Haley Barbour

Barbour Mixes Business With Pleasure When Using State Plane

Ryan J. Reilly | December 27, 2010, 9:12AM

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS)

Gov. Haley Barbour has traveled extensively on a Mississippi state plane and has mixed state business with both pleasure and national politics, a Politico review of the flight manifest since 2007 shows.

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Haley Barbour

Long Before This Week's Flap, Swiftboaters Bailed On Haley's PAC

Ryan J. Reilly and Alex Sciuto | December 22, 2010, 8:50AM

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS)

Long before all this week's hoopla over Barbour's rose-tinted recollections of the segregationist Citizens' Councils, two major GOP donors who supported the controversial Swiftboat ads had already stopped their donations to the political action committee affiliated with Haley Barbour. The 527 organization known as Haley's PAC brought in $986,506 in 2008 -- but that number dropped to just $211,486 in 2009, according to recently disclosed IRS filings.

Though 2009 was an off-year in the election cycle, that remains a precipitous drop unmatched by other leadership PACs, including former Rep. Newt Gingrich's.

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Haley Barbour

Yazoo Citizens' Council Drove Out The Klan Over Strategy, Not Segregation

Rachel Slajda | December 21, 2010, 2:40PM

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's argument in defense of the pro-segregation Citizens' Council from his hometown of Yazoo City, Miss., has centered on the fact that the group, made up of white town leaders, drove the violent Ku Klux Klan out of town.

"In Yazoo City they [the council] passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. ... We didn't have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City," he told the Weekly Standard. He stuck to the same version of events in his walkback today, though adding that the Council wasn't made up of "saints."

But why did the Yazoo City Citizens' Council, an outfit that led boycotts of integration supporters and drove the local NAACP out of town, fight the KKK?

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Haley Barbour

Barbour's Brother, While Yazoo City Mayor: Blacks 'Not Listenin To White People Like They Used To'

Rachel Slajda | December 21, 2010, 12:10PM

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS)

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), when defending the Citizens Council in his hometown of Yazoo City, painted himself as oblivious to politics and the civil rights movement as a teenager. When Martin Luther King Jr. came to town, he said, he and his friends paid more attention to the girls than the reverend.

But Barbour's older brother, Jeppie Barbour, was very aware of politics and the civil rights movement, as he was mayor for several years starting in 1968. As the Weekly Standard profile noted, that meant Jeppie Barbour was in office during the court-ordered but extremely peaceful integration of the city's schools, an integration the elder Barbour saw as inevitable.

It was a question about that non-violent integration that prompted Haley Barbour's controversial comments, as he credited the segregationist Citizens Councils for that peacefulness. Barbour today issued a statement backing up a bit, saying it was the town leadership that kept integration peaceful but that "their vehicle, called the 'Citizens Council,' is totally indefensible."

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Council of Conservative Citizens

Barbour Has History With Modern Incarnation Of Segregationist Group He Praised

Rachel Slajda | December 21, 2010, 10:59AM

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS)

Today we'll be looking at putting together some context for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's defense of the pro-segregationist Citizens Councils of the 1950s and '60s South.

Dave Weigel over at Slate points out that Barbour has a history with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a descendant group of the Citizens Councils. In 2003 Barbour went to the "Black Hawk Barbecue" to court the group while running for Mississippi governor.

We did a little more digging, and, turns out, it caused some controversy at the time. People called for Barbour to have his photo removed from the group's web site. Barbour refused.

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David Vitter

Vitter Cleared in FEC Probe Of Donations From Barbour PAC

Megan Carpentier | August 10, 2010, 10:50AM

Senator David Vitter (R-LA)

The Federal Elections Commission yesterday ruled that there was no reason to look further into allegations that former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-MS) used Gov. Haley Barbour's (R-MS) PAC to funnel campaign contributions to Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) in order to avoid bad publicity.

Pickering, of course, last made national news when his wife sued his long-time mistress for alienation of affection in Mississippi; Vitter's reported extramarital assignations with prostitutes are well-documented.

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Scott Rothstein

Dem Govs Group Blasts Florida GOP Candidate Over $200K Rothstein Donation

Justin Elliott | November 18, 2009, 5:12PM

Scott Rothstein (inset)

The Democratic Governors Association is going after Bill McCollum, the likely GOP nominee in the race for Florida governor, in the wake of TPMmuckraker's report that the Republican Governors Association got a $200,000 from accused fraudster Scott Rothstein.

"Bill McCollum is spending the week with RGA leadership at their annual fundraiser - in fact, this is the same fundraiser where Rothstein contributed his $200K last year," said DGA communications director Emily DeRose in a statement. "McCollum has two choices: Will he ask the RGA to return the fraudulent money, or will he thank them for using it to boost his chances in Florida?"

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