The 10 candidates competing in contested judicial elections this year have collectively raised nearly $400,000 in donations since January, and some have injected a substantial amount of their own money into the race, setting the stage for a competitive November election.
Amy St. Pe, a Pascagoula-based attorney running for a seat on the Court of Appeals, accepted $107,300 in donations since January, making her the candidate who amassed the most in campaign donations. She only spent $942 of that money, leaving her with over $106,000 in cash on hand.
Her other two competitors for the south Mississippi appellate seat, Ian Baker and Jennifer Schloegel, have also amassed a large amount of campaign cash, making the race for the open seat likely to become extremely expensive.
Baker, an assistant district attorney on the Coast, raised over $40,000 and loaned his campaign $25,000, giving him at least $65,000 to spend on the race. Schloegel, a chancellor for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties, raised over $97,000.
Perhaps the most surprising revelation in the first campaign finance report is the massive amount of money candidates loaned to their campaign accounts.
Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Philadelphia loaned her campaign account $250,000, as amount more often seen in a statewide or congressional campaign. Branning’s loan and around $68,000 in donations give her around $318,000 to spend.
Branning is challenging longtime incumbent Jim Kitchens, the second-most senior justice on the court who would become chief justice if current Chief Justice Mike Randolph were to leave his post.
Kitchens, who occupies one of the seats in the Central District, has been on the court since 2009. He reported raising over $42,000 and spending nearly $20,000, leaving him with around $22,000 in cash on hand.
The other candidates in the race, Aby Gale Robinson, Ceola James and Byron Carter, did not raise nearly as much as Branning and Kitchens. Robinson reported $0 in donations, James reported $584, and Carter reported nearly $5,000 in donations, supplemented by a $8,000 loan from himself.
The other contested Supreme Court race between incumbent Dawn Beam and challenger David Sullivan for a seat in the Southern District is also shaping up to be competitive on the fundraising front.
Beam reported raising over $17,000 since January, while Sullivan, the only challenger, raised $15,000 during that same timeframe.
Judicial offices are nonpartisan, so candidates do not participate in party primaries. All candidates will appear on the Nov. 5, 2024, general election ballot. If a candidate does not receive a majority of the votes cast, the two candidates who received the most votes will advance to a runoff election on Nov. 26.
Judges on Mississippi’s two highest courts do not run at large. Instead, voters from their respective districts elect them.
The nine members of the Supreme Court are elected from three districts: northern, central and southern. The 10 members of the Court of Appeals are each elected from five districts across the state.
Gov. Tate Reeves has vetoed several bills passed by the Legislature, but lawmakers will not reconvene Tuesday to attempt to override them.
On Monday, the last day for him to address bills passed in the 2024 legislative session, the governor vetoed a bill transferring money between state agencies, and part of another similar transfer bill. He vetoed four bills restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies. He let 16 such bills restoring voting rights pass.
Before legislators adjourned earlier this month, they set aside one day – Tuesday — to possibly return for the purpose of overriding gubernatorial vetoes. When legislators provided themselves the option to return on Tuesday, there was a belief they would need to do so to take up an expected veto by Reeves of a bill to expand Medicaid to provide health care for the working poor. But late in the session, legislators could not reach a compromise on efforts to expand Medicaid and the measure died.
Reeves had also vetoed a bill late Friday.
Reeves said he vetoed Senate Bill 2180 because it required the Capitol Police Force to enforce ordinances of the city of Jackson. The Capitol Police Force has jurisdiction in all of the city and primary jurisdiction in a portion of the city known as the Capitol Complex Improvement District.
The governor said the bill might have prevented the Capitol Police from working with federal officials to detain undocumented immigrants.
But, according to language in the bill, it did not require the Capitol Police to enforce city ordinances, but said they may enforce the ordinances, such as to control loud noises.
The bill also removed the requirement that people get permission from Capitol Police officials to protest outside of state-owned buildings, such as the Governor’s Mansion. A federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the requirement of a permit from Capitol Police for protests last year.
The bill also would have added another judge to hear misdemeanor cases in the Capitol Complex Improvement District.
Legislators might not have much notice on whether they will be called back to the Mississippi Capitol for one final day of the 2024 session.
Speaker Jason White, who presides over the House, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, must decide in the coming days whether to reconvene the Legislature for one final day in the 2024 session on Tuesday at 1 p.m.
Lawmakers left Jackson on May 4. But under the joint resolution passed during the final days of the session, legislators gave themselves the option to return on May 14 unless Hosemann and White “jointly determine that it is not necessary to reconvene.”
The reason for the possible return on Tuesday presumably is to give the Legislature the opportunity to take up and try to override any veto by Gov. Tate Reeves. The only problem is the final bills passed by the Legislature — more than 30 — are not due action by Reeves until Monday, May 13. And technically the governor has until midnight Monday to veto or sign the bills into law or allow them to become law without his signature.
Spokespeople for both Hosemann and White say the governor has committed to taking action on that final batch of bills by Monday at 5 p.m.
“The governor’s office has assured us that we will receive final word on all bills by Monday at 5 p.m.,” a spokesperson for Hosemann said. “In the meantime, we are reminding senators of the possibility of return on Tuesday.”
A spokesperson for White said, “Both the House and Senate expect to have all bills returned from the governor before 5 p.m. on Monday. The lieutenant governor and speaker will then decide if there is a reason to come back on May 14.”
The governor has five days to act on bills after he receives them while legislators are in session, which technically they still are. The final batch of bills were ready for the governor’s office one day before they were picked up by Reeves staff. If they had been picked up that day earlier, Reeves would have had to act on them by Saturday.
At times, the governor has avoided picking up the bills. For instance, reporters witnessed the legislative staff attempt to deliver a batch of bills to the governor’s Capitol office one day last week, but Reeves’ staff refused to accept the bills. They were picked up one day later by the governor’s staff, though.
Among the bills due Monday is the massive bill that funds various projects throughout the state, such as tourism projects and infrastructure projects. In total, there are more than 325 such projects totaling more than $225 million in the bill.
In the past, the governor has vetoed some of those projects.
The governor already has taken action of multiple bills passed during the final days of the session.
He allowed a bill to strip some of the power of the Public Employees Retirement System Board to become law without his signature. The bill also committed to providing a 2-and-one-half percent increase in the amount governmental entities contribute to the public employee pension plan over a five year period.
A bill expanding the area within the Capitol Complex Improvement District, located in the city of Jackson, also became law without his signature. The CCID receives additional funding from the state for infrastructure projects. A state Capitol Police Force has primary law enforcement jurisdiction in the area.
The governor signed into law earlier this week legislation replacing the long-standing Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which has been the mechanism to send state funds to local schools for their basis operation.
A capital murder investigation helped lead to unrelated federal charges against former Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree and his deputy that involved the sexual abuse of a jailed woman.
On Tuesday, Grassaree pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI when he denied receiving nude photos and videos from a woman locked in his jail. He faces up to five years in federal prison when he is sentenced Aug. 7.
Ex-Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree heads into federal court where he will plead guilty, Tuesday, May 7, 2024 in Jackson.
His former deputy, Vance Phillips, pleaded guilty last year to bribery, which experts say could have been the perks the woman received, including a contraband cellphone. No date has been set for his sentencing.
District Attorney Scott Colom said Thursday he would like to see serious punishment for Grassaree for such abuse. “This doesn’t need to be a slap on the wrist,” he said.
He said the discovery of this abuse began with a capital murder case. In 2015, Kristopher Haywood died in a convenience store attack in Macon when someone blasted the 28-year-old twice in the head with a shotgun.
A Noxubee County grand jury indicted Jonathan Shumaker, his girlfriend, Elizabeth Layne Reed, and Justin Williams and his brother, Joshua, on capital murder charges. Shumaker was also found in possession of a shotgun and charged with possession of a firearm by a felon. (These charges were dropped last year after an audio recording surfaced that exonerated them.)
But when Colom inherited the case as the new district attorney in 2016, he said he discovered the evidence and some of the witnesses contradicted the description of what happened.
Three years later, as he prepared for trial, he said his office interviewed Reed, who shared that deputies had been having sex with her inside the jail, “but you’re not going to do anything about it.”
Colom promised that he would.
He said he reached out to federal authorities in 2019 for assistance out of concern that it might be difficult to investigate law enforcement in such a small county.
He said his office took the lead. One of his workers messaged Deputy Phillips from Reed’s Facebook page a photograph of a positive test for pregnancy.
“That’s how we got Vance to corroborate that Reed was telling the truth about the unlawful sex,” Colom said. “We knew we had a serious problem then.”
Any sex that an officer has with someone behind bars is a felony under Mississippi law and carries up to five years in prison. The maximum penalty under federal law is also five years.
There is no way for those behind bars to give consent, Colom said. “They’re in a vulnerable situation. Their liberty and freedom can be used against them.”
Reed told Colom’s office that the sex began with Phillips after he began transporting her to doctors’ visits. He first took her to his trailer to have sex and then had sex with her while the female correctional officers were at lunch, Colom said.
The encounters also took place in deputies’ offices, the interrogation room and even the evidence shed, he said.
The deputy continued to demand sex with her on an almost weekly basis between May 2017 and October 2019, according to a lawsuit she filed against Noxubee County and the sheriff’s office. “Reed, under the coercion of Phillips’ authority and her incarceration, acquiesced in Phillips’ demands.”
Another deputy, Damon Clark, who gave her cigarettes and a touchscreen cell phone, took her up front to a shower, where “he laid me on the floor [and] got on top of me,” she told authorities.
Clark has never been charged. “I never coerced Reed into sex,” he wrote in his response to the lawsuit, but he never answered whether he had sex with her.
Reed told authorities that one other deputy digitally penetrated her and another groped her and “sexted” her.
Colom said their investigation into sexual abuse corroborated much of what Reed alleged. It was then, he said, “we realized we had a serious problem with the Noxubee County Sheriff’s Office under the regime of former Sheriff Terry Grassaree.”
Their investigation showed Grassaree knew about his deputies’ activities, but rather than referring the matter to authorities, he sought to “get in on the action himself,” Colom said.
Reed’s lawsuit said Grassaree demanded “a continuous stream of explicit videos, photographs and texts” from her in jail. She also alleged in the lawsuit that Grassaree touched her in a “sexual manner.”
The county settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.
Colom said he decided to turn over his investigation to federal authorities with the agreement they would prosecute since they could pull far more potential jurors. Getting enough people to serve as jurors has long been a problem in Noxubee County, which has a population of less than 10,000, much less finding impartial jurors, he said.
On July 13, 2020, an FBI agent interviewed Grassaree, who denied that he received nude photos and videos from Reed in jail.
Two years later, reporters from the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times began asking Colom about the case. Colom responded that he was waiting for federal authorities to prosecute as they agreed. Afterward, he contacted federal authorities again and told them reporters had reached out to him, asking questions.
In October 2022, a federal grand jury finally indicted Grassaree and Phillips.
Colom said federal authorities “never gave me a good reason for why they took so long.”
He said even more troubling in his investigation was the discovery of “illegal activities” by the sheriff’s office “that were unrelated to sex.” There have been no indictments in that case.
Noxubee County residents already have a lot of skepticism toward law enforcement, he said, “so when you actually do have corruption, it has to be aggressively handled. We can’t have police forces where the people we are trusting to protect and serve are only concerned about themselves and their own illegal agendas.”
He still hopes federal authorities will prosecute, he said. “It would send a strong message to the citizens in Noxubee County that you care about them.”
Asked if his office could bring state charges now, he said that was impossible because “the statute of limitations has run.”
Federal authorities have a five-year statute of limitations, but the statute of limitations in Mississippi is only two years.
Colom said he didn’t move sooner because federal officials “had agreed to prosecute the charges and kept telling me they were going to do something.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Jackson responded Thursday, “The Department of Justice follows the facts, law, and principles of federal prosecution when determining how to proceed in an investigation and what charges, if any, can be filed. Federal agents and prosecutors will continue working hard every day to hold public officials in Mississippi, like Sheriff Grassaree, accountable for corrupt use of their office and efforts to mislead investigators.”
Mike Hurst, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi
Former U.S. Attorney Michael Hurst, who served from 2017 to 2021, said prosecuting public corruption was one of his top priorities, especially when it involved law enforcement who “violated their oath and victimized our citizens.”
He said if the U.S. attorney’s office had sufficient evidence beyond a reasonable doubt to prosecute, “we prosecuted them, no matter who they were, period. In many instances, federal prosecutors are the last line of defense in our society of ensuring that our citizens are protected, their rights are upheld, and that criminals — especially corrupt public officials — are held accountable.”
Isabella Rosario Blum was wrapping up medical school and considering residency programs to become a family practice physician when she got some frank advice: If she wanted to be trained to provide abortions, she shouldn’t stay in Arizona.
Blum turned to programs mostly in states where abortion access — and, by extension, abortion training — is likely to remain protected, like California, Colorado, and New Mexico. Arizona has enacted a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks.
“I would really like to have all the training possible,” she said, “so of course that would have still been a limitation.”
In June, she will start her residency at Swedish Cherry Hill hospital in Seattle.
According to new statistics from the Association of American Medical Colleges, for the second year in a row, students graduating from U.S. medical schools were less likely to apply this year for residency positions in states with abortion bans and other significant abortion restrictions.
Since the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, state fights over abortion access have created plenty of uncertainty for pregnant patients and their doctors. But that uncertainty has also bled into the world of medical education, forcing some new doctors to factor state abortion laws into their decisions about where to begin their careers.
Fourteen states, primarily in the Midwest and South, have banned nearly all abortions. The new analysis by the AAMC — a preliminary copy of which was exclusively reviewed by KFF Health News before its public release — found that the number of applicants to residency programs in states with near-total abortion bans declined by 4.2%, compared with a 0.6% drop in states where abortion remains legal.
Notably, the AAMC’s findings illuminate the broader problems abortion bans can create for a state’s medical community, particularly in an era of provider shortages: The organization tracked a larger decrease in interest in residencies in states with abortion restrictions not only among those in specialties most likely to treat pregnant patients, like OB-GYNs and emergency room doctors, but also among aspiring doctors in other specialties.
“It should be concerning for states with severe restrictions on reproductive rights that so many new physicians — across specialties — are choosing to apply to other states for training instead,” wrote Atul Grover, executive director of the AAMC’s Research and Action Institute.
The AAMC analysis found the number of applicants to OB-GYN residency programs in abortion ban states dropped by 6.7%, compared with a 0.4% increase in states where abortion remains legal. For internal medicine, the drop observed in abortion ban states was over five times as much as in states where abortion is legal.
In its analysis, the AAMC said an ongoing decline in interest in ban states among new doctors ultimately “may negatively affect access to care in those states.”
Jack Resneck Jr., immediate past president of the American Medical Association, said the data demonstrates yet another consequence of the post-Roe v. Wade era.
The AAMC analysis notes that even in states with abortion bans, residency programs are filling their positions — mostly because there are more graduating medical students in the U.S. and abroad than there are residency slots.
Still, Resneck said, “we’re extraordinarily worried.” For example, physicians without adequate abortion training may not be able to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, or potential complications such as infection or hemorrhaging that could stem from pregnancy loss.
Those who work with students and residents say their observations support the AAMC’s findings. “People don’t want to go to a place where evidence-based practice and human rights in general are curtailed,” said Beverly Gray, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University School of Medicine.
Abortion in North Carolina is banned in nearly all cases after 12 weeks. Women who experience unexpected complications or discover their baby has potentially fatal birth defects later in pregnancy may not be able to receive care there.
Gray said she worries that even though Duke is a highly sought training destination for medical residents, the abortion ban “impacts whether we have the best and brightest coming to North Carolina.”
Rohini Kousalya Siva will start her obstetrics and gynecology residency at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., this year. She said she did not consider programs in states that have banned or severely restricted abortion, applying instead to programs in Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Washington, D.C.
“We’re physicians,” said Kousalya Siva, who attended medical school in Virginia and was previously president of the American Medical Student Association. “We’re supposed to be giving the best evidence-based care to our patients, and we can’t do that if we haven’t been given abortion training.”
Another consideration: Most graduating medical students are in their 20s, “the age when people are starting to think about putting down roots and starting families,” said Gray, who added that she is noticing many more students ask about politics during their residency interviews.
And because most young doctors make their careers in the state where they do their residencies, “people don’t feel safe potentially having their own pregnancies living in those states” with severe restrictions, said Debra Stulberg, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Chicago.
Stulberg and others worry that this self-selection away from states with abortion restrictions will exacerbate the shortages of physicians in rural and underserved areas.
“The geographic misalignment between where the needs are and where people are choosing to go is really problematic,” she said. “We don’t need people further concentrating in urban areas where there’s already good access.”
After attending medical school in Tennessee, which has adopted one of the most sweeping abortion bans in the nation, Hannah Light-Olson will start her OB-GYN residency at the University of California-San Francisco this summer.
It was not an easy decision, she said. “I feel some guilt and sadness leaving a situation where I feel like I could be of some help,” she said. “I feel deeply indebted to the program that trained me, and to the patients of Tennessee.”
Light-Olson said some of her fellow students applied to programs in abortion ban states “because they think we need pro-choice providers in restrictive states now more than ever.” In fact, she said, she also applied to programs in ban states when she was confident the program had a way to provide abortion training.
“I felt like there was no perfect, 100% guarantee; we’ve seen how fast things can change,” she said. “I don’t feel particularly confident that California and New York aren’t going to be under threat, too.”
As a condition of a scholarship she received for medical school, Blum said, she will have to return to Arizona to practice, and it is unclear what abortion access will look like then. But she is worried about long-term impacts.
“Residents, if they can’t get the training in the state, then they’re probably less likely to settle down and work in the state as well,” she said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
About a year and half ago, on the heels of Jackson’s infamous water system failure, advocates and politicians from Mississippi began publicly questioning the funding mechanisms that are supposed to support such systems.
In October 2022, U.S. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Carolyn Maloney wrote Gov. Tate Reeves, grilling him over an apparent disparity in how federal infrastructure funds were allocated to Jackson versus other parts of the state.
Then days later, the Environmental Protection Agency’s civil rights office opened an investigation into two state agencies — the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality and the Mississippi Department of Health — in response to the NAACP’s claims of discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits discrimination — based on race, color or national origin — in providing federal assistance.
On Monday, though, the EPA announced it had ended the probe after finding no evidence the agencies had short-changed Jackson’s water system. In its investigation, the EPA looked at the funding amounts and racial demographics of cities that received water funding from MDEQ and the Health Department and determined there was no correlation between the two factors.
A scatter plot from the EPA’s analysis comparing the levels of funding cities received with their percent of Black residents.
“The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality did everything right,” MDEQ Executive Director Chris Wells said in a press release following the EPA’s announcement.
The two agencies are in charge of disbursing funds from the EPA called “state revolving loan,” or SRF, funds, which are meant to help cities make infrastructure improvements. MDEQ handles SRF funds related to wastewater infrastructure, while the Health Department handles SRF funds for drinking water.
But the claims against the agencies were only part of the 2022 complaint the NAACP filed with the EPA. The federal agency did not address another complaint: The group also focused on the state Legislature, which has denied attempts in recent years by Jackson to raise money for its water system, such as creating a new 1% tax.
Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Frank Bordeaux announced on Wednesday that he will not seek reelection to his post and endorsed former U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst to succeed him.
Bordeaux, an insurance executive, wrote on Facebook that he’s had a great tenure as the party’s chairman, but it was time to “pass the torch” to a “new leader with a fresh perspective.”
“We’ve seen a lot of success,” Bordeaux said. “We’ve elected more Republicans in the last few years to local, state, and federal offices than at any point in history. With every election, we’ve gained seats and put more conservatives in positions to improve the lives of Mississippians.”
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in September 2020 backed Bordeaux, a longtime Coast resident, to replace former GOP Chairman Lucien Smith, a move that likely proved crucial to the governor transforming the Coast into a political firewall of support during the 2023 statewide election.
Reeves in a Wednesday social media post thanked Bordeaux for his service and backed Hurst to become the new leader of the party.
“He has done an outstanding job raising funds for the Party as the Chairman of the United Republican Fund,” Reeves said of Hurst. “And I look forward to working with him to continue to grow the MSGOP and increase our capacity to get conservatives elected to every level of government.”
It’s typical for a sitting Republican governor, as de facto head of the state party, to pick a new chairman. While the executive committee technically elects a GOP chairman, a governor’s choice is typically installed by acclamation. There has been no major executive committee challenge to a Republican governor’s chairman nomination in recent history.
The MSGOP annual convention begins Friday, and the change in leadership is expected to be voted into place this weekend. The Friday kickoff of the convention includes an address by national RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump, former President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law.
Hurst in a Wednesday statement reiterated he has Reeves’ support.
“I want to thank Gov. Tate Reeves for his support, Chairman Frank Bordeaux for his incredible leadership, and the staff of the MSGOP, who have all raised our party to new heights and have achieved so much for our conservative principles over the last number of years,” Hurst said.
Gov. Tate Reeves signs qualifying paperwork to run for reelection, as his wife Elee Reeves, left, and party chairman Frank Bordeaux look on at the Mississippi Republican Headquarters in Jackson, Miss., Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“Our future is bright in Mississippi and, if elected chairman, I hope I can play a small role in making our state and our party even better in the future,” Hurst added.
Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in a statement Wednesday said: “Being chairman is a tough, uncompensated job which takes a significant amount of personal time. Frank’s leadership through part of the pandemic and the recent statewide election has been pivotal to bringing organization, unity, and success to the Republican Party across the state. We appreciate his service and look forward to continuing his efforts under the guidance of Mike Hurst.”
Hurst has been involved in state and national Republican politics for years. He is currently a partner in the Phelps Dunbar law firm’s Jackson office. Hurst served as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi under President Donald Trump’s administration from 2017 to 2021, and previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney.
Prior to his presidential appointment, Hurst was the founder and director of the Mississippi Justice Institute, a division of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. He also previously served as a legislative director and counsel to then-U.S. Rep. Chip Pickering, and served as counsel to the Constitution Subcommittee of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
Hurst’s wife, Celeste Hurst, was elected last year to the state House District 77 seat, representing Madison, Rankin and Scott counties.
