MDOT presents The Extra Mile Podcast Legislative Session.

Paul - Welcome in to another episode of The Extra Mile Podcast Legislative Session. We are about a month and a half into the legislative session so about at the midway point. And we’ve got another great guest for everyone to listen to today. We've got Secretary of State Michael Watson.

A little information on Secretary Watson. He took office in January of 2020 as Mississippi’s 36th Secretary of State and also another former legislator in the house. He served three terms in the State Senate beginning in 2008 repping District 51 in Jackson County down there on the coast. Thank you so much, Secretary Watson for joining us. We really appreciate it.

Secretary Watson - Absolutely. Good to be here. I enjoyed my time in the Senate obviously and we did a lot of work with transportation and other issues. I got familiar with these folks, you folks over here. It’s great to be here as Secretary of State as well.

Will - We certainly appreciate that. What drove you back in the day to get involved in office to reach out and seek the Senate seat?

Secretary Watson - Yeah. You know early on in my life I really decided about the fifth grade and people say that’s a little odd. My Dad was a pastor and my mom obviously a pastor’s wife and so they were in the ministry and really it was kind of always drilled into my heart about public service helping people.

I always wondered what that would look like with which avenue that would lead to. So early on I decided that’s what I wanted to do in some facet who knows if it was elected office or not but just public services in general. I started doing things in high school, junior high, you name it just the different kinds of clubs, student leadership and trying to hone those skills and figure out every experience that you can have adds to your life.

Will - Sure.

Secretary Watson - So if it’s student council or if it’s FCA whatever it is learning different things and being around different people. That’s kind of how it led to the State Senate. I was looking at a couple different things. I remember the legislator I ran against. I ran against an incumbent. It felt like the perfect storm and I prayed really hard about it and I got a good peace about it. I called a few folks in the area one of them being kind of the godfather of politics in Jackson County. I said, “Hey, man. What do you think? What do you think about this?” He said, “Look. Just don’t get beat too badly.” And I remember thinking, I was 28 at the time, 29 that should kind of shake you but I had such a peace about it in my heart knowing that was really the right thing for me at the time. Fortunately we worked really hard and again it was the perfect storm. We were able to win and here we are.

Will - And even further what ultimately drove you to leave the Senate after your three terms and seek out the Secretary of State’s office?

Secretary Watson - Yeah. Again a conversation with Governor Bryant it was 2018-ish. He was actually leaving office. He was termed out as governor. The conversation kind of started more as “Hey. What are you gonna do—you’re done here.” He kind of flipped the tables on me and said, “Well what are you gonna do?” You know I thought I’d been in the State Senate for three terms. That’s probably enough. That’s a long time and I really hadn’t thought much about what else to do.

I’ve got a beautiful wife at home and at the time two little girls, now three little girls. I’m an attorney by trade so I could go home and probably practice and make a lot more money than you can in being a State Senator and missing all that time in the office. I could just go home and be fine and he said, “You know have you ever thought about Secretary of State?” And I’m talking about out of the blue. And I said, “No sir. I never thought about that.” Never wanted to be Secretary of State. No. It’s one of those conversations I walked to the office and thought that’s really cool. The governor just suggested maybe I run for statewide office. Nah. That’s not gonna happen. It was one of those ideas that you guys are well aware of that just kind of sticks in your head and eventually you gotta decide wait a minute if it’s not going away I probably need to pray about this.

Started thinking through it and wanted to make sure. Are you confident? Do you understand that office? Do you know what the needs are? What you can do and what you can bring to that office. Can you be successful with a good team? And ultimately does Lauren say yes? We had that long conversation. Had a really good peace about it and we’ve got a great team now so again here we are.

Will - I know you’ve certainly enjoyed your time in the Senate as you mentioned and now you’re over at the Secretary of States’ office. This being a legislative podcast we wanted to get your thoughts and take on what’s going on right now sort of what the legislative process we just come through the February 10th deadline for some of the original floor action on bills. What’s going on over there right now? What are things looking like in your experience?

Secretary Watson - It’s really fun as a State Senator looking back putting that hat on and I’m often reminded you’re not in the legislature anymore so you don’t have to get involved with everything and I appreciate that but it’s still kind of fun to look back and kind of think what would I be thinking as a State Senator so it’s been fun to watch the politics and the maneuvering that’s going on over there with the tax bill, with the education issues.

For us I would say elections. We’ve got a really good bill that moved through the House and will be headed to the Senate. It’s an election integrity package so we’re really excited about that and we really appreciate Speaker Gunn and his leadership over there and Representative Powell handled the bill for us on the floor so Chairman Beckett obviously. Appreciate all those guys and their good works. Looking forward to work hard on that on the state senate side.

Paul - Secretary Watson, you just mentioned the election bill but this time of the year you work at a state agency, you’re tracking legislation that comes through. Will’s very familiar with that. Is there anything else you’re kind of looking at that’s coming down the pipeline or they’re discussing over there at the state house?

Secretary Watson - Yeah. Obviously the tax bill is a big conversation of being between the house and the senate. It’s interesting to see the different positions on that. That’s something we’re watching. Obviously education’s near and dear to my heart. My wife was a former teacher and so anything that deals with education. And that was one of my passionate issues when I was in the state senate. I’m making sure that we continue to work hard towards parental choice in education. Making sure parents know what’s best for the children. So they should be the ones that are empowered. So issues like that we obviously pay attention to.

One of the things people don’t understand about our office or don’t really know. Not that they don’t understand. It’s not just elections. People look at our office and they say “That’s secretary of state’s office. They just run elections.” Well we don’t. It’s “Action Mississippi” is what’s called bottom up state. So the hard work is done with our circuit clerks and our election commissioners. So it’s really interesting that people don’t understand and put that together. But I want to give the clerks and the commissioners a lot of credit. They do the really hard work.

But elections then you have business services. So we do a lot LLC’s corporations non-profits, sports agents, scrap metal dealers. You name it. The businesses kind of flow through our office and then public lands. So we really have to have our head on a swivel during legislative session not just elections. What’s impacting our business community? What’s impacting public lands? Our conservation task force is one thing we’re looking at so the stewardship trust fund. You know big issues that are across the street. A lot of them have our attention this year.

Paul - Excellent and that’s a good point. If you work at a state agency the public probably doesn’t know how many different pieces that all the different agencies touch. This is a transportation podcast. We’re gonna ask you a little transportation question. Why do you think transportation’s important and kinda maybe even make it specific to your office and the services that the secretary of state’s office provide.

Secretary Watson - Yeah. Obviously with our office again you can talk about all of the different areas that we work on be it elections, be it business services, be it public lands. Elections and this is more of a local transportation issue. Is that we have to make sure that people can get to the precincts so they can go vote. That’s obviously very important. Business services. We want a thriving business sector in Mississippi so you’ve got to have good transportation. Infrastructure issues and then you look at public lands. Obviously we want to protect our state parks and different pieces of public lands that we own. We’ve got to have folks being able to get to those as well and again transportation is key to everything. And it’s a core government function so those infrastructure issues are something that obviously we’re keenly aware of as well.

Paul - Awesome.

Will - The mission this early too all the things going at the Secretary of State’s office you touch so many facets of everyday life for every tax payer. What else is going on in the secretary of state’s office right now? I know you’ve got the “Tackle the Tapes” is a big push that you guys are working on. What are some other buzz worthy topics that you guys got going on?

Secretary Watson - Yeah. That’s a great question. And again with your point folks again they think it’s just elections but it is a service that touches business services and public lands and through those for instance public lands sixteen section lands which is some funding that goes to public education. So we impact your lives just about every day whether you know it or not. That’s why it’s important to have a good conservative minded individual in that office. But as far as specifically to your question we’re keeping our head on a swivel and watching what’s coming down the road. I think I forgot your question obviously when I started talking.

Will - There’s so much going on. I know you’ve got the initiative process coming back up, “Tackle the Tape” measures and you know I think we just came through the Census. You just have so much going on and if you want to talk about any of those specifically.

Secretary Watson - Yes. Actually since you mentioned the Census there’s a lawsuit that’s been filed dealing with congressional lines. So we have our first petition or excuse me our first filing is due this coming next week. Then the respondents obviously have a couple of weeks so really March one is the qualifying deadline. The last thing that has to be filed is on February 28 somewhere in that range so it’s really a tight schedule. So we’re under the gun with redistricting right now obviously a very important piece to our entire state in a federal capacity as well.

That and you mentioned “Tackle the Tape.” We’ve been so pleased with that. For your listeners out there it’s very important to understand what that is. So if you go to our website you’ll see this little landing spot. It says “Tackle the Tape.” What that is if you see any kind of regulations, any statute things that are bad for your business as a small business owner or as a large business owner we want you to report those to us. Because then we go and look at that statute, that regulation or whatever it is. Okay where did it come from? Is this good or bad for business? And if it’s bad for business how do we cut that?

And folks always think about Mississippi being such a conservative state and we are to an extent but we’ve got a 118,000 regulations on the book. That’s amazing. We’re one of the most regulated states in the Southeast. So we came into office focused on cutting those regulatory burdens. So you look at a 118 regulations surely surely we can get that down. So that’s one of the things that we’ve really been working on in the business sector and it’s been a smashing success so far.

Paul - Talking about businesses I know that you know during the pandemic lots of people are doing side gigs, kind of trying to figure out a small business kind of opportunity. So you mentioned a little bit but what kind of services does the secretary of state’s office offer to kind of help people out and get going.

Secretary Watson - Yeah. That’s a great question. We actually just launched in January a business webinar. So new businesses that are coming in. We thought you know a lot of folks launch their business that just don’t know how to operate them. They don’t know what they need to do. What services are out there? What can they connect with at the state government level or the local level and so we launched this just this past January. Our first one went live where we do this business webinar so folks can ask questions. We present the materials. We also have a new LLC packet. So we send these to the new folks who are registering their LLC’s. What do you need to know? When do you need to file your interim report? Just those things that people just don’t think about and don’t understand that comes with the responsibilities of owning a small business. We’re really excited about that. Wade Hinton in our office has taken that bull by the horns and done a really really good job.

To that point the numbers of new businesses in Mississippi just continue to skyrocket. It’s amazing. So good things are happening in our state on the business side. You would think with Covid for example in twenty 2019 we had a net new business number and so that is the new businesses that come in versus those that close down in a certain year. It almost tripled the next year. And you would think well Covid hits “Wait a minute. That can’t happen.” Oh yeah. And last year grew even more. So the number of new businesses coming in is really staggering but also great positive news that we need to be talking about.

Paul - That is excellent news no doubt.

Will - I’m very thankful that you included that question. I was not aware of the webinar series. That’s very useful information.

Paul - For sure.

Will - To get into this a little more about your office here. I was checking some things and I noticed you have a very interesting policy for lack of better words, you new hires, your new employees. Let me make sure I characterize this correctly. It’s something you like to do when you get new folks in the office and you meet with them. A “milk and cookies” type routine. Right? Is that accurate?

Secretary Watson - That’s accurate. I love cookies and milk obviously grew up with my dad eating that. My favorite desert. I got the countdown. I know exactly when the cookie is completely saturated so saturated to ratio something like that. But yeah we started that and one of the things I really wanted to bring to the office was a family atmosphere. We’re a team. We’re a family. We’re there for each other. Clearly we’re here to serve Mississippians but as we do that I want us to grow together professionally and personally. And so it’s important for us to have that relationship. So when we do have new hires I try to get them in the office. I actually have one next Wednesday.

So if it’s someone coming in to do an internship from school or if it’s a new hire in a certain division we get them all together in the same room and sit down. I bring and this is important I bring Clover Valley Chocolate Chip cookies. People are like “Wait a minute. Clover Valley?” “That’s a Dollar General brand.” Here’s the deal. The cookies at Clover Valley have legit chocolate. Like you can taste the chocolate as opposed to Chips Ahoy you can kind of taste it but Clover Valley legit chocolate chips.

Will - I’m gonna test that this week.

Secretary Watson - And the cookie dough is much better than Chips Ahoy. Now here’s the issue. They got a little bit of a problem with quality control. Sometimes you get a burnt bag. So I take Clover Valley and I tell them the story about how I got the Clover Valley. And I really just spend time with them and ask them “What do you want to do when you grow up?” If it’s not our Secretary of State’s office. If it’s our interns. And how can I help you get there? And I challenge all of our folks all the time. Listen I want you to grow. And if it’s something that’s not at the Secretary of State’s office I want to help you get there. But the key is to our leadership I tell every one of them “You better have a No. 2 ready.” Someone who can take over because if you get a great opportunity which I want for you and you leave I want someone to be able to fill your shoes. So always think about “How do I train my team to continue on the work that we’re doing here?”

Will - That’s awesome and succession training as you just mentioned is probably one of the most important things in our state agencies right now.

Going back local maybe if you will or otherwise. I know you don’t so much represent a district anymore. You’re statewide. But you spend a lot of time on the roads and a lot of traveling and stopping in and speaking at different places. Is there any place you have stopped through recently maybe for a bite to eat or a speaking engagement or something that was just so phenomenal you can’t wait to get back by or maybe even something back home you know it’s a weekly anytime you get an opportunity that you want to give a shout out?

Secretary Watson - Gracious. So recently Hinds Grocery is one of those. That’s a great stop for breakfast. We had a meeting there for Farm Bureau fans. Friends. I hope they’re fans. Farm Bureau friends. I was on the Coast the seafood. There are so many options. Bozo’s is my hometown favorite. I grew up in Pascagoula so Bozo’s is obviously one of the best.

Will - Bozo’s gotten a couple of shout outs so far.

Secretary Watson - I bet Representative Busby. And if he didn’t say it get him in trouble for that.

Will - He did.

Secretary Watson - I talked to Keith Tocambrie actually this week to get some crawfish for the Super Bowl this weekend so excited about that. Other than that you know it’s fun to just travel the state and people always say, “Michael, you’re from the Coast.” People just kind of look at people from the Coast differently. But at the end of the day we’re all in the same boat together. We all want what’s best for our families what’s best for our communities. And the reception that we receive being it North Mississippi and central wherever it’s been great. So yeah. We love to stop and grab a bite to eat. I’ll keep that in mind next time I’m here and tell y’all some of the secret spots that we find.

Will - We’ve got a great list so far of recommendations. We were talking about maybe next year we host at all these different spots. Get a little bite while we’re there.

Secretary Watson - When you’re at Bozo’s I’m on the show.

Will - Absolutely. Yeah. You got to be.

(Paul) Well we’ll put that on the outlook calendar. That’s happening for sure.

Will - That’s exactly right.

Paul - Before we get out of here we have a couple more questions for you. First of all this a softball softball you’ve never been asked this before but why is it important to vote? Give your pitch for that.

Secretary Watson - Yeah you know being engaged and it’s important for folks to vote because number one we want good government period. And to have a good government you gotta have an engaged electorate. Voting is our voice the way we keep our representatives and our elected officials in check. So I encourage folks don’t just vote for somebody you know follow them. Hold them accountable. And the way that you do that is through your vote. And so it’s important for folks to get out and be engaged to pay attention to what’s going on in their communities. It starts at the local level.

You know sometimes we get so focused just ultra focused on the federal elections but those elections those hometown elections for your mayor, city council those are the ones that can impact you the quickest. So it’s so important to remember that at the local level and that your vote matters. So many times as a matter of fact this past year we saw a couple that were tied. Every single vote counts. So it’s so important for folks to get out and get their voices heard. And that’s the way you do it to go vote.

Paul - For sure. Awesome. That is always a good message to hear. Just one more thing for you. How can people contact you? I know you’re active on Twitter but besides Twitter what’s the best official way to get in contact with you in the Secretary of State’s office?

Secretary Watson - Yeah so obviously our website is a very important one sos.ms.gov so make sure you check that out. And go to “Tackle the Tape” and you’ll see some of the stories that we’ve seen of late. One of the really cool things about this is businesses are starting to feel we finally have an advocate that we can check in with them and go to bat for us. And once they feel that that message spreads and it’s so fun to watch. Businesses think well wait a minute. We finally have someone if we have some kind of regulations just not smart. I’m not an anti-regulation guy. Smart regulations is fine but if you have bad regulations that are harmful to businesses now they know you know what I’ve identified that. I can go to the Secretary of State’s office and they’ll go to bat for me. So that’s a lot of fun. But that’s through our website.

Also one of things real quickly in leaving here it’s important as citizens to check your voter registration status. So many times we forget about it. “I’m registered to vote. I don’t have to think about it.” It’s just important to continue to check that. That’s another reason to go to our website. We’re gonna encourage folks all the time. If you’re wrongly purged from the voter rolls well if you’re checking your status as often as you can that’s typically not gonna happen. Not that it happens ever but if it did you would be able to catch it because you were checking your status. I just encourage folks to check their voter registration status just so next time there’s an election up they’re ready to roll.

Will - That’s great. Great advice.

(Paul) No doubt. Secretary Watson, thank you for that important information as we get out of here and thank you so much for joining us for walking down the street. Fantastic interview.

So we’ll go ahead and wrap things up. We want everyone who’s out there listening if you want to hear more episodes of The Extra Mile Podcast legislative session be sure to download or subscribe wherever podcasts are found. Now you can also watch each episode of The Extra Mile. Just search Mississippi Department of Transportation on YouTube. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. And as always remember to drive smart out there on Mississippi highways.