Jackson Jambalaya

Clarke T. Reed Sr., who skillfully and purposefully changed both the retail political allegiances and the philosophical worldview of many white Southerners, died earlier this month at his Greenville home at age 96. He was the grey eminence of the Mississippi Republican Party.

Reed was one of the fathers of the GOP in Mississippi. As a Mississippi Republican when the party could “meet in a phone booth,” he helped build the party to the dominance it enjoys today — holding all eight statewide elected offices, supermajorities in both houses of the Mississippi Legislature, and 5 of 6 seats in the state’s congressional delegation.

For almost 70 years, Reed wielded considerable influence in state, regional and national GOP politics. He was a force in formulating and implementing public policy during the administrations of GOP Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

He mentored and molded modern-day Mississippi Republican political icons like Thad Cochran, Trent Lott and Haley Barbour. Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Convention, two-term Mississippi governor and a successful global lobbyist, was perhaps his greatest acolyte.

Reed possessed the keenest, most analytical political mind I’ve ever encountered. He was a master strategist and had a salesman’s understanding of human nature. Most of all, Clarke Reed was the very definition of a Southern gentleman. From his courtly Delta drawl to his skill as a host and guide for those experiencing the South and Mississippi for the first time, Clarke made resistance to his way of thinking almost futile.

He was also a rugged and dogged survivor. After a 2010 car accident in Greenville that killed an Oklahoma man, injured a passenger in Reed’s vehicle, and left the then-81-year-old GOP power broker battling for his life, he fought through multiple surgeries to remain active and relevant.

His son Reynolds died in 2019, and his daughter Julia Reed, the fiery and acclaimed writer, died in 2020. Yet Clark and his wife, Judy, persevered.

It was at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York that I saw Reed in all his splendor as he sported the oldest, tackiest sports coat seen within Madison Square Garden that stifling summer.

“This coat’s older than you are,” Reed laughed in his thick Delta drawl. “My wife bought it for me.”

Reed’s jacket is a garish Black Watch plaid affair with gold elephants screened on it. During the 2004 convention, a photograph of Reed wearing the same jacket at the 1968 Republican convention appeared in The New York Times illustrating a major convention feature story on the Mississippi GOP pioneer by Times political analyst R.W. “Johnny” Apple Jr. The 1968 photo of Reed in his prime in that sports coat illustrated the expansive Times obituary published last week.

The obituary focused on Reed’s role in the most significant national moment for the Mississippi GOP at the 1976 GOP National Convention in Kansas City.

After assuming the presidency following President Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation in the depths of the Watergate scandal, President Gerald Ford began in 1975 to seek the 1976 Republican nomination for president, which would culminate at the Kansas City convention.

In Mississippi, Reagan had earlier won support from Reed, then-state Sen. Charles Pickering of Laurel and Jackson oilman W.D. “Billy” Mounger. Ford was supported by then-U.S. Rep. Thad Cochran, 1975 Mississippi gubernatorial nominee Gil Carmichael of Meridian and then-Jackson City Commissioner Doug Shanks.

But when Reagan chose liberal Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Richard Schweiker as his running mate, Reed defected to the Ford camp and other Mississippi delegates would follow.

Nationally, the Ford-Reagan battle for the nomination was almost dead even and both candidates began to scour the country for uncommitted delegates to the convention. Because of the so-called “unit rule” - which required that the candidate who had the support of the majority of the state’s 30 delegates got all 30 votes - a procedural vote on a Reagan-backed convention rules change was the showdown vote.

Mississippi’s 30 votes went against the rules change and Reagan’s bid for the nomination was effectively dead in 1976.

In 2016, the Reed-Mounger rift endured. At age 90, Mounger told AP correspondent Emily Pettus: “We have not communicated since 1976.” He died in 2020.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.