Who is playing politics in the escalating spat involving three statewide government officials, Shad White, Lynn Fitch and Delbert Hosemann?
The answer to that is probably all three.
In the latest chapter of the saga, Attorney General Fitch is saying that Auditor White exceeded his legal authority when he spent $2 million of the public’s money to hire a consultant to look for waste and fat in several Mississippi government agencies.
Not that Fitch, who doesn’t much care for White, needed any excuse to examine the legality of the consulting contract, but officially she was put up to it by one of Lt. Gov. Hosemann’s top allies in the Senate. That ally, Sen. John Polk, chairs a subcommittee that oversees the state auditor’s budget. The Hattiesburg lawmaker, who himself has made significant efforts to try to reform the state’s purchasing practices, said that he was concerned whether White broke the law by taking it upon himself to arrange a managerial study without being asked to by the Legislature.
White, not known to take criticism lightly, fired back through a spokesman that the reason that Fitch and Hosemann (supposedly through an intermediary) were making a stink is because the consultant discovered a questionable expenditure by his two fellow Republicans when they used the state plane to attend an out-of-state college baseball game. That finding had previously not been disclosed. White is also sensitive to claims that the $335 million in waste the study identified was mostly a rehash of what has been pointed out over the years by legislative and media watchdogs.
Underlying this flap is the common knowledge that all three are seriously considering a run for governor in 2027 to succeed Tate Reeves, who is term-limited.
White has had more than his share of conflicts with Fitch. He has criticized her — legitimately — for not backing up the auditor on demands he has made against public officials for misspent public funds or misused public property. The auditor can make demands for repayment, but he can’t sue. He has to rely on Fitch’s office to do that.
The auditor has also claimed that most of his legislative proposals have met a chilly reception in the Senate, over which Hosemann presides. White doesn’t say that the lieutenant governor is directing his committee chairs to kill White’s proposals for political reasons, but that’s the implication.
Meanwhile, Fitch has gotten upset with White over some disparaging remarks he made about her office in the recent book White authored about the welfare scandal he exposed. She has reciprocated by refusing to represent White in a defamation suit filed against him by former NFL quarterback Brett Favre — leaving the auditor to personally foot a chunk of his legal bills in a case that is an outgrowth of that same welfare scandal.
Hosemann may be enjoying at the moment that Fitch is tweaking White’s nose, but the lieutenant governor has also had his differences with Fitch. During the lieutenant governor’s run for reelection last year, he called Fitch out for not enforcing what appeared to be violations of the state’s campaign finance laws by Hosemann’s opponent in the Republican primary.
If these early skirmishes are a taste of what’s to come in a couple of years, that contest for the GOP nomination for governor should be a doozy.
