Pearl River County Supervisor Hudson Holliday is not the kind of guy to shy away from questions. At times, his frank opinions surprise reporters who are more accustomed to politicians versed in the art of question-dodging.

Holliday's multiple careers cover almost every facet of legal employment. He's been a logger, a crop-duster, a developer, a pilot, a soldier, a banker, and now a supervisor and wetlands mitigation fund manager—which he admits is a long way from logger.

What separates you from the other candidates?
In some ways, the candidates running for governor ain't all that different. You could put them all in a sack, shake it up and whatever falls out is identical to everything else that's in the sack. But I like to think I'm different, in that I'm aware we have a really negative image in this state with the rest of the nation. Some of my opponents say I'm running this state down. I'm not running it down. I love this state. I love it so much that I don't want it to be on the bottom anymore. I'm tired of being No. 50. With all the resources and the quality people we have here, the state's economy ought to be booming.

I see that one of your priorities will be to "represent all Mississippians." Which ones need more representation?
The middle class really needs some representation right now. Go to the secretary of state's website and count up the number of campaign contributors, and you'll see that the money's not coming from even one-tenth of 1 percent of the population of this state. One out of a thousand might be giving money to a politician, but who represents the other 999? What politicians are doing, whether we like it or not, is they're taking the rich man's money and buying the poor man's vote. But they're obligated to the rich person, and there's no correlation between how much money a candidate has in his campaign chest and the support they offer the public.

What kind of representation is the poor man not getting?
The best way to grow the state is to change the image of it, and we haven't done that. Governor Barbour worked on tort reform and made some changes—a little of that went almost too far. It really did. It went too far.

As a businessman, wouldn't tort reform protect your interests?
Nobody that I know of wants frivolous lawsuits, but my wife had knee surgery, and a doctor put her knee on crutches, and I wound up having to take her to Georgia to get it fixed. She was in a wheelchair. She's out of it now, but she was crippled on account of a doctor's bad decisions, and tort-reform changes protected him, when he really didn't deserve that protection.

What's your take on the illegal immigration issue?
I think that law went after the wrong person. If a guy came here, and he could not find a job because he was an illegal immigrant, how long would he stay? He'd move on. They come here for a job. Can't blame them for wanting to come here—if you and I were below the border we'd probably both be coming to America because it's a great country. But there are proper channels for doing that.

I think businesspeople who hire illegal immigrants so they can gain a competitive advantage over the guy who doesn't need to be held accountable. It's a violation of the law. If there were some really stiff fines out there for these companies that engage in this kind of thing it would make a difference.

How do you feel about cuts to Medicaid? Would you consider it to balance the state budget?
You have to look at the pros and cons of everything. Just like when I was a general, I always asked the staff, 'How do we minimize the impact and maximize the use of our money?' and, 'What's the right thing to do for the people?'

It may take weeks to figure out what we're going to do, but if it makes sense, I'll
do it. If it doesn't make sense, or it's not logical, or it won't better this state, I won't do it. It won't happen.

Everybody's talking about debt reduction, but you know as a county supervisor that much of this debt deals with bonds that fund many hometown projects. How do you balance that?
There's no free ride. I know this will cost me votes, but I'll never make the statement that I will never raise taxes—because there may come a time when we have to. Some legislators and candidates brag that, 'I never raised taxes,' but what they did was push that tax burden on down to the county, so the Board of Supervisors had to raise taxes or cut services to meet needs.

You have to be realistic. Our job is to make sure that every dollar we get is spent efficiently.