An ongoing rift between Republican State Auditor Shad White and a growing number of elected officials in Mississippi has widened over the last month. The second-term auditor said Monday the pushback has only served to spur him closer to taking a swing at the governor’s seat in 2027.
White has boasted a no-holds-barred approach to keeping state government accountable since being appointed to the position by then-Gov. Phil Bryant in 2018. He has since been elected to the statewide office twice, with the beginning of his current term bringing a maelstrom of controversy and resistance from other leaders who take issue with his increasingly aggressive approach.
The backlash from both public detractors and political counterparts has been a consistent backdrop in his second full term. Opposition has included a lingering lawsuit from Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch regarding White’s legal role in the ongoing TANF welfare scandal fallout, an accusation of an improper investigation framed as “political shenanigans,” and a continuing public jousting match with Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
At the annual budget hearing for the state auditor’s office in front of the Mississippi Senate Appropriations Committee last month, questions from Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, probed both White’s role in seeking monetary retribution from Brett Favre in the TANF scandal and the legality of a $2 million audit of state government waste outsourced to Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The questions sparked a verbal donnybrook between the auditor and Polk – an exchange that White believes was politically motivated.
“This line of questioning feels less about policy, and it feels more about politics to me. That’s exactly what it feels like,” White said at the hearing on Jan. 22. “I’ve never been questioned on an audit like this right up until the moment where the lieutenant governor thinks I might be the thing standing between him and the governor’s office.”
Polk denied White’s assertion, stating his questions were aimed at making sure Mississippians were “getting their money’s worth” from the office. When the
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