Raymond Edwin Mabus Jr. (; born October 11, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 75th United States secretary of the Navy from 2009 to 2017. Mabus previously served as the State Auditor of Mississippi from 1984 to 1988, as the 60th governor of Mississippi from 1988 to 1992, and as the United States ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 1996.
Early life and education Mabus was born on October 11, 1948, in Ackerman, Mississippi. He was the only child of Raymond Mabus Sr. (1901–1986), a successful timber farmer, and Lucille (née Curtis) Mabus (1909–2000), a teacher. His paternal uncle, merchant Leslie E. Mabus (1896–1992), was a member of the Mississippi State Senate from 1932 to 1936.
Mabus graduated from Ackermann High School in 1966 as class valedictorian. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Mississippi, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and political science. He earned a Master of Arts in political science from Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School. He had been offered a Fulbright Scholarship, had held a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and had traveled widely throughout Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and Latin America. Prior to attending law school, he also served two years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer from 1970 to 1972 aboard the cruiser , achieving the rank of lieutenant junior grade. He worked as a law clerk in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and as a legal counsel to a subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Agriculture.
Early political career Mabus volunteered for William F. Winter's unsuccessful gubernatorial candidacy in 1967. Following Winter's successful election to the governorship in 1979, Mabus returned to Mississippi to work as the governor's legal counsel in 1980. While in office, Winter and his staff pushed through a legislative overhaul of the state's public education system. Mabus was one of several of the governor's aides who delivered lectures across the state to build popular support for the reform bill.
State senator Ellis B. Bodron, who was broadly opposed to the legislation, denounced Mabus and the other young Winter aides—including Dick Molpus, David Crews, Bill Gartin, Andy P. Mullins, and John Henegan—as the "Boys of Spring", a moniker which they thereafter took pride in. Mabus also helped draft an open records law and more stringent driving under the influence legislation. He left the counsel position in 1983.
Mississippi State Auditor Election While working on Winter's staff in 1982, Mabus requested that the Department of Audit supply him with the latest three audit reports for Hinds County government. The department sent him three reports, with the latest dated 1977. Surprised, Mabus reminded the department that he wanted the three latest audits. The department informed him that 1977 was the last year in which an audit of the county was conducted, and that all audits were being conducted on a five-year-delay. Aspiring to run for elective office, Mabus researched the position of State Auditor. He realized the office had the power to investigate nearly all state and local government agencies, later saying, "I did a radical thing. I went and read the statute. That office had more jurisdiction than almost any in the state of Mississippi. It had never been used. It's the one place you can combat corruption without changing the law. It was sitting there, waiting for somebody like me to come along." Concluding that it could be "the most powerful office in the state", he decided to run for the position of State Auditor in the 1983 elections.
In the 1983 Democratic primary, Mabus faced Department of Audit employee Mason Shelby and former radio station owner Murray Cain. Shelby was viewed as the favorite of the outgoing state auditor, Hamp King, and other leaders in the department. Mabus and Cain criticized the department for which Shelby worked as outdated in its methods and a part of an old boy network. Mabus declared that the department was two to four years behind on most of its audits. King wrote an open letter to Mabus rejecting his claims as exaggerations and asked a legislative committee to conduct a review of the Department of Audit. Mabus ultimately won the election, and the legislative report was published in December. The committee identified several flaws with the department's structure and practices, and determined that it was delinquent for 581 fiscal years worth of audits.
Tenure Mabus was sworn in as state auditor on January 5, 1984. At the time he took office, he found the audit department was disorganized; in addition to being behind on hundreds of years' worth of audits, it had no filing system and thousands of dollars' worth of checks for auditing services performed for local governments and other agencies were stored in a shoebox in the auditor's office. Mabus convinced the legislature to permit the department to contract out auditing services to private Certified Public Accountant firms to work on the backlog. Using these strategies, the office eliminated the backlog in two years. On July 1, 1985, his office adopted Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for financial reporting. His office also released a single comprehensive annual financial report for state government for the 1986 fiscal year instead of separate reports for each state agency, the first time this had been done in Mississippi. The consolidated report was well-received, and the legislature subsequently mandated the issuance of a comprehensive financial report by statute, though it transferred the responsibility for the document's publication to the Fiscal Management Board.
Mabus discovered early in his tenure that many department auditors conducting reviews of county government finances were forced to piece together county accounting records as they worked. Though the state charged $25 per day it took to work on a county audit, most counties found this preferable than paying to maintain their own accounting. Many auditors found that records were missing, which Mabus feared might conceal evidence of fraud. In order to improve county accounting practices, he created a new requirement that county governments maintain up-to-date accounting records, raised the cost of daily auditing services to $100, and appointed a head of an investigative division in the department. He had field auditors supplied with undercover tags so that their vehicles could not be traced during their investigations.
Mabus warned the Mississippi Association of Supervisors that he would enforce financing laws strictly and would disapprove of misuse of local government resources or noncompliance with purchasing practices. In order to ease compliance, he created a technical assistance division in the Department of Audit to provide legal and accounting advice to county boards of supervisors. He also met with each of the 82 county boards to advise them of relevant state laws and his expectations. To deal with complaints of misconduct, he created a departmental hotline to field public grievances. The hotline received numerous complaints from across the state, accusing county supervisors of various acts of malfeasance including misusing county resources for private purposes, signing contracts with companies despite conflicts of interest, gifting away government funds to charities, and extorting contractors. Mabus' office ultimately audited all 82 counties during his term, enabling five to have their bond ratings restored and leading to $1.7 million in misused funds being returned to the state. His actions infuriated many county supervisors.
Early in his term Mabus began collaborating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation on a corruption investigation into Mississippi county governments known as Operation Pretense. For the purposes of secrecy, initially only Mabus and his chief investigator in his department were aware of the scope of the federal investigation, until the first indictments against county officials were announced in February 1987. By the time Operation Pretense was finished, 57 public officials were indicted. The Department of Audit's contribution to the investigation was mostly limited to providing purchasing records for federal prosecutors to use as evidence of wrongdoing. Upon the public reveal of the investigation, Mabus appealed to the state legislature to switch counties from the beat system of government to the unit system, mandate the hiring of professional county administrators, and strengthen county record-keeping standards. He also advised restricting federally-convicted criminals from holding public office, barring convicted vendors from securing government contracts, and creating a white collar crimes unit in the office of the Attorney General of Mississippi. He was succeeded as State Auditor by Pete Johnson on January 7, 1988.
Governor of Mississippi 1987 election
Mabus began planning a gubernatorial bid in 1985 and formally declared his candidacy four days after Operation Pretense was revealed to the public in 1987. Incumbent William Allain did not seek reelection. In the Democratic primary he faced seven other candidates, including former governor Bill Waller, Attorney General Ed Pittman, Maurice Dantin, John Arthur Eaves, and Mike Sturvidant. Mabus had an advantage in being from northeast Mississippi, which usually heavily participated in Democratic primaries. He also enjoyed the good faith of many journalists for cracking down on corruption. Some warned that county supervisors would organize against him as retaliation for his work as auditor, but these fears proved unfounded. Mabus led in the August 4 primary with 37 percent of the vote, while Sturvidant—who spent heavily on his campaign—placed second with 16 percent. A runoff was held on August 25 in which Mabus took 65 percent of the vote, the largest-ever margin of victory in a runoff in the state's history.
In the 1987 general election Mabus faced Republican Jack Reed. A businessman from Tupelo, Reed had worked with Winter on education reform and ran as a moderate, leaving voters with the impression that the two candidates had little to distinguish one from the other. Mabus ran with the slogan "Mississippi will never be last again," and while his campaign did not articulate many specific stances, it emphasized a theme of change. He pledged to raise the state's teacher salaries to the Southeastern average, which Reed criticized as necessitating either a tax hike or funding cuts to other government responsibilities. Mabus spent a total of $2.9 million on his campaign, the most ever spent on a Mississippi gubernatorial candidacy. He won with 53.4 percent of the vote, relying on a coalition of support from blacks, urbanites, and traditional Democrats from the northeastern portion of the state. About two-thirds of the white electorate voted against him, but he secured almost 90 percent of the black vote. Mabus was inaugurated as the 60th Governor of Mississippi on January 12, 1988. Aged 39, he was the youngest governor in the country.
Executive action and appointments Mabus staffed his gubernatorial administration with a significant number of political moderates from outside the state. He appointed the first black members to the State Tax Commission and the first woman head of the Department of Public Safety. Mabus had potential judicial appointments vetted by a commission before making a selection among their nominees.
Legislative action County reform