By Barbra Murray and Bob Benenson
Congressional Quarterly

Electoral votes: 7

Delegates: 48

Chairman: Gov. Ronnie Musgrove

Hotel: Sportsmen's Lodge (818) 769-4700

1996 Election:
Dole – 49%
Clinton – 44%
Perot – 6%

At the presidential level, conservative Mississippi has drifted about as far from its Democratic Party heritage as any of the former Southern Democratic strongholds. Since holding fast for Democratic nominee Adlai E. Stevenson over President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, the state has gone Democratic for president only once: in 1976, when Georgia's Jimmy Carter first ran.

Though the symbolic break came in 1948, when Mississippi supported States' Rights Party nominee Strom Thurmond over President Harry S Truman, the shift began in earnest in 1964.

That summer, a group of blacks and sympathetic whites from Mississippi, dubbed the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, petitioned the credentials committee at the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, N.J., to be seated as the state's delegation. Though they were denied, most members of the all-white official Mississippi delegation boycotted the proceedings at which Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated for a full term as president.

That November, Mississippi was one of just six states that Johnson lost to conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.

Even in their past two national losses, the Republicans carried Mississippi with relative ease. In 1992, President George Bush defeated challenger Bill Clinton in Mississippi by 50 percent to 41 percent. In 1996, Republican nominee Bob Dole topped President Clinton by 49 percent to 44 percent in the state.

Yet even this long series of disappointments has not dampened the enthusiasm of Mississippi's Democratic loyalists who lined up for the opportunity to go to Los Angeles this year and cheer the nomination of Vice President Al Gore for president.

State Democratic Party spokeswoman Emma D. Sanders said the competition was steep for the state's 24 congressional district-level delegate slots, which make up half the state's 48-member total.

Although Sanders conceded that some delegate candidates may have just wanted to go along for the ride to California, she added, "Most campaigned hard for the position."

The Mississippi Democrats have more reason to cheer than they've had in a number of years. Ronnie Musgrove finished first in the governor's contest last November over Republican former Rep. Mike Parker; though he fell short of the majority vote needed for outright victory, his election was confirmed in January by the overwhelmingly Democratic state House of Representatives, ending an eight-year Republican hold on the governor's office. Musgrove is leading the state's delegation to the national convention.

The Democrats also regained a narrow 3-2 lead in the state's U.S. House delegation in 1998 when their nominee, Ronnie Shows, won the 4th District race for the seat left open by retired Republican Parker.

In sharp contrast to the situation 36 years ago, the Mississippi Democratic contingent has 35 African-American members - with U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a congressman since he won an April 1993 special election, as the most prominent.

But one African-American member of the overall Mississippi contingent discovered this year that the national Democratic Party's devotion to diversity might actually work against her.

Mamie Cunningham in 1964 had sought to be a national convention delegate but was barred by the racial embargo that was then in place. She did not try again until this year, when she initially won a place in the delegation to Los Angeles.

However, national Democratic Party rules require each delegation to have equal numbers of men and women - and the Mississippi delegation had too many women. Just three weeks before the convention's start, Cunningham learned she had been demoted to an alternate delegate slot.

But the story had a happy ending for her. Delegate Stephanie Parker Weaver volunteered to switch places with Cunningham, allowing her to go as a full delegate.

The Mississippi delegation encompasses a number of occupations. Sanders, Mavilou Burns and Mary A.B. Perry are among those who are teachers. Charles Penson is a broadcasting company executive. Rickey Cole is a farmer who recently lost his position as the state Democratic national committeeman to state Rep. Bill Wheeler, but he still has something that Wheeler does not have - a place in the delegation.

Others in the group have made the journey to a party national convention in the past. Among them are Holmes County NAACP President Jessie Banks, a former mayor of Tchula, who was a delegate in 1988 and 1996, and newly elected Democratic National Committeewoman Johnnie Patton, who was also a member of the 1996 delegation.

MISSISSIPPI NOTABLES: Gov. Ronnie Musgrove; U.S. Reps. Ronnie Shows, Gene Taylor and Bennie Thompson; state treasurer Marshall Bennett; state Attorney General Mike Moore; state Sen. Alice Harden; state Sen. Gloria Williamson, the outgoing state Democratic Party chairman; Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr.