Sounds like the governor’s staff is getting on the wrong side of Gulf Coast media, and it’ll be interesting to see if (a.) this is a trend and (b.) how his handling of the current crisis affects his political future. The governor, who is (too generously) heralded for his “handling” of Katrina in Mississippi, may be stepping in it a bit as he tries to dance and chew gum at the same time while grabbing facetime during the tragedy in the Gulf.
For starters — and I’m just spitballing here — he might not want to piss off the press. In Threat of Arrest Has No Place in Press Coverage of Gov. Barbour, the Sun Herald today editorialized against the governor’s staff and his Highway Patrol entourage for overstepping the bounds of their power.
Money quote: Second: Without provocation, a law enforcement officer has no right to order anyone away from a public space, and certainly has no grounds to threaten someone with arrest if they don’t comply with an illegal demand. Yet rather than affirm that fact, state Public Safety Commissioner Stephen Simpson, who oversees the Highway Patrol and the governor’s security staff, said, “I think it was completely proper for our people to ask him (Fitzhugh) to leave ….” Simpson’s attitude is all the more disheartening considering that he is a former circuit judge with aspirations to become state attorney general.
This is kind of a silly thing for the Guv’s staff to screw up after this long in office. If his efforts continue to run toward glossing over this tragedy in the Gulf, the Governor (and folks with aspirations like Commissioner Simpson) is going to need to be careful that he doesn’t fall off this PR tight-rope (a line I saw Sid Salter use in his syndicated column printed in the Deer Creek Pilot) and make a mess of his post-gubernatorial career.
