Mississippi's poverty a draw for politicians

from Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal

Edwards' visit last week only the most recent of many by national figures.

By SHELIA BYRD
Associated Press Writer

When politicians want to talk about poverty, Mississippi, especially the Delta, has been a jumping off point.

In 1968, Democrat Robert Kennedy's 200-mile poverty tour included stops in Mississippi. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., came through in 1997, followed by President Bill Clinton in 1999.

The latest political figure to launch a poverty tour was Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards. The former North Carolina senator said during stops last week in Canton and Marks that he wanted to shine a light on the nation's poor and find ways to end economic stagnation.

These tours reminded the nation, albeit briefly, about the persistent grip poverty has on Mississippi, where 19.9 percent of the population lives below the poverty level, several counties have unemployment rates in the double digits and substandard housing proliferates statewide. However, politicians focus on the Delta.

What tangible benefits has Mississippi reaped from these tours?

In 1999, Clinton pledged $15 million to the Mississippi Delta, part of $46.5 million in community development grants to bolster private investment.

Thanks to Clinton, the region earlier had received millions of dollars in tax breaks and other incentives to attract industries. Those incentives led to the creation of some small to medium-sized businesses in the Delta, but big industry development is rare and farming remains the region's main employer.

Wellstone, a progressive Democrat who died in a 2002 plane crash, kicked off his 1997 tour in Tunica County, bringing a busload of news reporters and network television crews.

Again, the nation peered into the lives of poor Mississippians, a few of whom lacked bathrooms in their homes. But they also saw progress. Some residents were now living in three-bedroom homes instead of shacks as a result of good-paying jobs from the growing casino industry.

"A lot of times this notion about a poverty tour is really about raising awareness rather than producing a tangible policy benefit," said John Bruce, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi.

Bruce said this increased awareness can bring about new strategies over time, but "what comes out may be an unrecognizable product of what started."

Bruce said the tours of Wellstone and Edwards were perfect examples of raising awareness.

"(Barack) Obama and Hillary (Rodham Clinton) are being so careful they don't want to make a mistake, and being third, Edwards is able to speak out and make headlines," Bruce said, referring to the leading Democratic candidates for president.

Edwards stopped in Canton to listen to poultry plant workers, who complained about low wages and mistreatment by their employers. The workers, most of them Hispanic, said they had to live in dilapidated or rundown housing because that's all they could afford.

He then went to Quitman County in the Delta and heard a call for more jobs.

Edwards told both groups he wanted to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour, provide universal health care and create a savings plan for the low-income.

If nothing else, Edwards gets credit for helping poverty emerge as a top issue in the Democratic campaign. Two days after Edwards' tour began, presidential hopeful Obama gave tackling the problems of poverty more prominence in his speeches.

Obama said his first step would be to attack urban poverty by expanding a New York City program that provides to an entire neighborhood training for expectant parents, early childhood education, and charter schools, among other services.

Obama said he would roll out his anti-poverty initiatives for rural areas in coming weeks, and though he's already stopped in Mississippi earlier this year, it's possible he'll swing this way again.