Andy Taggart, Prominent Mississippi Republican, Sticking Toe into Racial Healing, Flag Debate

Andy Taggart has been on the Mississippi political scene for a long time, perhaps most prominently as the chief of staff for former Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice, a Republican who was, shall we say, Trumpian in his own garish ways. For one thing, Fordice was an unapologetic, public apologist for the pro-Confederate, wink-wink racism crowd that his party has bowed before since Dixiecrats defected to the Republican Party after northern Dems supported civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Fordice was one of the Mississippi politicians outed in the 1990s for speaking to the Council of Conservative Citizens, for instance. That group grew out of the mailing lists of the white Citizens Council that started in Mississippi in the 1950s, and is blatantly racist. So racist, in fact, that Dylann Roof wrote in a “manifesto” found in his home that the organization inspired him. Continue Reading