"Loyalist" faction of the state Democratic Party, instead of the "regulars" (being "the old guard conservative delegation composed of the governor and others from Mississippi")—the first time in history an entire delegation had been denied and replaced. The Loyalist Democratic party became official in June 1968 and encompassed the concerns of such groups as the NAACP, Young Democrats and the MFDP. In 1972, Governor Bill Waller attempted to unify the "regulars" and the "loyalists," without success. That year, Mississippi sent two delegations to the national convention, but the convention committee once again supported the loyalists. Efforts continued to reunite these two factions before the election of 1976. After the election of 1976, it was clear that the Democrats were losing speed in the South. It became difficult to merge and force cooperation between the regulars and the loyalists, and conservative Republicans began to make inroads. In 1980 Republican Ronald Reagan kicked off his presidential campaign in Mississippi, with the states' rights speech at the Neshoba County Fair, and Southern liberal Democrat Jimmy Carter lost in a landslide to Reagan that year; more of the state began to vote Republican. This was a trend across the South. In 1991, the governorship was taken away from Democrats when Republican Kirk Fordice won the election. Republicans consolidated this power between 1994 and 1996. At the end of the 1996 general election, Republicans held three of the five congressional seats in addition to both U.S. senators, as well as a gain in the state legislature. Democrats, no longer the Dixiecrats of the past and "by the 1970s resolutely committed to biracial Democratic Party politics", had lost significant power at both the state and national level. Governors and legislators over the decades have called for rewrites of Mississippi's Constitution. The current Constitution was created in 1890, crafted explicitly to replace the 1868 enfranchising constitution of Reconstruction days. It has experienced many amendments—as of 2014, 121 approved since 1890, more than 75 since 1960—and outright repeals, mostly as a result of U.S. Supreme Court rulings. However, according to John W. Winkle III, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Mississippi, "More than a century later, the 1890 Constitution, with its rather severe limitations on government and its antiquated organization and content, still shadows the state." Nominees for governor Ronnie Musgrove (2003) John Arthur Eaves Jr. (2007) Johnny DuPree (2011) Robert Gray (2015) Jim Hood