Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves still has not returned campaign donations from Nancy New and Zach New, two of the criminal defendants in Mississippi’s $77-million welfare-fraud scandal, as Associated Press reporter Emily Wagster Pettus reported on May 30. His campaign says it will hold onto the funds until litigation surrounding the scandal wraps up.
After State Auditor Shad White and Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens broke the news of the welfare scandal and announced the first six arrests in February 2020, the governor vowed to return $8,500 in campaign donations he had received from the indicted mother-and-son duo.
The News, whose nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center funneled tens of millions in Temporary Assistance For Needy Families welfare funds to illegal causes, have since pleaded guilty to multiple charges. Public campaign-finance filings show that, between 2017 and 2019, Nancy New donated $2,500 and Zach New donated $6,000 to Reeves’ campaign. Nancy New also donated $2,000 to Reeves’ 2019 Democratic opponent, Jim Hood, during that period.
On Feb. 6, 2020, Reeves vowed that “anything they gave to the campaign” would go to “a separate, untouched bank account” while officials continued investigating the scandal and that the funds “will be there waiting to return to the taxpayers and help the people it was intended for.”
So far, those funds remain in the Reeves campaign’s bank account. When WJTV asked Reeves on May 26, 2023, why he had reused old footage of himself visiting Nancy New’s private school for a new campaign ad, his campaign did not directly answer the question but reiterated that the News’ donations would “be donated to a worthy cause at the ultimate conclusion of the legal proceedings.” (Later, on June 1, he told reporters the footage was in the video because “I guess whoever did the editing decided that it was a good picture”).
‘It’s Really Just What Feels Appropriate’
But why wait for the legal proceedings, which could last years longer, to conclude before returning the funds?
Parker Briden, who serves as senior adviser to the governor’s re-election campaign, told the Mississippi Free Press on June 15 that
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