Jackson Jambalaya

 Car tags in Mississippi typically cost between $300 and $700 a year. In the first year, a car tag can sometimes cost between $800 and $1,500. Cross the state line into Arkansas or Alabama, and the same car tag will cost you about half as much.

Put aside, for a moment, what this says about car tags. What does it say about Mississippi politics?

This is a state where voters consistently elect conservative leaders at every level of government. And yet we still end up with some of the highest car tag costs in the country.

Sadly, it is not just car tags where Mississippi seems to end up with rather less than the full-flavor conservatism voters thought they were buying.

Mississippians elect lawmakers in the expectation that they will be conservative. It is why both the House and the Senate have solidly conservative majorities. But when it comes to the laws those majorities actually pass, things are not always as conservative as you might expect.

Listening to some Republicans in the Senate kill the school choice bill in 84 seconds, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching progressive lawmakers in Massachusetts or Minnesota.

Under the Mississippi constitution, you — the voter — are entitled to a direct say through the ballot initiative. Due to changes in the number of congressional districts, the old trigger mechanism was ruled defunct. Rather than restore it — which is what you would expect from conservatives who trust the people — our Senate leadership has consistently killed every effort to bring it back.

There have, of course, been some important wins. Labor deregulation in 2021. Flat tax reform in 2022, thanks to Speaker Gunn, which paved the way for the income tax elimination law passed in 2025. This session, too, saw an important step toward repealing red tape in healthcare — the certificate of need law, an intentionally protectionist relic.

But part of the problem is this. With local media struggling, politicians know that no one is really holding them to account for what they actually do. So long as they turn up at the right events and post the right photos on social media — hunting trips, club suppers — they get assumed to be conservative. Even when they vote rather more like a Kamala Harris Democrat.

The good news is that there is now a tool that lets you see how your lawmakers actually voted.

The Mississippi Freedom Index has just launched. At MississippiFreedom.com, you can see how your local representative voted on the key issues of this session. You will notice that there are only two key bills tracked — because, frankly, this session only produced two clearly conservative measures. And even then, a large chunk of the Republican caucus failed to support them.

Take a look. You can also pull up campaign finance reports for each lawmaker, so you can see who is supporting them.

Like the cost of car tags, one of the great Mississippi mysteries is why a state that votes so consistently conservative so seldom sees fully conservative policy.

It is also important to recognize those genuinely principled leaders in our state — like Speaker Jason White — who have shown real conservative leadership when it counted.

The first step in getting more of them, and fewer of the Kamala kind, is knowing the difference. MississippiFreedom.com is how you find out.

This post was authored by Mississippi Center for Public Policy President Douglas Carswell.  

MCPP sponsored this post.