi establishment elite has for two years laughed and ridiculed Finch, they can no longer dismiss Finch's adventitious rise to power as incidental or insignificant. On the contrary, Finch's meteoric ascendency can be traced to the changing nature of Mississippi society and the material conditions molding the outlook of its people...
When Finch Jumped into the race for governor of Mississippi in 1975 he at first seemed, to many political observers, enigmatic. Finch proclaimed himself "the working man's candidate" and adopted a lunch pail as his symbol. One day a week he rolled up his sleeves and worked at various jobs to demonstrate his dedication to the working man--one day he bagged groceries, the next day he drove a bulldozer...
...chief concern is to protect the endangered agrarian lifestyle their fathers and their father's fathers led before them. As the waves of modernization lap just beyond their rickety barbed-wirse fences, these proud and fiercely independent farmers--no longer safely nestled far from civilization in the sparsely-populated Mississippi hill country--turn to a savior, or at least a defender. In 1975, they turned to Finch...