Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves believes religion has a lot to do with the region’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a Thursday, Aug. 26, fundraiser at the Eads home of Shelby County Election Commission Chairman Brent Taylor, Reeves spoke to several dozen Republicans.

“I’m often asked by some of my friends on the other side of the aisle about COVID … and why does it seem like folks in Mississippi and maybe in the Mid-South are a little less scared, shall we say,” Reeves said.

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“When you believe in eternal life — when you believe that living on this earth is but a blip on the screen, then you don’t have to be so scared of things,” he said, but added: “Now, God also tells us to take necessary precautions.

“And we all have opportunities and abilities to do that and we should all do that. I encourage everyone to do so. But the reality is that working together, we can get beyond this. We can move forward. We can move on.”

Because the event was outside, masks were not required under Shelby County Health Department guidelines. But there was little social distancing.

Reeves has found himself in the middle of the debate about pandemic measures. A year ago this month, he issued a mask mandate for Mississippi schools.

Earlier this month, with another school year about to begin, he refused to issue a new school mask mandate, leaving the decision to individual school districts.

Most Mississippi public school districts require masks. DeSoto County Schools is one of the few where masks are optional.

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Reeves also called new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on the Delta variant, which recommended masking, “not rational science.”

Mississippi has one of the lowest vaccinations rates among the 50 states.

Reeves was elected governor in 2019 and is up for re-election in 2023.

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves talk at a Thursday, Aug. 26, fundraiser for Reeves in Eads. (Bill Dries/The Daily Memphian)

Between now and then, 38 gubernatorial races will be held across the country – two this year and 36 in 2022.

“To all of you that live in Tennessee, I feel like I should apologize for the millions of dollars we spent on Memphis TV during the 2019 campaign and all of the commercials you had to watch,” Reeves said of the political ads that reach North Mississippi audiences.

In the upcoming races, Reeves said Republicans would raise millions of dollars more and spend most of it.

“We’re still going to get outspent significantly by the far left,” he added.

Republican U.S. Rep. David Kustoff of Germantown praised Reeves for cutting the federal unemployment supplement to the jobless in Mississippi, saying the $300 federal supplement, which Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee also ended in July, “gave people the incentive not to go to work.”

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“It’s common sense leadership,” Kustoff said of the cutoff. “By being here tonight, you are guaranteeing that Mississippi and, frankly, this whole Mid-South region remains economically strong.”

Reeves emphasized the statewide races for governor at a time when state edicts from Republican governors and majority Republican legislatures limiting or banning mask mandates and forbidding proof of vaccination are being challenged on several fronts.

As the fundraiser was underway Thursday evening, Shelby County government had filed a federal court lawsuit challenging Lee’s executive order earlier this month allowing parents to opt out of school mask mandates in a recent Shelby County Health Department directive.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona sent letters last week to Lee and at least two other governors saying the federal government could investigate whether the limits and bans on mask requirements “may infringe upon a school district’s authority to adopt policies to protect students and educators.”

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The Shelby County lawsuit raises the same specific question.

“We’re all here tonight because we believe in conservative principles. We believe in electing God-fearing people to office,” Reeve said. “We believe in standing up for what we believe in. We believe that we need leaders who will stand up to the other side — the ones who want to take our country in a far different direction than the principles our country was founded on.”

Election Commission chairman Brent Taylor hosted a fundraiser at his Eads home Thursday, Aug. 26, for Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves. The home is a replica of the Mississippi governor’s Greek Revival mansion. Taylor is originally from Mississippi.

Reeves found Taylor’s home familiar, although it was his first visit there.

Taylor, who is from Mississippi, is a former Memphis City Council member and Shelby County commissioner who harbored thoughts of a future as governor.

When his fourth-grade class visited the Mississippi governor’s mansion in Jackson, Taylor drew — and still has — a detailed sketch of the antebellum Greek Revival house he intended to occupy one day.

Fast forward to a move to Memphis, where Taylor held two local offices and staged a failed bid in 2002 for the Republican Congressional nomination in the 8th district. He and Kustoff lost that race to future U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

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“When I moved to Memphis, I thought, ‘It won’t be that governor’s mansion. It will be another governor’s mansion,’” Taylor told the group gathered outside his home in front of the American flag and the state flags of Tennessee and Mississippi.

“I ran for City Council and later got ... whipped for Congress. So I decided probably the governor’s mansion was never going to be in my stack of cards,” Taylor said. “I decided I’ll just build a governor’s mansion. Then I don’t have to worry about giving it up in four years to somebody else.”

The architect on the ambitious project was former City Council member Tom Marshall, with Taylor going to a Christmas Party at the original mansion with a tape measure to take some key measurements.

A Mississippi state trooper asked what he was doing and Taylor explained. Reeves heard about the home-building project when he became governor and later met Taylor. That’s when Taylor invited Reeves out with the offer of a fundraiser.