Haley Barbour
Haley Reeves Barbour (born October 22, 1947) is a Republican politician from Mississippi. He is the current governor of that state.
A Yazoo County native, he received a degree from the University of Mississippi Law School in 1973.
In 1982, he was the Republican candidate for United States Senate but lost in a landslide to incumbent Democrat John C. Stennis. Afterwards, Barbour was President Ronald Reagan's Director of the White House Office of Political Affairs for two years. During his tenure as Republican National Committee chairman from 1993 to 1997, the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress and gained a majority of governorships. Barbour went on to become an influential lobbyist and served as chairman of then-Governor George W. Bush's presidential campaign advisory committee in 2000.
In 2003, he announced his intention to run for governor of Mississippi. On August 5, 2003, he won the Republican gubernatorial primary. During the campaign, concerns were raised about Barbour's connections to racist groups. Barbour refused to ask the Council of Conservative Citizens to remove his photograph from their website. The photograph showed Barbour at a CCC-sponsored barbecue with five other men, including CCC field director Bill Lord. The CCC grew out of the segregationist White Citizens' Council and is often labeled as racist, though it calls its position majoritarianism. Despite this, Barbour defeated incumbent Democrat Ronnie Musgrove in the general election on November 4, with 53% of the vote to Musgrove's 46%, and became the second Republican governor elected in Mississippi since Reconstruction. He took office in January 2004.
