Ronnie Musgrove
David Ronald Musgrove is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 62nd governor of Mississippi from 2000 to 2004. A Democrat, he previously served as the 29th lieutenant governor of Mississippi from 1996 to 2000 under Governor Kirk Fordice. As governor, Musgrove had a conservative record.
He was the Democratic nominee in the 2008 special election for one of Mississippi's seats in the United States Senate, losing to incumbent Senator Roger Wicker.
Musgrove is a principal at a public affairs consulting firm, Politics. In 2014, he became founding partner of a new law firm in Jackson, Mississippi, Musgrove/Smith Law. As of 2025, he is the most recent Democrat to hold the office of Governor of Mississippi.
Early life
David Ronald "Ronnie" Musgrove was born on July 29, 1956, in Sardis, Mississippi. He was raised in Tocowa and the city of Batesville. He had four siblings. His mother was a textile factory worker and his father was a road crew worker for the Mississippi Highway Department. When Musgrove was seven years old, his father caught pneumonia while laboring during a snowstorm and died. He attended Northwest Mississippi Junior College, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Mississippi School of Law.State Senate
In 1987, Musgrove ran for the District 10 seat of the Mississippi State Senate, representing Panola and Tate counties, which was being vacated by its incumbent. He defeated Price Darby in an August Democratic primary runoff and won the November general election. After being seated in January 1988, Musgrove was appointed vice chairman of the Senate's Universities and Colleges Committee and made a member of the Education Committee.Despite rumors that he would seek the office of Attorney General of Mississippi in 1991, Musgrove chose to seek reelection to the Senate. He ran unopposed and was reelected. At the onset of his second term in January 1992, he was named chairman of the Education Committee.
Lieutenant governor
In 1995 Musgrove ran as the Democratic candidate for the office of lieutenant governor of Mississippi, facing one-term Republican incumbent Eddie Briggs. Briggs refused to debate his opponent, and Musgrove accused him of hypocrisy for not releasing his tax returns when he had demanded the same of Brad Dye, whom he had defeated four years prior. Briggs also distanced himself from Republican Kirk Fordice's gubernatorial reelection campaign due to personal differences between the two.On November 7, the election was held and Musgrove won, taking 52 percent of the vote. He was sworn-in as lieutenant governor on January 4, 1996. In an attempt to contrast himself from his predecessor, he began his tenure by indicating he was open to cooperation with Governor Fordice. As lieutenant governor, Musgrove was an ex officio member of the Joint Legislative Budget Committee, chairing it in 1999. His service on the board allowed him to garner significant experience in budgeting.
Shortly after being elected lieutenant governor, Musgrove was seriously injured in a car accident while traveling on official state business. After Fordice was gravely injured in a car accident, Musgrove served as acting governor from November 7 to December 17, 1996. While serving in an acting capacity in Fordice's absence, Musgrove limited his activities to signing proclamations, processing extraditions, declaring weather-related emergencies and making appointments recommended by Fordice's staff. At the time, Musgrove was quoted as saying, "When we're confronted by these types of matters, politics has to be put on the back burner and we have to do the right thing."
After taking office, Musgrove named Black senators to chair several Senate committees, including those concerning the judiciary, constitution, elections, and universities and colleges.
Differences later emerged between Fordice and Musgrove over the latter's support of public education. After the governor vetoed the Mississippi Adequate Education Act in 1987, Musgrove lobbied for the legislature to override Fordice's decision.
In 1998 Musgrove chaired the National Conference of Lieutenant Governors. After the 1999 elections but before the official end of his tenure, Musgrove turned over the lieutenant governor's offices to Lieutenant Governor-elect Amy Tuck so as to ease her assumption of the position.
Governor of Mississippi
1999 election
Musgrove ran for the office of governor in 1999, having hired a full-time fundraiser and a political consultant to mount such a campaign two years prior. He won the August 3 Democratic primary, taking 57 percent of the vote and defeating former state Supreme Court justice Jim Roberts, though Roberts had damaged his credibility by questioning his use of state vehicles for campaign activities. In the general election he faced Republican former U.S. Representative Mike Parker.Musgrove focused on education advancements, running a series of television ads showcasing his accomplishments as lieutenant governor in supporting elementary and secondary school improvements. He also ran a significant amount of campaign ads on Christian radio stations and espoused socially conservative positions such as opposition to abortion. Parker largely campaigned on his personality, focusing on his background in Mississippi and his experience in government. As a result, Musgrove criticized him for being "issueless", to which Parker responded that he was not "going to play this gotcha politics."
Musgrove also spent a significant amount of time traveling and hosting events while his campaign staff innovated with using traffic density maps to strategically place campaign signs and deployed get out the vote efforts in every county. In contrast, Parker relied largely on his radio and television ads to promote his campaign. During the last week of the campaign, Musgrove continued attending events while his campaign printed newspaper ads which attacked Parker for depriving rural hospitals of funding by voting in favor of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, generating a significant amount of public interest. The congressman in turn played at a charity golf tournament during the last day before the election.
The 1999 gubernatorial election was the closest in Mississippi history; Musgrove earned an advantage in the popular vote, taking 379,033 votes to Parker's 370,691. As there were two minor independent candidates, Musgrove fell 0.38 percent short of receiving a majority as required by the Constitution of Mississippi. Since neither candidate received a majority of the popular vote, had each won 61 of the state's 122 electoral districts, and Parker refused to concede, the Mississippi House of Representatives was required to hold a contingent election to select the winner. On January 4, 2000, the House convened and voted in favor of seating Musgrove, 86 to 36, in a mostly partisan vote. It was the only time the election of a Mississippi governor was decided by the Mississippi House, as a 2020 referendum abolished the electoral vote requirement and replaced a contingent election with a runoff election between the top two candidates.
Tenure
Due to the short time frame between his election as governor and the date of his inauguration on January 11, 2000, Musgrove entered gubernatorial office with an incomplete staff. He entered office with the intent to reform government institutions, specifically public education.As Governor, Musgrove served as chair or vice chair of a number of boards and associations, including the National Governors Association, the Southern Regional Education Board, the Southern States Energy Board, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the Executive Committee for the Democratic Governors Association.
As governor, Musgrove presided over what is still considered the largest economic development project in Mississippi history. In August 2000, he launched the Advantage Mississippi Initiative to create new jobs for the state, which brought in a new Nissan Motor Company production plant. Nissan's arrival gave legitimacy to the notion that the Southeastern United States could become an automotive manufacturing leader. Musgrove's AMI economic development package also helped set in motion the mechanics needed to recruit Toyota to Blue Springs.
In 2000, Musgrove signed a bill into law banning same-sex couples from adopting children, making Mississippi only the third state to have done so. The law also says that Mississippi will not recognize adoptions from other states by same-sex couples.
Beginning in the 1980s, Mississippi lawyers won a series of large damage suits against corporations, resulting in large payouts to the plaintiffs they represented and significant profits for the attorneys. As a result, damage suit attorneys' political influence increased and by the early 2000s were one of the largest sources of campaign contributions for Democratic candidates in the state. In response, the business community began increasingly funding pro-tort reform candidates who would support new limits on the lawsuits. In late 2001, the press began to publish exposes on the damage suit attorneys, which, combined with a series of lawsuits against hospitals and medical practices, led to increased public support for reform. On August 23, 2002, Musgrove announced to a group of campaign contributors—all of them trial lawyers—his intention to call the legislature into special session to consider tort reform proposals. When asked for his reasons, Musgrove told them that he was under intense political pressure to act.
The tort reform special session opened on September 5. By the time it closed on November 26, it was the longest-lasting special session in Mississippi history. The legislature adopted several new laws restricting damage suits, including caps on punitive damages in cases involving businesses and instances of medical malpractice. Despite the success of the session he had called, Musgrove garnered no obvious political advantage from the enactment of the reforms, and Democrats' fundraising efforts in the state were left compromised.