Former Mississippi Gov. Bill Allain Dies at 85

[Recursion]

RIP. He was a good guy.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mississippi-gov-bill-allain-dies-85-21074915

Former Mississippi Gov. Bill Allain, a Democrat who appointed many women and minorities to government jobs and strengthened the executive branch by removing lawmakers from state boards, died Monday in Jackson.

A nephew, Tom Allain, says the former governor was 85.

Allain was state governor from January 1984 to January 1988, after serving a four-year term as Mississippi's attorney general.

...

Associates said Allain's restructuring of state government was his greatest public policy achievement. He also appointed the first black justice to the Mississippi Supreme Court and made government more inclusive by hiring significant numbers of women and minorities.

Incidentally, his successor, Ray Mabus, is currently Secretary of the Navy

[LuvNewcastle]

1. He was one of our better governors, one of the last few Democrats in that office.

Democrats had held the governor's office for about 100 years before the first Republican was elected. Now it might be another 100 years before we get another Democrat. Except for about a 20 year transition period, Miss. has basically been a one-party state all along.