Mississippians who believe in good government should take no comfort that House Speaker Jason White’s freebie trip to the 2025 Super Bowl in New Orleans was financed by a utility monopoly rather than, as initially suspected, a sports gambling giant.
It is wrong for White to accept lavish, though legal gratuities from any business that lobbies for legislation worth millions of dollars to its corporate kitty, no matter which business it is.
The fact is, DraftKings had hoped to treat White, a major proponent of legalizing online sports betting in the state, to the Super Bowl weekend in New Orleans, but Entergy beat the gaming company to the punch. The speaker had already accepted the utility company’s invitation that included White, House Public Utilities Chairman Brent Powell and both of their spouses.
Not to be totally shut out of this lobbying opportunity, though, DraftKings put in a backup plan, treating instead three members of White’s staff and one of their spouses.
Combined, the two companies spent more than $107,000 on their legislative branch guests, including tickets that were worth up to $15,000 a seat at America’s premier sporting event.
When a news story about the Super Bowl trip was first reported a year ago, there was some confusion over who was treating White. Even DraftKings was apparently uncertain, since when it filed its lobbying report this past January, it initially claimed that it had spent its $60,000 on White, not his staff. It later corrected the error.
White, of course, could have identified in 2025 his Super Bowl benefactor, but he opted not to talk about the trip to the Mississippi Today reporters who broke the story. He was content to let Entergy’s role stay undisclosed until the state’s lax reporting requirements on lobbying expenditures brought the truth out early this year. Why would that be? Maybe because White understood that in the public’s mind, there’s not much difference in who is picking up such a huge tab when the motivation for the generosity is clear.
Just as does DraftKings, Entergy wants favors from the Legislature.
It got a big one in 2024 when Mississippi lawmakers granted the utility company, outside of normal state regulatory oversight, the authority to build power-generating facilities to serve the massive datacenter Amazon is putting in Madison County. Entergy and its critics disagree wildly over whether this electricity-hogging project will save other ratepayers or cost them. Because the Legislature agreed in the same bill to keep the rates Entergy will be charging Amazon under wraps, there’s no way to be certain what the impact will be until it’s too late to do anything about it if the critics are proven right.
Then this year, according to Mississippi Today, the House passed a bill requested by Entergy for the state to loan the company $200 million to cover damages from Winter Storm Fern.
White claims that there is “nothing out of the ordinary” for he and other lawmakers to accept gifts such as the Super Bowl trip. He says that their legislative priorities and their votes can’t be swayed by freebies, no matter how substantial those freebies are.
Tell that to the average voter who won’t get any closer to the Super Bowl than the couch in front of their TV screen. Or to the gift givers themselves. Why would Entergy and DraftKings spend more than $100,000 on a weekend sports vacation for a select group of state officials, staffers and spouses unless the benefactors consider the expenditure a reward for past favors or an incentive for future ones?
If White and other state officials don’t want to give the impression that their influence can be bought, they should say, “Thanks but no thanks,” when these gifts from special interests are offered. Better yet, they should push for tougher lobbying laws that make all gifts worth more than a token amount illegal.
