Mississippi Today

It’s primary election day in Mississippi. Here’s what to watch for.

Published

2 years ago

August 8, 2023

Voters across Mississippi will flood polling places today to select their favored candidates in numerous statewide and local primary elections.

Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. When votes tallies are counted this evening, follow along with our live, interactive results at the link below.

And if you’re wondering about polling place info or maybe want to see a sample ballot before you head to the polls, check out our voter guide below for all the info you’ll need.

READ MORE: Mississippi Today 2023 Voter Guide

Here’s what we’re watching in Tuesday’s primary election:

1) The Republican primary for lieutenant governor

Many consider the lieutenant governor the single most powerful job in all of Mississippi politics. First-term incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann faces a tough challenger in state Sen. Chris McDaniel, an arch-conservative who is no stranger to statewide politics. The two Republicans have been attacking each other for weeks in mail pieces and in television advertising.

Lesser-known candidate Tiffany Longino is the third candidate in the race. If neither Hosemann nor McDaniel are favored by a majority of GOP voters, Longino could play spoiler and force a runoff between the top two candidates.

This is far and away the headliner of today’s primary elections. Will election night produce the same drama as the actual campaign itself?

2) ‘Game on’ for Republican Gov. Tate Reeves and Democratic challenger Brandon Presley?

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who believes incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves will have much of a problem today against two little-known Republican primary challengers John Witcher and David Hardigree. That would be welcomed news for Reeves, who was in a much worse situation this time four years ago.

In 2019, Reeves only captured 49% of the vote on primary day and was forced into a late August runoff with former Supreme Court Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., who earned 33%. Former state Rep. Robert Foster garnered a respectable 18%.

Assuming Reeves wins today’s primary, what will the margin be? And what, if anything, could Democratic challenger Brandon Presley, who is unopposed in today’s primary, take from those results?

Today’s primary will likely make official what Mississippi and national prognosticators have long believed will be an expensive, nasty and close few weeks of gubernatorial campaigning.

3) Another record Republican turnout?

Four years ago, Mississippi Republican Party leaders celebrated the party’s highest ever turnout in a primary election.

Looking at the gubernatorial GOP primary vote totals from the past statewide cycles, the upward trend is obvious:

2019: 383,080 Republican votes cast
2015: 277,407 Republican votes cast
2011: 289,788 Republican votes cast
2007: 197,647 Republican votes cast
2003: 190,223 Republican votes cast

Looking at absentee ballots requested and returned for the 2023 primaries, one could surmise that Republicans will break the record again this year. Through this past weekend, Mississippi Today reporter Bobby Harrison reported, 45,199 absentee ballots were requested and 40,698 had been returned to the local circuit clerks. This is already up compared to the final numbers in the 2019 party primaries, when 42,096 ballots were requested and 38,237 were returned.

What does this trend mean, exactly? It’s hard to say. Perhaps Mississippi is, as GOP officials gleefully claimed four years ago, expanding its conservative voter base. They’re certainly continued expanding their slate of candidates up and down the ballot.

But maybe this trend is the effect of a virtually dormant Mississippi Democratic Party and a noticeable lack of high-profile Democratic candidates on statewide ballots. There’s new leadership at the Democratic Party headquarters, but it sure looks like they’ve got a mountain of work to do before they see any real shift in election results.

4) House and Senate race surprises

Republicans have for three terms now enjoyed supermajority control of the Legislature. Both the House and Senate are totally controlled by the Grand Old Party, meaning Republicans don’t need a single Democratic vote to pass any bill they want.

Don’t expect any partisan sea change or shift of legislative control in this year’s elections. However, recent history shows that we may be in for some big surprises tonight. Just four years ago, two of the top leaders of the House of Representatives unexpectedly lost their primary elections. House Pro Tempore Greg Snowden of Meridian and House Ways and Means Chairman Jeff Smith of Columbus lost to GOP primary challengers, shocking many political observers and drastically changing the upper realms of House leadership.

Will any current legislative leaders meet the same fate tonight?

5) Any big wins for the far right wing of the Republican Party?

For several years now, there’s been an obvious identity crisis within the Mississippi Republican Party. Three main factions of the GOP have emerged, and one of them — the far right wing of the party — has struggled for power and prominence even among their conservative peers.

Led by state Sen. Chris McDaniel and a handful of recruited uber conservatives running for statewide and legislative seats, this wing is hoping for some big wins tonight. As outgoing Republican state Rep. Dana Criswell put it to his supporters in an email on Monday: “The establishment folks have spent millions in the past few months in an attempt to end the conservative movement. This election is Mississippi’s fight for conservative government.”

If you’re keeping score at home, yes, Criswell is arguing that many Republicans on the ballot today are not true Republicans — RINOs (Republicans In Name Only), they’re often called.

Mississippi Today has a list of right wing candidates who are hoping to unseat Republicans in today’s primaries. We’ll have a full analysis of how they did later this week.

6) Down-ticket statewide races.

We have contested primaries for a few statewide offices and regional commissions outside of the governor’s and lieutenant governor’s races.

Three Democrats are running for their party’s nomination for Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce. The winner of that primary will face incumbent Republican Commissioner Andy Gipson in the November general election.

Incumbent Republican Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney faces a GOP primary challenger today in Mitch Young. The winner of that race will face Democrat Bruce Barton in the November general election.

And two of the three seats on the Mississippi Public Service Commission have primaries today. In the northern district PSC seat, currently held by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brandon Presley, two Republicans are battling it out at the polls today: Tanner Newman and Chris Brown. The winner of this primary will be unopposed in November.

For the southern district PSC seat, incumbent Republican Commissioner Dane Maxwell has a primary challenger in Nelson Carr. The winner of that race will also run unopposed in November.

7) Don’t forget about the sheriffs and district attorneys.

If you live in a county where there are contested primaries for district attorney or county sheriff, you know exactly how much money gets pumped into these campaigns.

Several large counties have contested primaries for sheriff today, and there are six contested primaries for district attorney. These are very important elected positions of great power (further reading: Mississippi Today’s ongoing investigation with The New York Times of the long unchecked power of Mississippi sheriffs).

Another thing to ponder: These local races usually drive up turnout for the statewide races. If, say, Hosemann beats McDaniel tonight, you may hear him thank Harrison County and DeSoto County sheriff primary winners from the podium at his election watch party. Those farther up the ticket often do, in fact, ride the coattails of the local candidates running near the bottom of the ballot.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1912

Published

9 hours ago

March 9, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-03-09 07:00:00

March 9, 1912

Portrait of Charlotte Bass Credit: Wikipedia

Charlotta Bass became one of the nation’s first Black female editor-owners. She renamed The California Owl newspaper The California Eagle, and turned it into a hard-hitting publication. She campaigned against the racist film “Birth of a Nation,” which depicted the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, and against the mistreatment of African Americans in World War I.

After the war ended, she fought racism and segregation in Los Angeles, getting companies to end discriminatory practices. She also denounced political brutality, running front-page stories that read, “Trigger-Happy Cop Freed After Slaying Youth.”

When she reported on a KKK plot against Black leaders, eight Klansmen showed up at her offices. She pulled a pistol out of her desk, and they beat a “hasty retreat,”

The New York Times reported. “Mrs. Bass,” her husband told her, “one of these days you are going to get me killed.” She replied, “Mr. Bass, it will be in a good cause.”

In the 1940s, she began her first foray into politics, running for the Los Angeles City Council. In 1951, she sold the Eagle and co-founded Sojourners for Truth and Justice, a Black women’s group. A year later, she became the first Black woman to run for vice president, running on the Progressive Party ticket. Her campaign slogan: “Win or Lose, We Win by Raising the Issues.”

When Kamala Harris became the first Black female vice presidential candidate for a major political party in 2020, Bass’ pioneering steps were recalled.

“Bass would not win,” The Times wrote. “But she would make history, and for a brief time her lifelong fight for equality would enter the national spotlight.”

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1977

Published

1 day ago

March 8, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-03-08 07:00:00

On this day in 1977

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today
March 8, 2025

March 8, 1977

Henry Marsh — Henry L. Marsh III became the first Black mayor of the Confederacy’s capital.

Henry L. Marsh III became the first Black mayor of the former capital of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia.

Growing up in Virginia, he attended a one-room school that had seven grades and one teacher. Afterward, he went to Richmond, where he became vice president of the senior class at Maggie L. Walker High School and president of the student NAACP branch.

When Virginia lawmakers debated whether to adopt “massive resistance,” he testified against that plan and later won a scholarship for Howard University School of Law. He decided to become a lawyer to “help make positive change happen.” After graduating, he helped win thousands of workers their class-actions cases and helped others succeed in fighting segregation cases.

“We were constantly fighting against race prejudice,” he recalled. “For instance, in the case of Franklin v. Giles County, a local official fired all of the black public school teachers. We sued and got the (that) decision overruled.”

In 1966, he was elected to the Richmond City Council and later became the city’s first Black mayor for five years. He inherited a landlocked city that had lost 40% of its retail revenues in three years, comparing it to “taking a wounded man, tying his hands behind his back, planting his feet in concrete and throwing him in the water and saying, ‘OK, let’s see you survive.’”

In the end, he led the city from “acute racial polarization towards a more civil society.” He served as president of the National Black Caucus of Elected Officials and as a member of the board of directors of the National League of Cities.

As an education supporter, he formed the Support Committee for Excellence in the Public Schools. He also hosts the city’s Annual Juneteenth Celebration. The courthouse where he practiced now bears his name and so does an elementary school.

Marsh also worked to bridge the city’s racial divide, creating what is now known as Venture Richmond. He was often quoted as saying, “It doesn’t impress me to say that something has never been done before, because everything that is done for the first time had never been done before.”

He died on Jan. 23, 2025, at the age of 91.

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

Mississippi Today

Judge tosses evidence tampering against Tim Herrington

Published

2 days ago

March 7, 2025

Staff Editor

mississippitoday.org – Molly Minta – 2025-03-07 15:08:00

A Lafayette County circuit judge ended an attempt to prosecute Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr., the son of a prominent north Mississippi church family who is accused of killing a fellow University of Mississippi student named Jimmie “Jay” Lee, for evidence tampering.

In a March 7 order, Kelly Luther wrote that Herrington cannot be charged with evidence tampering because of the crime’s two-year statute of limitations. A grand jury indicted the University of Mississippi graduate last month on the charge for allegedly hiding Lee’s remains in a well-known dumping ground about 20 minutes from Herrington’s parent’s house in Grenada.

“The Court finds that prosecution for the charge of Tampering with Physical Evidence commenced outside the two-year statute of limitations and is therefore time-barred,” Luther wrote.

In order to stick, Luther essentially ruled that the prosecution should have brought the charges against Herrington sooner. In court last week, the prosecution argued that it could not have brought those charges to a grand jury without Lee’s remains, which provided the evidence that evidence tampering occurred.

The dismissal came after Herrington’s new counsel, Jackson-area criminal defense attorney Aafram Sellers, filed a motion to throw out the count. Sellers did not respond to a request for commend by press time.

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