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- NATION, Page 24ELECTION NOTESAn Old Card Trumps the New Politics
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- Democrat Ray Mabus was hailed as the new face of Mississippi
- politics when he was elected Governor in 1987 -- a 39-year-old
- Harvard grad who vowed to fight racism and improve his state's
- decrepit public schools. But with his reform package thwarted by
- a stubborn legislature and the state economy sliding,
- Mississippi voters booted Mabus out in favor of Kirk Fordice,
- a Vicksburg building contractor who had never before sought
- political office. Fordice, 57, became Mississippi's first
- Republican Governor since Reconstruction largely by attacking
- Mabus for failing to deliver on his promises. But the Republican
- also played the oldest card in Southern politics, the racial
- resentments of whites, by frequently criticizing quotas and
- affirmative action and calling for welfare reform.
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