In 1956 , Wirt Adams Yerger , Jr. , an insurance agent from Jackson , founded the modern Mississippi Republican Party and served as the first state chairman from 1956 until 1966 . He was chairman of the Mississippi delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1956 , 1960 , and 1964 . He was elected to a four-year term as chairman of the Southern Association of Republican State Chairman in 1960 . In 2009 , the central committee of the Mississippi Republican Party named Yerger Chairman Emeritus . The Mississippi Republican Party would grow in supporters with then President Dwight D. Eisenhower , who still twice lost the electoral votes of Mississippi . On September 24 , 1960 , Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon campaigned in the state , the first time a presidential candidate had appeared in the state in more than a century . During the 1964 Republican National Convention Mississippi delegates would help nominate Barry Goldwater for President . Goldwater would go on to win 87 percent of the vote in Mississippi in the 1964 Presidential Election , the first time a Republican would win the state since the Reconstruction Era . Only once since 1956 has a non-Republican presidential candidate won the state of Mississippi , Jimmy Carter in the 1976 Presidential Election . In 1988 , Republican Congressman Trent Lott would defeat Democratic Congressman Wayne Dowdy to replace retiring Senator John Stennis ( D-MS )
1964 Republican National Convention
1964 Republican National Convention
Mississippi Republican Party