At the Neshoba County Fair, politicians spar and families continue traditions

The crowds at the Founders Square Pavilion were loud and rowdy on Thursday as the two leading candidates for Governor painted starkly different pictures of where Mississippi is and where it should go. 

Incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves defended his record, arguing that the state's historically low unemployment rate and improved elementary school test scores show his brand of conservative leadership is working.

"To hear Brandon's fiction, Mississippi is just not doing very well and it's all my fault," Reeves said. "He said, and I quote 'under Tate Reeves' leadership we are moving in the wrong direction...' The math says that is pure fiction."

Brandon Presley, the Democratic candidate for governor and North Mississippi's public service commissioner, reiterated his support for expanding Medicaid to provide health care to the working poor and help save the state's struggling hospitals. 

"I understand where working people are and Tate Reeves doesn't have a clue," Presley said. "He doesn't have a clue as to what people in Mississippi are struggling with, and much like Nero of old, he's fiddling while our hospitals are burning to the ground."

Some families, such as the Whites, have gathered in Neshoba for multiple generations. 

“I was born and raised about a mile across the road from here and I’ve been here all my life,” said Ron White, a local farmer and grandfather of four. “The fair is about family get-togethers. Getting this red dirt into the kids’ lungs and they just come back forever. At a typical fair you just have a carnival – this is where you have cabins and you can get together and see folks you haven’t seen since last year. You’ve got to come and experience it. You can’t explain it to anybody.” 

He says his family's first home at the fair was a 10-by-10 foot corn crib, transported in 1964 by mule to the exact lot his three story cabin stands on today.

Across from the pavilion where gubernatorial candidates Tate Reeves and Brandon Presley spoke to crowds is the cabin where sisters Rebecca and Cat McClain have stayed since 1948. Two stories and wood all around, the sisters decorate interior walls with more than a dozen framed posters displaying the signatures of every visitor that's stopped by.

“There were three of us born and raised out here. So we come back and bring our families, because it’s just instilled in us as a family tradition.”