The Sunday New York Times Magazine is featuring Haley Barbour in a lengthy profile by Pulitzer nominee Nicholas Dawidoff. An excerpt: “While Barbour denies race-baiting, Winter says that Barbour’s mention of the ticket is ‘a nuanced racist message,’ and Hodding Carter, president of the Knight Foundation and former editor of The Delta Democrat Times, says that Barbour’s reference to liberals and tickets ‘is simply code for n*gger-lover, integrationist, supporter of all the changes they’ve hated since 1964.’ To Robert Haws, chairman of the history department at the University of Mississippi, the election has become a referendum on progress. ‘If the subtle way Haley Barbour’s using race is rejected by a Musgrove victory, then we may be into a genuine new era of Mississippi politics. I don’t know why a middle-class white Mississippian would vote for Haley Barbour when he doesn’t represent their interests at all, but race is still deep here.’” There’s much more in the story.
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