As I sat in my office at the Jackson Free Press on Tuesday – Mississippi's primary day – I looked out into the newsroom, where the vast majority of our staff members and nine summer interns are under 30 (and most are Mississippi natives). Some attend or have attended historically black colleges and universities, others Mississippi State and Ole Miss; the youngest ones go to either a private, majority-white academy or a public, majority-black Jackson high school.

To a person, they are driven, passionate, talented and willing to work hard to bring progress to Mississippi and its citizens. But I don't think a single one of them gave a damn about what happened in that much-discussed US Senate primary, in which Senator Thad Cochran and the Tea Party upstart Chris McDaniel appeared headed to a run-off.

I really didn't give a damn, either.

The problem with this year's primary is the same one that progressive Mississippians – and a modern wave of progressive Southerners – face nearly every time we go to vote, especially in congressional and statewide elections: there is no one we want to vote for, no one who excites us, and certainly not a single candidate who inspires us.

In fact, most every candidate on the ballot is either an establishment conservative (a Republican like Cochran), a far-right conservative (a Republican like McDaniel) or a politician who plays a conservative on TV and, all too often, in office (a Democrat).

We're told to, wink-wink, vote Democratic today because a Democrat like the pro-NRA, anti-abortion Travis Childers (on the off-chance that he wins after his primary victory Tuesday) will help hold the Senate majority – and maybe-just-maybe he will act more progressive once he's a senator and doesn't have to run all the time.

Or, we're urged to vote for Cochran because at least he's not as bat-shit crazy as McDaniel (which is true).

I, for one, am tired of holding my nose to vote for a pretend-Republican who may or may not serve my interests and work to preserve my rights – especially when the poseurs keep losing to actual Republicans anyway ... and maybe now the Tea Party. But Democratic reticence to even acknowledge the existence of an increasingly progressive electorate with even a moderate candidate is an insult to progress-minded Mississippians.

It's those Mississippi Democrats who frustrate me the most – not to mention the national Democrats who treat our state like flyover country, with nary a thought about putting any real money or faith into progressive candidates here.

So we get Democratic gubernatorial candidates who try to out-pray and out-gay-bash Republicans on the campaign trial – and lose. We get state lawmakers who play procedural games to try and trick Republicans into voting down abortion bills (but who mostly won't say out loud anything about the rights of women to manage their own health decisions). And our only current statewide elected Democrat, Attorney General Jim Hood, runs so "tough on crime" that he will never dare to question the death penalty – even in cases such as that of Michelle Byrom, in which judicial and prosecutorial actions eventually got her conviction overturned by the majority-GOP Mississippi supreme court.

Democrats: the deep south deserves better candidates than you're willing to give us. And, even more vitally, all the young (and some older) people who have started to stay here in Mississippi – to fight for choice, to defeat the "personhood" amendment (yeah, we did that), to speak out against racism, to put stickers on their businesses supporting LGBT friends and family members, and to face boycotts as a result – all of them deserve candidates who aren't dumb, dumber, or just pretending to be.

And younger Mississippians are different – just as they are across America. Back in 2004, exit polls showed that under-30 voters in Mississippi led the South (including over Florida and Georgia) in terms of the percentage who voted for John Kerry over George W Bush (and that was Kerry). Obviously, the trends have continued, as has the movement for young people to stay here rather than flee.



But Southern politics are stuck in an age-old cycle. Our politicos seem to still believe that the only people who vote in our state are white wingnuts and religious zealots who spread hate rather than love of their neighbors. So everyone – from Cochran to McDaniel to the "Democrat" Childers – panders to those voters. It's the same people fighting for the same pool of voters, with at least one foot stuck firmly in a dark past.

Meantime, Democrats keep losing here, and Mississippians stay poor with fewer health-care options – and those we do elect, such as Gov Phil Bryant, continue to make us look like a bunch of greedy bigots.

But here's the thing: we're not. I have a front-row seat to what is really happening in Mississippi, and we've helped nurture smart, loving progress through this newspaper for more than a decade. From my desk, I look down on City Hall, where – while people chose between Kang and Kodos at the ballot box – the Jackson City Council passed the state's eighth municipal equality resolution, which pointedly including the rights of LGBT citizens.

Oh, and don't just write off "evangelicals" either – many of our progressives are people driven by their faith to pursue progress in the ways that matter to our state. Recently, we published a special issue on gay activism in the state in which many businesses bought ads to tell LGBT customers "We Don't Discriminate: If You're Buying, We're Selling" – just as they do with stickers in their windows. The man who started the now-national campaign is a local conservative Christian, Mitchell Moore, whose faith does not allow him to hate on gay and lesbian people.

It's time for Mississippi and the South as a whole to stop playing small and instead demand political candidates that don't limit our potential, don't assume that we're all bigots or homophobes, and who allow us to show the world what is really happening here.



It's also time for politicians to stop treating us as if we haven't changed. Many of us have.

Now, they need to.