State Sen. Jenifer Branning and incumbent Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens will compete in a runoff election on Nov. 26 after no candidate received a majority of votes in Tuesday’s election for a seat on the state’s highest court. 

The Associated Press had not yet called the results for the Central District race on Wednesday morning, but both Kitchens and Branning, in social media posts, acknowledged they are headed to a runoff. The election will almost certainly inject partisan politics into what is supposed to be a nonpartisan judicial race over the next three weeks. 

Kitchens is one of two centrist members of the high court and is widely viewed as the preferred candidate of Democrats, though the Democratic Party has not endorsed his candidacy. Not only are GOP forces working to oust one of the dwindling number of centrist jurists on the high court, but they appreciate Kitchens is next in line to lead the court as chief justice should current Chief Justice Mike Randolph step down.

With 90% of votes counted, Branning received the largest share of the vote total at 41.8%, while Kitchens received 35.6% in the five-person race Tuesday.

The runoff will take place just two days before Thanksgiving, ensuring both campaigns will be focused on the difficult task of turning out voters for a holiday-season election, and with judicial elections typically receiving less public attention than for other positions. 

Kitchens, first elected to the court in 2008, is a former district attorney and private-practice lawyer. On the campaign trail, he has pointed to his experience as an attorney and judge, particularly his years prosecuting criminals and his rulings on criminal cases. 

“During the next three weeks, I’ll be working harder than ever to inform the voters why Jim Kitchens is ready, willing and able to serve them better than any other candidate,” Kitchens said. 

Kitchens has raised over $288,000 and spent around $189,000 of that money, leaving him with roughly $98,000 in cash on hand. Most of his campaign donations have come from trial attorneys around the state. 

Branning, a private-practice attorney, was first elected to the Legislature in 2015. She has led the Senate Elections and Transportation committees. During her time at the Capitol, she has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate leadership, voting against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem, voting against expanding Medicaid to the working poor and supporting mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime.

While campaigning for the judicial seat, she has pledged to ensure that “conservative values” are always represented in the judiciary, but she has stopped short of endorsing policy positions — which Mississippi judicial candidates are prohibited from doing. 

Branning has raised over $666,000 and spent roughly $312,000, leaving her with around $354,000 in cash on hand. Several special interest groups and trade associations have donated to her campaign, but the donations have been supercharged by a $250,000 personal loan she gave her campaign. Third-party groups have also spent money on the race.

“There’s a clear choice in this runoff because I’m the only candidate who will bring new energy and constitutional conservative leadership to the Mississippi Supreme Court,” Branning wrote on social media on Wednesday morning. 

Incumbent Justice Dawn Beam, who was up for reelection on the Court’s Southern District, also appeared to concede defeat to her challenger, David Sullivan. 

“I believe in democracy,” Beam wrote on Tuesday night. “Moreover, I know that God’s plans are perfect. It has been my joy to serve our State for 9 years on the Supreme Court, but the people have spoken.” 

With 93% of the votes counted, Sullivan led with 54.8% of the vote, while Beam trailed with 45.2%. 

Beam joined the state Supreme Court in 2016 after former Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her to the bench to fill the seat left vacant by former Justice Randy Pierce. Sullivan is a public defender in Harrison, Stone and Pearl River counties and has been a municipal judge in D’Iberville since 2019. A Gulfport resident, Sullivan comes from a family of attorneys and judges. His father, Michael D. Sullivan, also served as a Supreme Court justice. 

The three candidates competing for the open seat on the Court of Appeals were still locked in a close race that remained too close to call, with a runoff likely, with 92% of the vote total counted.  Amy St. Pé led the candidates by receiving 35.1% of the vote, with Jennifer Schloegel getting the second largest vote share at 32.6%. Ian Baker followed with 32.3%. 

Mail-in absentee ballots and affidavit ballots could impact which two candidates in the Court of Appeals race head to a runoff election. State law allows for local election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots until November 13, though the ballots must be postmarked by the date of the election. Counties must certify election results by November 15.  

The earliest day voters can cast absentee ballots for a runoff election is November 18, according to an election guide from the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

This story will be updated.

Former President Donald Trump won Mississippi handily, and the state‘s incumbent congressional leaders facing reelection were returned to office on Tuesday night.

With nearly 90% of the statewide vote in, Trump led Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris 62% to 36% Tuesday night.

Mississippi’s two contested elections for the Mississippi Supreme Court and the open seat on the Court of Appeals remained too close to call on Tuesday night. 

With 59% of votes processed for the Central District seat on the state Supreme Court, none of the five candidates running had an outright majority of the votes cast. Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning, at 44.5% of the vote, and incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens, at 34% of the vote, remained the leading candidates. 

If no candidate receives an outright majority of the vote, or more than 50%, the two candidates who received the most votes will compete in a runoff election on November 26. 

For the Court’s Southern District seat, challenger David Sullivan, at 54.9% of the vote, was leading incumbent Justice Dawn Beam, who had 45.1% of the vote, though the Associated Press had yet to call the race with only 79% of the vote counted. 

The three candidates competing for the open seat on the Court of Appeals were still locked in a close race that remained too close to call with 84% of the vote total counted.  Amy St. Pé led the candidates by receiving 34.3% of the vote, with Ian Baker getting the second largest vote share at 33.3%. Jennifer Schloegel remained in last place with 31.7%. 

Incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker defeated Democratic challenger Ty Pinkins in unofficial results Tuesday night.

Wicker, the state’s senior U.S. senator, resides in Tupelo and has served in the U.S. Senate since late 2007 after first being appointed to fill a vacancy by then-Gov. Haley Barbour. He was elected to the post in 2008. He previously served in the U.S. House and as a state senator. 

If the Republican Party takes control of the Senate, Wicker will likely lead the Committee on Armed Services, the committee with jurisdiction over the nation’s military. He would be the first senator from Mississippi to lead the committee since John C. Stennis. 

In a speech last week to the state’s business leaders, Wicker encouraged them to vote for Republican candidates on Election Day so that political leaders in Washington can pass new laws to reduce federal taxes, strengthen the nation’s military and reduce the number of undocumented immigrants entering the country. 

Wicker defeated Pinkins, a civil rights attorney and a Rolling Fork resident who unsuccessfully ran for Mississippi secretary of state last year. 

All four of Mississippi’s incumbent U.S. House members were reelected to another term. 

In the 1st Congressional District that comprises most of northeast Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly, a Republican, defeated Democratic opponent Dianne Black. 

In the 2nd Congressional District that makes up most of the Delta and west Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Democrat in Washington, defeated Republican challenger Ron Eller. 

In the 3rd Congressional District that contains most of central Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Michael Guest was reelected without opposition. 

In the 4th Congressional District located in south Mississippi, U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell defeated Democratic opponent Craig Raybon. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A new health care alliance will unite several of Mississippi’s largest hospital systems – all of which left the state hospital association following controversy over Medicaid expansion – under the umbrella of one of the state’s largest and most influential lobbying firms.

The new group will be helmed by former Mississippi Medicaid Director Drew Snyder, who served under two Republican governors who thwarted Medicaid expansion and the flow of billions of federal dollars to provide health insurance to low-income Mississippians for over a decade. 

The new collaborative will focus on “providing sustainable solutions to challenges facing access to care,” said a press release. It will include representatives from the state’s leading acute and trauma care hospitals, rural hospitals, mental health providers and primary care providers.

Critics, along with the Mississippi Hospital Association, say the new group’s formation is motivated by partisan politics.

A slew of hospitals left the hospital association after the organization’s political action committee made its largest-ever contribution to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, a strong supporter of Medicaid expansion, in 2023. All but one have joined the new collaborative. 

This means lawmakers in 2025 will hear from two separate groups of hospitals and health care organizations, raising questions about whether their overall impact will be diluted without a unified voice.

Snyder, who declined repeated requests for comment for this story, will lead the Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative under the umbrella of multi-state, Jackson-based lobbying firm Capitol Resources and its new health policy consulting division, Health Resources.

Capitol Resources is a strong supporter of Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. The firm’s political action committee has contributed nearly $75,000 to Reeves since 2018.

Five of Capitol Resources’ scores of Mississippi clients hold multi-million dollar contracts with the Division of Medicaid. 

A query to the Mississippi Ethics Commission published just days before Snyder announced his resignation from the Division of Medicaid sought an opinion on how a former head of an agency could work for a lobbying firm with clients in the same field as his or her public service without violating state law. Requests for opinions are anonymous.

The Ethics Commission ruled that the public official could not work for compensation on matters “which he or she was directly or personally involved while working for the government,” but would not be forbidden from working for a company that does. 

A national ethics expert told Mississippi Today that when public officials transition to private sector work, particularly in the same field as their public service, it can raise ethical issues. 

The knowledge and information public officials hold can be used as a “leg up,” which leads to unfairness in private companies’ and lobbying organizations’ business dealings with government entities, said professor John Pelissero, the director of Government Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Capitol Resources has for years represented Centene, a company that currently holds $5.2 billion worth of contracts for managing Medicaid beneficiaries care through its subsidiary Magnolia Health. The company has paid the lobbying firm $3.9 million over the last decade, according to the Secretary of State’s website.

Tim Moore, the former head of the Mississippi Hospital Association, said he has concerns about the conflict posed by a lobbying firm representing two health care organizations with competing interests. 

“How do you represent a managed care company and a bunch of hospitals at the same time?” he said. 

Moore was ousted by the Mississippi Hospital Association’s Board of Governors following hospitals’ withdrawal from the organization.

Clare Hester, the founder and managing partner of Capitol Resources, did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The evolution of the Mississippi Hospital Association

The Mississippi Hospital Association was for many years one of the most powerful lobbies at the Capitol. But that began to change with the passage of the federal Affordable Care Act, which created a partisan rift over whether or not the state should expand Medicaid. 

The trade association splintered in May 2023, starting with the departure of the state’s largest hospital system, University of Mississippi Medical Center, in May. Four additional hospitals, all led by Gregg Gibbes, left the association in 2024. 

Hospital leaders at the time declined to say what precipitated their decision to leave, other than to cite concerns about the hospital association’s leadership. But the exodus was widely interpreted as a rebuke of the association’s support for Presley and, specifically, Medicaid expansion. 

Research has shown that Medicaid expansion would provide millions of dollars to Mississippi’s struggling hospital system. 

As Reeves faced an uphill reelection bid, due in part to his opponent’s support of Medicaid expansion and his adamant opposition, he worked with Snyder to create a new program to provide supplemental payments to hospitals to offset low Medicaid payments. While the program did not directly support low-income Mississippians, it was estimated to generate $700 million for the state’s largest hospitals. 

Republican House leaders pushing for Medicaid expansion in the last legislative session said the program prevented some large hospitals from being strong advocates for expansion, in part due to fear that Gov. Reeves would punish such a move by doing away with the expanded payments.

The Mississippi Hospital Association has 76 current hospital members, according to its online directory. Some are members of hospital systems. 

“The Mississippi Hospital Association will continue to be the trusted voice in health care and to offer education and quality advocacy solutions based on sound health care policy – and not politics – as we have successfully done for almost 100 years,” president and CEO Richard Roberson told Mississippi Today. Roberson is the former head of TrueCare, a provider-led, nonprofit managed care organization that contracts with Medicaid.

Kent Nicaud, one of Reeves’ top campaign donors and the president and CEO of Memorial Hospital, will serve as chair of the collaborative’s board. Memorial Health System left the hospital association in 2023, and is a current client of Capitol Resources. 

Moore said having two major health care trade associations in the state will “create division among the industry, which is not good.”

“…The best thing for all hospitals is to be united in one voice, because they have similar issues, whether they’re a small hospital or a large hospital,” he said. 

Along with hospitals that left the association, Mississippi Healthcare Collaborative incorporates several existing Capitol Resources clients, including the state’s 21 Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, and Universal Health Services, a company with five behavioral health centers in Mississippi. 

“For too long, too many health providers have been siloed in our advocacy. It’s time to sit down at the same table and work together,” said Terrence Shirley, CEO of the Community Health Center Association of Mississippi, which represents the Federally Qualified Community Health Centers, in a press release. 

Other members of the new group include Methodist Rehabilitation Center and Northwest Regional Medical Center in Clarksdale.

The group’s members are based in 78 of Mississippi’s 82 counties.

Ochsner Medical Center, which left the Mississippi Hospital Association last year and is a client of Capitol Resources, is not listed as a member of the new collaborative. Ochsner did not respond to Mississippi Today by the time of publication.

Geoff Pender contributed reporting.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.