By Sid Salter
Columnist
Clarke T. Reed Sr., who skillfully and purposefully changed both the retail political
allegiances and the philosophical worldview of many white Southerners, died earlier this
month at his Greenville home at age 96. He was the grey eminence of the Mississippi
Republican Party.
Reed was one of the fathers of the GOP in Mississippi. As a Mississippi Republican
when the party could “meet in a phone booth,” he helped build the party to the
dominance it enjoys today — holding all eight statewide elected offices, supermajorities
in both houses of the Mississippi Legislature, and 5 of 6 seats in the state’s
congressional delegation.
For almost 70 years, Reed wielded considerable influence in state, regional and
national GOP politics. He was a force in formulating and implementing public policy
during the administrations of GOP Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald
Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
He mentored and molded modern-day Mississippi Republican political icons like Thad
Cochran, Trent Lott and Haley Barbour. Barbour, the former head of the Republican
National Convention, two-term Mississippi governor and a successful global lobbyist,
was perhaps his greatest acolyte.
Reed possessed the keenest, most analytical political mind I’ve ever encountered. He
was a master strategist and had a salesman’s understanding of human nature. Most of
all, Clarke Reed was the very definition of a Southern gentleman. From his courtly Delta
drawl to his skill as a host and guide for those experiencing the South and Mississippi
for the first time, Clarke made resistance to his way of thinking almost futile.
He was also a rugged and dogged survivor. After a 2010 car accident in Greenville that
killed an Oklahoma man, injured a passenger in Reed’s vehicle, and left the then-81-
year-old GOP power broker battling for his life, he fought through multiple surgeries to
remain active and relevant.
His son Reynolds died in 2019, and his daughter Julia Reed, the fiery and acclaimed
writer, died in 2020. Yet Clark and his wife, Judy, persevered.
It was at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York that I saw Reed in all
his splendor as he sported the oldest, tackiest sports coat seen within Madison Square
Garden that stifling summer.
“This coat’s older than you are,” Reed laughed in his thick Delta drawl. “My wife bought
it for me.”
Reed’s jacket is a garish Black Watch plaid affair with gold elephants screened on it.
During the 2004 convention, a photograph of Reed wearing the same jacket at the 1968

Republican convention appeared in The New York Times illustrating a major convention
feature story on the Mississippi GOP pioneer by Times political analyst R.W. “Johnny”
Apple Jr. The 1968 photo of Reed in his prime in that sports coat illustrated the
expansive Times obituary published last week.
The obituary focused on Reed’s role in the most significant national moment for the
Mississippi GOP at the 1976 GOP National Convention in Kansas City.
After assuming the presidency following President Richard Nixon's 1974 resignation in
the depths of the Watergate scandal, President Gerald Ford began in 1975 to seek the
1976 Republican nomination for president, which would culminate at the Kansas City
convention.
In Mississippi, Reagan had earlier won support from Reed, then-state Sen. Charles
Pickering of Laurel and Jackson oilman W.D. “Billy” Mounger. Ford was supported by
then-U.S. Rep. Thad Cochran, 1975 Mississippi gubernatorial nominee Gil Carmichael
of Meridian and then-Jackson City Commissioner Doug Shanks.
But when Reagan chose liberal Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Richard Schweiker as his
running mate, Reed defected to the Ford camp and other Mississippi delegates would
follow.
Nationally, the Ford-Reagan battle for the nomination was almost dead even and both
candidates began to scour the country for uncommitted delegates to the convention.
Because of the so-called “unit rule” – which required that the candidate who had the
support of the majority of the state’s 30 delegates got all 30 votes – a procedural vote on
a Reagan-backed convention rules change was the showdown vote.
Mississippi’s 30 votes went against the rules change and Reagan’s bid for the
nomination was effectively dead in 1976.
In 2016, the Reed-Mounger rift endured. At age 90, Mounger told AP correspondent
Emily Pettus: “We have not communicated since 1976.” He died in 2020.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.