Rubel Phillips

Rubel Phillips

Rubel Lex Phillips, Sr. (March 29, 1925 – June 18, 2011) was an attorney, businessman, and politician from the U.S. state of Mississippi best known for his Republican gubernatorial campaigns waged in 1963 and 1967.

Previously, as a Democrat, Phillips was a circuit court clerk in Alcorn County in northeastern Mississippi and a member and chairman of the Mississippi Public Service Commission from 1956 to 1959. By 1963, he had switched parties to become only the third Republican since 1877 to seek his state's governorship. Phillips ran on the slogan of "K.O. the Kennedys", even though he had backed U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy for the presidency in 1960 over the Republican Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Phillips, with 38 percent of the ballots cast, lost to Democrat Paul B. Johnson, Jr., the son of a former governor. That election was held barely two weeks prior to the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas.

In 1967, Phillips ran as a moderate Republican but lost decisively to the conservative Democrat John Bell Williams, a U.S. representative.