A Democratic Governor in Mississippi? He thinks it’s possible.

After a meet-and-greet in Ridgeland, a porch festival in Vicksburg, the Great Delta Bear Affair in Rolling Fork and an event on a baseball diamond in Yazoo City, Brandon Presley entered a packed house in McComb and launched the message he believes he can get a Democrat – namely himself – governor of Mississippi.

He would immediately move to expand Medicaid, which would help revive rural hospitals and provide largely free government health insurance to most low-income adults. He would cut a hated tax on groceries. Above all, he assured the crowd, he would be a very different governor than Tate Reeves, the incumbent Republican president, whom he castigated as someone hiding in privilege and dented by scandal.

“The battle in Mississippi politics is not between right and left,” Mr. Presley, an elected public utilities commissioner and former mayor of Nettleton, his small hometown in northern Mississippi, said in McComb. “And sometimes it’s not even Democratic versus Republican. It’s those of us on the outside versus those of us on the inside.”

Mr. Presley’s campaign is based on the bet that his human touch and populist platform can forge a coalition of black and liberal-to-centrist white voters, including some disaffected Republicans, that is robust enough to win. It’s a test of a blueprint that Democrats have long relied on, but with waning effect in recent decades as Republicans have tightened their grip on power in Mississippi and most of the South.

Still, Mr. Presley has gained significant momentum — and with it, the attention of Democrats outside Mississippi. Since January, he has raised more than $11 million. far beyond Mr. Reevesand has used the money to flood television and radio stations with campaign ads.

Cook’s non-partisan political report recently discovered that the elections had ‘turned into a competitive fight’. But it also classified the race as “likely Republican” — a splash of cold water underscoring that no matter how much ground Mr. Presley gains or how much optimism he has inspired among Southern Democrats, he still faces difficult odds in a state that already No Democratic governor elected for 24 years.

In the race for governor four years ago, Jim Hood, then attorney general and the last Democrat elected statewide, was seen as the most viable candidate the party had fielded in Mississippi in more than a decade. Still, he lost to Mr. Reeves by about five percentage points.

Still, Mr. Presley sensed an opening. He believed that Mr. Reeves’ shaky popularity ratings, anger over a massive scandal in which Social Security funds went to the pet projects of wealthy and connected Republicans, and dissatisfaction with the state’s perennial struggle for prosperity could allow him to accomplish what previous Democratic candidates could not reach. .

If neither candidate receives a majority of votes on Tuesday, a runoff will take place on November 28.

Mr. Presley has made enormous efforts to mobilize black voters, a crucial bloc in a state where nearly 40 percent of the population is black. But deploying the rest of the coalition Presley needs—for example, white working-class voters who might have voted for Mr. Reeves voted – will be very important.

“You can’t win if you don’t win white crossover votes,” said Byron D’Andra Orey, a professor of political science at Jackson State University.

For months, Mr. Presley has had marathon days as he ping-ponged his way down the Mississippi, stopping in all 82 counties. He has become a frequent presence at football games on historically black college campuses, as well as at festivals and small gatherings at community centers.

In every place he has made the same claim: he is not a liberal – he is against the right to abortion – and he is certainly not elite. It is true that Elvis Presley was his second cousin, but the fame of a distant relative did not help his family’s fortunes. His mother had to raise him and his siblings alone after his father was murdered at the age of 8.

“I’m white, and I’m a country guy — I can’t help it,” Mr. Presley told a mostly black audience during a campaign stop. “But I get up every day and go to bed every night to get Mississippi together.”

The state is splitting along racial and regional lines, creating a landscape that is anything but homogeneous, even if it leans heavily in favor of the Republican Party. The western flank, including the flat farmland in the Delta, votes for the Democrats.

Mr. Presley has been betting that one of his goals in particular can unite Democrats and Republicans, black voters and many white voters: joining the 40 other states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Researchers predict this would make coverage available to about 230,000 lower-income adults over six years.

Polls in Mississippi – where death rates from heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer are among the highest in the country – have expressed overwhelming support.

Mr. Reeves has been adamant in his opposition to Medicaid expansion, pointing to the costs (much of which would be a federal responsibility) and dismissing them as “welfare.” In September, he suggested an alternative which, if approved by federal officials, would increase funding for some hospitals but not provide coverage for the uninsured.

Grant Dowdy, a dentist from Greenville who came to the festival in Rolling Fork, said he was willing to break the consistent streak of voting for Republicans precisely because of Mr. Presley’s support for Medicaid expansion. Mississippi, he said, “should be like every other sensible state in the country.”

But in such a polarized political climate, where party loyalty often outweighs everything else, recruiting enough Republicans to tilt the balance toward Presley may prove impossible.

In 2001, he became Mississippi’s youngest mayor when he was elected leader of Nettleton, a city of about 1,900 in the northeastern part of the state.

Since then, Mr. Presley, 46, has been elected four times to represent much of northern Mississippi on the state’s Public Service Commission, which oversees telecommunications, electric, gas, water and sewer utilities . Colleagues and supporters said the position — in a district full of deeply conservative areas — helped him hone the concerned approach he’s taking in the governor’s race.

Mr. Reeves has portrayed Mr. Presley as a liberal aligned with President Biden and his campaign as orchestrated by the national Democratic Party. He has pointed out that most of Mr. Presley’s fundraising comes from outside Mississippi.

“Ask yourself: Why are they historically dropping money on Mississippi to turn it blue?” Mr Reeves said this on social media in October. “It’s because they know Brandon Presley will govern as a liberal Democrat.”

Mr. Reeves also emphasizes his conservative bona fides, including tax cuts he signed into law and a pledge to continue pursuing his ambition to eliminate the state income tax.

He has touted the state’s unemployment rate, which has fallen to just over 3 percent — the lowest in decades. He has also campaigned pay increases he approved last year for public school teachers which were among the largest in state history, amounting to an average increase of about $5,100 per year.

Mr. Reeves has also said his administration is trying to recoup money misspent in the welfare scandal, in which more than $77 million was siphoned from the state’s poorest residents to fund projects like those of Brett Favre, the former N.F.L. player, om build a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi. Mr. Reeves was the state’s lieutenant governor at the time.

Mr. Presley knows how to stir up a crowd, remembering a preacher one moment and insulting a comic the next. He interrupted Mr. Reeves at the candidate forum in McComb to loud cheers and howls of laughter, delivering an almost cartoonish portrayal of the governor ignorant and unsympathetic to the hardships facing the working poor.

“Like the Pharaoh of old, his heart has been turned to stone,” Mr. Presley said. He also particularly enjoyed the roasting upgrades reportedly made to the governor’s mansion, like a special lemon tree shelter and an expensive ice cream machine (“You better make that good Sonic ice cream!”).

At several stops, he has told the crowd about a promise to his wife Katelyn, whom he married just three months ago: If he wins, they will feed the homeless from the governor’s mansion. His concern for the needy, he says, came from his own experience of enduring the turmoil and humiliations of poverty.

Some who came to hear him speak recently said they were drawn to Mr. Presley because his early struggles sounded familiar — and simply because he was there and reached out to them.

“Look where he is,” said Joseph M. Daughtry Sr., the police chief in Columbus, where Mr. Presley had navigated a maze of country roads to speak to several dozen people at a community center in a poor, mostly black neighborhood. .

“We have someone who understands us,” Chief Daughtry said. ‘Someone who cares about us. And someone who is not ashamed of us.”

Mr. Presley walked over to shake his hand.