Rubel Phillips

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Hailing from a politically active family and initially a member of the Democratic Party, Phillips was elected circuit court clerk for Alcorn County, serving from 1952 until 1956. He was elected to the Mississippi Public Service Commission in 1955 as its northern district member. The two other members of the commission decided to name Phillips as the body's chairman upon their assumption of office. He and the rest of the commission were sworn-in on January 16, 1956. He announced his resignation from the Public Service Commission on December 20, 1957 to join a law firm in Jackson. Governor J. P. Coleman appointed his brother, Thomas, to succeed him on the commission. His resignation went into effect on January 1, 1958. In 1959 he worked on a campaign advisory committee for Ross Barnett.

Phillips opposed the nomination of John F. Kennedy as the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1960 and voted for the slate of unpledged electors during the general election. In late 1962 he began consulting Wirt Yerger Jr. on the possibility of him running for the office of governor of Mississippi with the backing of the Mississippi Republican Party, which Yerger chaired. After several weeks of public speculation, on December 20, Phillips formally announced his decision to run as a Republican in the 1963 Mississippi gubernatorial election, making him the first Republican gubernatorial candidate in Mississippi since George L. Sheldon ran in 1947. He justified his switch in party affiliation by arguing that the Republican Party offered Mississippi "a program of genuine conservatism and local responsibility" and accusing the "National Democratic Party" of promoting socialism. Political columnist Bill Minor said of his partisan switch, "I really believe he converted to Republicanism as a political opportunity to raise money to run. I never saw him as adopting the philosophy."

Like his Democratic opponent, Paul B. Johnson Jr., Phillips' campaign was dominated by appeals to white supremacy and race-baiting, arguing that Republicans were better suited to protect Jim Crow racial segregation in the state than Democrats. He declared in one campaign appearance, "I was born a segregationist, I am for segregation now, and I will be for segregation when I die." He attempted to link Johnson with President Kennedy, using the campaign slogan "K.O. the Kennedys", and stated that he would help U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater get elected president in 1964. He also stated that a strong two-party system in the state would "undermine the Negro" as "Negroes are all Democrats." Johnson characterized Phillips as a covert racial moderate who had switched parties because he had little chance of winning a large Democratic primary, and his campaign publicized a memo Phillips had written as a public service commissioner in 1956 calling for a moderate approach to racial issues. He and major state newspapers decried the threat posed by a two-party system to the political unity of white conservatives, warning that it would create an opening for black voters to gain influence. Phillips also backed education reform, civil service reform, and right-to-work legislation. He opposed sales tax increases. He lost the election, garnering only 38 percent of the vote. Despite concluding that Republicans had "lost a battle," he argued that "we have not lost the war. We now know that we have a strong two-party system."

Eager to continue to build up the Republican Party in Mississippi, state Republican chairman Clarke Reed and finance director Billy Mounger convinced Phillips to run again in the 1967 Mississippi gubernatorial election. Encouraged by the good performance of moderate Republicans in the South during the 1966 United States elections, Phillips decided to run as a moderate against Democrat John Bell Williams. He opened his campaign on October 3 with a television broadcast, calling for a "two-way street in human relations" and advising that "The white cannot keep the Negro down without paying the awesome penalty of restricting his own advancement." The declaration marked a break from previous Republican messaging in the state and garnered skepticism from political observers. When asked whether his comments had doomed his chances, Phillips stated, "I think the people of Mississippi are ready to face this issue. I think it is a timely subject." He also alleged that the state was controlled by an "old guard establishment" who were interested on perpetuating their own power at the expense of the state's economy.

Phillips backed the reinstatement of compulsory school attendance legislation, the disbanding of the Mississippi Milk Commission, the repeal of the two-year residency requirement for prospective voters in the state. He also supported a freeze on state government hiring, which Williams rejected, arguing it would deny employment opportunities to young people. Phillips was endorsed by the black-dominated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which he denounced as a "kiss of death type endorsement". He lost overwhelmingly to Williams, only garnering 30 percent of the vote, much of it coming from black voters registered in wake of the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He never ran for office again but continued to fundraise for Republican candidates throughout the rest of his life.

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