Barry Goldwater may have been an unrelieved disaster for the National Republican Party, but he put the Mississippi G.O.P. back in business for the first time since Reconstruction. He won an astonishing 87% of the state's vote; at the same time, the only Republican who ran for Congress was elected, and Republican officials are still kicking themselves for not having gone after all five Mississippi seats in the House of Representatives.
Last week, in a series of municipal elections, the G.O.P. proved that its 1964 performance was not a flash in the pan. Where the party ran only two candidates in the 1961 municipal elections, this time it put up no fewer than 46—seven for mayor, 39 for lesser posts in 18 towns and cities. Sensing a threat to Democratic rule, Governor Paul Johnson urged Mississippians to the polls for "probably the most important election in this state's recent history."
When the votes were tallied, even the hopeful Republicans were surprised. They elected a city councilman in Columbus, a total of seven aldermen in four other towns. More important, they elected two mayors—the first ever in Mississippi. In Hattiesburg, Lawyer Paul Grady, 41, who lost a runoff election for mayor as a Democrat in 1961, decided he'd rather switch before fighting again, did much better as a Republican. Though Hattiesburg is the Governor's home town, Grady defeated Democratic Incumbent Claude Pittman Jr. 2,429 to 1,827. In Columbus, another Democrat-turned-Republican, City Councilman Robert D. Harmond, 54, beat Democratic Mayor William Propst, 1,394 to 1,191.
In most leagues, nine wins out of 46 would be rated an anemic average, but Mississippi has been a one-team league for so long that G.O.P. officials were elated. To Republican State Chairman Wirt Yerger Jr., an efficient organizer who has seeded all of Mississippi's 82 counties with G.O.P. workers, the party's victories represented "a history-making breakthrough, particularly because they were at the grass-roots level." Next year, added Yerger, the G.O.P. will try for all of Mississippi's congressional seats, and will even contest Veteran Senator James O. Eastland's. Said Yerger: "We think Eastland is vulnerable."