Richard Henderson Molpus Jr. (born September 7, 1949) is an American businessman and Democratic Party politician who served as Secretary of State of Mississippi from 1984 until 1996.

Molpus unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 1988, losing the Democratic nomination to Wayne Dowdy and accruing the third highest campaign debt for any senatorial candidate nationwide.

[5][6] His grandfather, Richard Hezekiah Molpus,[5] established the first sawmill in Philadelphia in 1905 as part of a general merchandise venture, the Henderson-Molpus Company.

[3][12] During the 1967 Mississippi gubernatorial election, Molpus worked as a youth coordinator in Neshoba County for Democrat William F. Winter's unsuccessful campaign.

[16] Molpus was Winter's first announced appointee when he was selected as executive director of the Governor's Office of Federal-State Programs, on November 15, 1979.

[18] He also helped Winter lobby the Mississippi State Legislature to pass the 1982 Education Reform Act, hosting the governor's staff at a cabin he owned for strategy sessions, delivering over 35 speeches to build public support for the bill, and organizing a phone call campaign to pressure a state senator to support the creation of public kindergartens.

[19] State Senator Ellis B. Bodron, who was broadly opposed to the legislation, denounced Molpus and other young Winter aides—including Ray Mabus, David Crews, Bill Gartin, Andy P. Mullins, and John Henegan—as the "Boys of Spring", a moniker in which they thereafter took pride.

[20] Winter's tenure sparked a decade of political interest in reforming state government and led to like-minded candidates—many being former members of his administration—to seek elective office.

[30] In the general election he defeated Republican legislator Jerry Gilbreath after he campaigned on his managerial experience and record of helping Winter's education reforms succeed.

He wanted to shift the focus of the secretary of state from clerical and administrative duties to handling education, public lands, securities, and elections.

[41][42] Despite concerns from some of his advisers that his involvement in a commemoration would ruin his political career, Molpus agreed to attend and helped to organize a planning committee for the event.

[44] On June 21, 1989, Molpus officially apologized to the families of the murdered civil rights workers, saying, "We deeply regret what happened here 25 years ago.

"[46] Many white Mississippians disagreed with Molpus' remarks;[47] he received several critical letters and threatening phone calls in response,[48] including 26 death threats.

[64][11] Combined with an uptick in corporate registrations in Mississippi, by the end of the 1992 fiscal year these measures allowed the office to collect enough money to be self-funded and deposit $1.1 million in surplus into the state treasury.

[64] For his efforts to reorganize the secretary of state's office, in 1985 Molpus received the American Society for Public Administration's Elected Official of the Year Award.

In 1984, Molpus began enforcing the act in order to aid education funding, thus triggering the renegotiation of about 5,000 below-market leases and increasing the amount of revenue to the public schools from those properties during his tenure by $24 million (equivalent to $46,625,080 in 2023).

Initially confined to a group of largely white-middle-class parents in Jackson, Mississippi who sought to support the local school district, by 1997 it had expanded to 50 chapters scattered across the United States.

[44][85] Molpus announced a twenty-five member task force on June 19, 1984, to review Mississippi's election laws and recommend improvements.

[82][86][87] The task force made recommendations that included the at-large election of municipal officials, requiring the usage of electronic voting systems, having a statewide voter registration list compiled by the secretary of state, simplifying the wording for constitution amendment referendums, and requiring political action committees to submit financials reports for state and local elections.

[99] During the campaign he criticized Dowdy for his low voting attendance of 68 percent, a line of rhetoric which was later used by Republican nominee Trent Lott in the general election.

Easily winning the August 8 Democratic primary over evangelist Shawn O'Hara with 77.1 percent of the vote, he faced Republican incumbent Kirk Fordice in the general election.

[104][106] During the election, Molpus campaigned for reductions in sales tax on food and government expenditure while proposing the issuing of bonds to finance economic development.

"[114] Molpus responded by referring to his 1989 speech, "I apologized to the family, the mother and father and sisters of those three young men who lost their life in Mississippi.

[116] Molpus hoped to leverage the incident to his advantage by appealing to more women voters,[104] presenting himself as a gentlemen acting in defense of his wife's honor.

[117] In 1993 Molpus, having already planned to run for governor in 1995, considered pursuing a career in timberland investment management in the event his political ambitions faltered.

The following year it signed its first contracts with large corporate clients, and by 2004 it was the largest timberland investment management organization in the Southern United States.

[121] That year he also helped organize the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Mississippi Burning murders, and spoke in favor of state and local efforts to reexamine and prosecute the case.

[123] That year President George W. Bush appointed Molpus chairman of the board of the United States Endowment for Forestry and Communities, a nonprofit created under the terms of the Softwood Lumber Agreement between the United States and Canada designed to promote sustainable forestry and to promote economic development in timber-reliant communities.

[123] In 2012, he called for Attorney General Eric Holder to block Mississippi's new voter ID law stating that it violated the Voting Rights Act.

[127] Stewart apologized for the joke the following week,[126] saying his show had erred in using "Dick Molpus ... as an avatar for racial bigotry, forgetting, perhaps that Dick Molpus is a real person with a real record on civil rights"[128] and praised him for having "a long and distinguished record of speaking out for civil rights in Mississippi.