Mississippi election results: Three Republicans, one Democrat again win U.S. House seats

by Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender, Mississippi Today
November 9, 2022

Three Mississippi U.S. House incumbents won handily, and a new U.S. House member was elected on Tuesday, according to preliminary election results gathered by the Associated Press.

Incumbent U.S. Reps. Trent Kelly in the 1st Congressional District, Bennie Thompson in the 2nd Congressional District and Michael Guest in the 3rd Congressional District easily won their races on Tuesday. In the 4th Congressional District, Mike Ezell won his first term in the U.S. House.

Thompson, the longest serving delegate representing Mississippi in Washington, remains the state’s sole Democratic representative. Kelly, Guest and Ezell are Republicans.

While the national spotlight was on key battleground states and congressional districts to determine which party would control the U.S. House and Senate, there was never much doubt who would win Mississippi’s four contested elections. Various reports indicate that turnout was light across the state on Tuesday.

Neither of Mississippi’s two U.S. senators, Roger Wicker or Cindy Hyde-Smith, were up for reelection this year. The seat Wicker holds is up for grabs in 2024, and the seat Hyde-Smith holds is up in 2026.

In the House races:

• District 1 incumbent Kelly, a former district attorney in northeast Mississippi, defeated Dianne Dodson Black, an Olive Branch small business owner. Kelly was first elected to Congress in a 2015 special election to replace Alan Nunnelee, who died in office. Black was attempting to become the first African American woman from Mississippi elected to a federal office.
• District 2 incumbent Thompson upended Brian Flowers of Clinton, a Navy veteran who works in mechanical planning at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Plant near Port Gibson. Thompson, chair of the Homeland Security Committee and the special committee formed to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, is the second Black Mississippians to serve in Congress in the modern era.
• District 3 incumbent Guest, a former district attorney in Madison and Rankin counties, beat Neshoba County native Democrat Shuwaski Young. Young was running for office for the first time, but has experience working in the Mississippi Secretary of State’s office and in Homeland Security on the national level. Guest was first elected in 2018.
• In District 4, Ezell, who defeated incumbent U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo in the Republican primary earlier this year, defeated Democrat Johnny DuPree and Libertarian Alden Patrick Johnson. DuPree, former mayor of Hattiesburg, also has run unsuccessfully for governor and secretary of state. In 2011, DuPree became the first African American major party nominee for governor.

Other contests across Mississippi, such as for judicial posts and school board seats, also were on the ballot.

Click here to see full results from Tuesday’s midterm elections.

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