Mississippi, our home state that showcases plenty to be proud of and celebrate, also faces some pretty dire and complex problems.
Federal and state prosecutors are still investigating the state’s welfare scandal, what some have labeled the largest embezzlement scheme in state history in which tens of millions of dollars intended for our poorest residents were misspent or squandered by powerful, wealthy and politically connected people.
Our state’s already weak hospital system is continuing to show signs of impending failure, with many rural hospitals on the brink of closure and even large metropolitan hospitals forced to cut critical health care services and lay off employees to make ends meet.
Residents of Jackson, our state’s capital and largest city, lost running water for days last fall and may never be able to trust the safety and reliability of the water system again. The state as a whole has the highest homicide rate in the nation, our state’s young people are moving away at a troubling pace, and our economy is struggling to keep up with our immediate neighbors.
Voters this year have a chance to address all of these problems and more at the polls in August and November. Candidates for the state’s most powerful elected positions are already sharing their ideas for how to create a better future for all Mississippians.
Mississippi is one of just three states with gubernatorial elections this year, meaning we’ll get lots of national attention in the campaign for governor. But we also have seven other crucial statewide offices up for grabs, two key regional commission elections, as well as 174 legislative races and district attorney races. All of these people will be elected by Mississippians later this year to positions where they absolutely could improve problems and lives across the state.
We’re already becoming overloaded with rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle, making it difficult to understand which ideas from candidates are real or feasible. We have critical questions for those seeking office, but it’s often impossible to sift through talking points to understand which of those ideas could be most effective for us.
That’s why we wanted to create this voter guide, where you can find most everything you need to know about our 2023 statewide elections. We’ll keep asking every major candidate for office this year key questions about how they would use their positions of power for good, and we’ll present their answers in an easy-to-digest way.
Here, you will also find basic information about how to vote, as well as critical voting deadlines. We believe that civic engagement is the most effective way we can help move Mississippi forward. We hope this will be a helpful resource as you navigate these next few weeks before Election Day, but we want to know how it could be improved.
If you don’t see something you’d like to know, view our full coverage. There, you’ll find the most robust, comprehensive coverage of Mississippi politics. If you still have questions or suggestions for us, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
And don’t forget to vote on Aug. 8, and then again on Nov. 7!
The Mississippi Department of Education says its hands are tied when it comes to the $100 million in additional funding allocated to school districts this year because of disagreements in the Legislature about how to distribute it.
“We have not been given a clear direction on how it is that we are to calculate how we divide up the $100 million,” Interim state Superintendent Mike Kent told Mississippi Today.
The Mississippi Department of Education defines enrollment as the “number of students belonging to a school unit at any given time.” The definition goes on to explain that enrollment is an “ever-changing” number, meaning that calculations of enrollment are tied to a specific time period.
The text of the law says the money is to be distributed based on “average daily enrollment or the total number of students enrolled for each day in each public school district or charter school divided by the total number of school days.”
Kent said he originally thought the extra $100 million was to be distributed based on enrollment in months 2-3 of a school year, similar to how students are counted for the public school funding formula. However, when he followed up with the Legislative Budget Office after the session ended, the office said it needed to check and would get back to him. Two proposals emerged, one from the Senate to count enrollment using months 1-8 of the school year, and a plan from the House to count it based on months 2-3.
“Our intention with the $100 million language in the appropriations bill was to disburse this money to school districts on the average daily enrollment,” said Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leaksville. “I think the language as we crafted it was clear, and our intention on the Senate side is to follow the language in the law. I don’t believe we should be deviating from what the language in the statute says.”
During the session, House leaders refused to add additional money to the school funding formula after the Senate brought forward a proposal to rework it. Though on Tuesday, a source close to House leadership told Mississippi Today it was always the intent of the House to distribute this separate money using the same method as the school funding formula, which uses months 2-3. The source said there is a standard that has always been followed and the Legislature needs to continue to follow that precedent.
Kent said MDE ran calculations multiple times to show legislators how the different proposals would play out. He said the difference between the options was “negligible.”
Despite this, Kent said the department cannot proceed without official guidance from the Legislative Budget Office.
“We are, to a great extent, a flow-through agency … and there are always strict guidelines about how that money flows,” he said.
He added that, while the difference between the options is small, it’s enough that if the department “arbitrarily” made a decision, “there would be people that would have a problem with it.”
Budget bills take effect July 1, giving the Legislature just a few days to resolve the matter before the education department is supposed to start distributing the money.
“The language in the statute in the appropriations was clear that the money should be disbursed based upon the number of students throughout the school year,” said DeBar, the senate education chair. “I expect that the Department of Education will follow the law and disburse that money as of July 1.”
Kent said this delay was a point of stress for district superintendents because it limits their ability to budget for the upcoming school year and get new projects approved by their school boards. To address this, Kent wrote an email earlier this month to superintendents explaining the dueling proposals and gave them an estimate of $236 per student.
“The districts were so eager to know the number because there are programs and projects and personnel that every district wanted to do, but they needed to know, am I talking about hiring two additional teachers or three? Can I build six classrooms or twelve classrooms?” he said.
After Mississippi Today published an emailed tirade by state Democratic Party Chairman Tyree Irving that some fear could jeopardize $250,000 in funding for the state party, one of the top Democratic statewide candidates is calling for Irving’s removal as party boss.
Shuwaski Young, the lone Democrat running for secretary of state this year, said the state Democratic Party’s executive committee should promptly remove Irving from his post.
“It is my hope — and I hate it has to come to this — that Tyree Irving will be removed as chair of the Mississippi Democratic Party for the sake of Mississippi and the collective futures of our residents,” Young told Mississippi Today in an interview late Monday. “I don’t see any other path forward.”
Emails published Monday showed that Irving sharply criticized Andre Wagner, the state party’s executive director and No. 2 leader of the party, in a note that was sent to three Democratic National Committee staffers. Shortly before Irving sent the email, the DNC officials had committed to sending the state party $250,000 to boost political programs and support candidates “up and down the ballot.”
Wagner had sought in an email to clarify Irving’s previous comments about how the state party should spend that $250,000 from the national party. Then Irving, a 77-year-old former Mississippi Court of Appeals judge who has been party chairman since 2020, insisted that he alone ran the state party and that Wagner was “out of order.”
“Mr. Wagner, you do not speak for the chair, and you are out of order,” Irving wrote. “I am an accomplished jurist. I know and understand things that you cannot know or understand because: you do not have the education level, you do not possess the personal or vicarious experience that I have, and you know nothing about the historical political landscape of Mississippi. You are not in a position to speak for the Mississippi Democratic Party or say how the Mississippi Democratic Party will spend any funds without being granted that authority to speak, and it has not been granted to you. You are a salaried employee and nothing else. You need to find your place and stay in it.”
Wagner, in response, forwarded the exchange to other state party leaders and predicted that the national party would pull its commitment to send the money to the state party. Several other Democratic Party officials told Mississippi Today they shared Wagner’s concern.
Young, who faces incumbent Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson in November, said on Monday that Irving’s comments were “shocking and unacceptable,” and that several high-ranking state Democratic officials felt the same way.
“The chairman’s main job is to fundraise and to support candidates up and down the ticket,” Young said. “When you have a chairman acting in this outrageous way, it makes people not want to invest into the party. It makes people not want to donate to candidates. And politically, it makes it harder for Democrats to win. When we can’t operate in a coordinated fashion because our leader can’t respect other people, it hurts every Democrat in the state. We have to be able to have our house in order, and that’s clearly not the case.”
The process of removing Irving from the chairmanship would not be easy. The party chair is the only individual who can schedule meetings of the 80-person Democratic executive committee. Currently, there is no scheduled executive committee meeting on the books. However, 25% of the committee (21 members) may call a meeting with or without the chair’s approval.
The Mississippi Democratic Party constitution does not specify the process for removing a party chair mid-term, but changes to leadership or the party’s constitution itself can be made with a two-thirds vote of all present members. If all 80 members showed up to any special meeting, 54 votes could remove the chairman.
Young, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2022, said Irving “is not doing the job Mississippi needs from him.”
“As far as I can tell, Tyree Irving is a man who has never said one single positive word about any candidate on the ticket, myself included,” Young said. “He does not reflect all Democrats in Mississippi. He sure doesn’t reflect me and who I am. It’s important to have someone in that position who respects people. But the party itself is not being led with the party’s own principles, when it comes to respecting all people and being able to properly conduct business without fear of being sabotaged. How can we win like that?”
Portrait of Thurgood Marshall Credit: Artist Betsy Graves Reyneau, which hangs in the National Gallery Portrait
Thurgood Marshall, the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, announced his retirement from the high court. President George H.W. Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to take Marshall’s place.
Two years later, Marshall died and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery near the graves of previous justices.
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust,” he said in an interview before his death. “We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
Mississippi will receive $1.2 billion in federal money to expand high-speed internet, President Joe Biden announced Monday.
The state’s share of the money — part of $42 billion in spending to expand access nationwide — is part of the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act, passed by Congress in 2021.
The announcement of funding through the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding came in a press conference at the White House on Monday. Biden likened the efforts to expand broadband access nationwide by 2030 to work to provide electricity to rural America in the 1930s.
Sally Doty, director of the Mississippi office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi, was at the White House on Monday for the announcement.
“The amount is in the range I expected,” Doty said. “It was driven by the large number of high cost (of providing access) areas in the state. The BEAM office is working through all the numerous requirements to get the money out as fast as we can … We know this funding will be transformational for so many Mississippians and their communities.”
The award was based on the number of homes and businesses lacking high-speed internet and estimated costs of expanding it. Mississippi has an estimated 300,000 unserved and 200,000 underserved homes and businesses. BEAM was created to administer Mississippi’s broadband expansion through a competitive grant program. It will now submit a five-year action plan for the federal funding in late summer.
“Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, we are working with Gov. (Tate) Reeves to close the digital divide so that everyone in Mississippi will be able to participate in the digital economy and realize the benefits of broadband access,” said national Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.
Reeves in a statement on Monday said: “People want to live in areas where they can access broadband and that are connected. That’s why we’ll continue to aggressively build out broadband infrastructure to every region of our state, so all Mississippians can harness the opportunities technology provides them.”
U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson were the only members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation to vote for the Infrastructure Act.
Thompson, in a statement, said: “I was the only congressman from Mississippi in the House of Representatives to cast a ballot in favor of the infrastructure spending package. I am proud to have taken a stand for the people of my state and to have been an advocate for responsible investment in our nation’s future. Broadband access is essential for our country’s progress, and this spending package is going to get us off the bottom and bring us forward into an era of greater technological advancement.”
Wicker said he was a key negotiator of the Infrastructure Act and “also worked for years as the lead Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to ensure Mississippi’s lack of broadband coverage was accurately reflected in national coverage maps.” He said early versions of federal map incorrectly inflated Mississippi’s coverage.
“I am thrilled at this announcement and, and I will continue working with our leadership to ensure that every dollar is put to work connecting all corners of the state,” Wicker said.
Doty continues to urge Mississippians to contribute to the state broadband map at broadbandms.com, where people can take a speed test that will log lagging service into the map.
The Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, recently filed comments with the federal government over concerns that disadvantaged areas of the state — such as the Delta — might be overlooked as the state expands broadband service. MCJ requested better guidance to the state from the feds and better notification to unserved areas to ensure this doesn’t happen.
“BEAM has struggled to reach communities in the Mississippi Delta, a predominantly rural and Black region,” MCJ wroted. “The Delta’s barriers have resulted in low engagement with the mapping tool (which has) caused Delta communities’ broadband needs to be underrepresented in (maps).” The group called on federal leaders “to be cognizant of news deserts in rural and small communities when forming guidance of community-based notification.”
MCJ also noted that previous state grant programs expanding access were mostly concentrated in north Mississippi that, while rural, does not suffer the levels of poverty of the Delta.
The Mississippi Association of Educators endorsed Democrat Brandon Presley for governor on Monday over incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.
The election between Reeves and Presley, the northern district public service commissioner, is drawing national attention, and the candidates are beginning to roll out their policy ideas to voters.
An April Mississippi Today/Siena College poll showed Reeves with an 11-point lead over Presley: 49% of respondents said they would vote for Reeves compared to Presley’s 38%.
“As a proud product of public schools and the son of a preschool teacher, it’s an honor to earn the support of thousands of educators across this state,” Presley said. He continued, “Mississippi educators know that as governor, I will stand with them to fully fund public education so we can position our state towards the economy of the future.”
MAE President Erica Jones said the decision to endorse Presley was made after reviewing Reeves’ actions during his first term, leading the association to say the first-term governor is “absent as a leader and advocate for public schools.”
Jones elaborated that while Reeves signing the state’s largest teacher pay raise was “an important start,” her organization feels that Presley is the candidate who can step into the leadership role it feels Reeves has not embraced.
“Governor Tate Reeves promised and then secured the largest pay raise for teachers in Mississippi history,” said Elliott Husbands, Reeves’s campaign manager. “If being a Democrat is more important to MAE than historically raising teacher pay, that’s a decision they are free to make.”
This year’s endorsement from the state’s teacher union, one of the largest education associations in Mississippi, came alongside 49 others for state legislators. Pam Johnson, the association’s communications director, said the endorsements were based on candidates’ voting records on issues like the teacher pay raise, an extra $100 million for public schools allocated this session, community schools and advancing mental health resources.
MAE contacted legislators based on their voting records for possible endorsement. The organization said they sent questionnaires to all the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, which Presley responded to and Reeves did not.
When asked if any candidates had approached the association to discuss policy ideas or goals, Jones said several did throughout the legislative session and since it ended. George Stewart, the president of the local Jackson Association of Educators, also said he was contacted by the Presley campaign to discuss its education platform.
“As an organization committed to improving education across Mississippi, we believe these candidates have the vision, leadership, and commitment necessary to create a better future for all of our students, educators and communities,” said Jones in a press release. “We urge voters to support them, and to become engaged in the upcoming election — our children and our future depend on it.”
Hattiesburg’s Alexei Orohovsky became the first Mississippian to win the gold medal at the International Ballet Competition at Thalia Mara Hall. Credit: Richard Finkelstein
Thalia Mara, for whom Jackson’s magnificent municipal auditorium is named, was the daughter of Russian immigrants, grew up in Chicago, studied classical ballet in Paris, toured the world as a dancer, and founded and directed the National Academy of Ballet in New York City in 1963.
But that’s not all…
Rick Cleveland
Mara moved to Jackson in 1976 at the age of 65, and when most folks think of retiring, she began to make ballet matter in, of all places, Mississippi. From all accounts, Mara was a boundless force of nature, who somehow brought the International Ballet Competition (IBC) to Jackson in 1979 — the first time the competition had been held in the Western Hemisphere.
Why Jackson? Mara told writer Bettye Jolly in a 1977 article for Jackson Magazine she saw first-hand that Jackson was a sports town, and that she was “searching for a way to stimulate a similar interest in ballet.”
Competition, she surmised, was what she needed. “Mississippians love athleticism and they love a competition,” she said. The IBC is the Olympics of ballet, awarding gold, silver and bronze medals to top competitors across the globe. The dancers most certainly are amazingly athletic, as we will discuss. So, Mara enlisted community support and parleyed her connections in the international ballet community to bring the IBC to Mississippi.
Thalia Mara
Mara died in 2003, but most assuredly her spirit pervaded the auditorium these past two weeks when the IBC welcomed 99 dancers from 17 different countries. And wouldn’t Mrs. Mara have loved it last Saturday night when Alexei Orohovsky, a 16-year-old from 90 miles down U.S. 49 in Hattiesburg, won the gold medal in the juniors competition?
You know she would have. And you may wonder, as I did, how a soft-spoken, incredibly graceful and athletic 16-year-old named Orohovsky, born and raised in Mississippi’s Pine Belt, could win a worldwide ballet competition. We will get to that as well…
First, let’s tackle the age-old question: Are ballet dancers athletes? You only needed to sit through one performance of the two weeks of IBC competition to know the answer. Hell yes, they are athletes — amazingly graceful athletes, men and women, boys and girls. I don’t know a pas de deaux from pass interference, but I know an athlete when I see one. These dancers are tremendously strong and limber with the ability to leap and seemingly suspend themselves in air. At times, it is as if they are flying. The boys and men can lift the girls and women above their heads, while gracefully dancing. The girls and women can stand on the toes of one foot and spin themselves round and round until you, the spectator, become dizzy. Great athletes have stamina; these dancers do, too.
In Mississippi, some wise coaches have long known the benefits of ballet training for their football and basketball players. Back in the 1960s, about the time Mara was founding the National Academy of Ballet, a basketball coach named Fred Lewis was winning and winning big at Mississippi Southern College. Lewis, who later created a powerhouse basketball program at Syracuse, was searching for ways to improve his Southern players’ footwork and leaping abilities. And so he put them in ballet classes at the college’s School of Dance. Did it work? You decide. Lewis’s Golden Giants, as they were then called, were 23-2 and 23-3 in back-to-back seasons.
In 1974, Granville Freeman, a fireball of a young football coach at Lake High School in Scott Country, was looking for an edge. And so he brought in a ballet teacher from Jackson that summer to train his Lake Hornets twice a week. Heresy? Some of his players probably thought so, but years later Freeman told a sports writer, “Ballet is all about footwork, about core strength, about flexibility. I thought it was perfect training for football. We called ourselves the Twinkletoe Hornets. People laughed at us before the season; they weren’t laughing after it.”
No, the Twinkletoe Hornets won every game they played, and what’s more, no opponent so much as scored a point. “Undefeated, un-tied, un-scored upon,” Freeman said. “People around here now refer to us as the un-team.”
Young Alexei Orohovsky tried soccer, baseball, swimming and other sports growing up in Hattiesburg. He kept coming back to ballet, which, to be sure, was in his blood. His father and mother, Arkadiy and Katya Orohovsky, were accomplished ballet dancers themselves and now teach the discipline at South Mississippi Ballet Theatre in the Hub City. Father Arkadiy grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine, mother Katya in Hattiesburg.
Their talented son began dancing seriously at age 12. He graduated from high school at age 15. His parents taught and trained him until the age of 14. He now trains at world-renowned John Kranko Schule in Stuttgart, Germany. Indeed, Alexei won the gold medal on Friday, danced a solo from The Nutcracker in the IBC Encore Gala Saturday night and flew back to Stuttgart on Sunday.
In Stuttgart, he spends more than six hours a day dancing and training to perfect his art. Besides hours of dancing, he does weight training, stamina workouts, Pilates and pays close attention to nutrition. In his spare time, he studies German. At his level, ballet is a full-time job.
Alexei is nothing if not dedicated. Taseusz Matacz, his instructor in Stuttgart told freelance writer Sherry Lucas, “On stage, Alexei feels like a fish in water. With visible joy, he dances the variations which are peppered with technical difficulties. He has excellent coordination, his explosiveness in the muscles enables Alexei to bring special lightness into the dance. One of Alexei’s specialties are his pirouettes – small or large, great variability in execution, incredible speed – he masters this in a virtuoso manner.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Alexei is just shy of 6-feet tall and still growing. Weight? “I have no idea,” he says, smiling. I don’t know, either, but I can tell you from observation he has roughly the body fat content of a grasshopper and can jump like one, too. He is polite and well-spoken and insanely talented. He told his mother four years ago he would one day dance in the IBC in Jackson. He did not specify he would win the gold medal.
But he won the silver medal last year at Helsinki and then topped that in his home state 90 miles away from his hometown. “Incredible,” he described the feeling. “Huge,” he said about what the gold medal would mean for his career.
This was 44 years after the IBC first came to Jackson, 41 years after Jackson native Kathy Thibodeaux won the silver medal. No Mississippian had won a medal here since — not until this past weekend when Alexei Orohovsky won the gold. Last Friday night, he stood adorned with the gold medal, while The Star-Spangled Banner played and Mississippians stood at attention.
The Democratic National Committee recently committed to send $250,000 to boost the Mississippi Democratic Party’s election efforts, including the gubernatorial campaign of Brandon Presley.
But after Tyree Irving, the chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party, fired off a nasty written tirade about a fellow state party official and insisted that he alone ran the state party, some fear the DNC will withdraw that commitment, according to several party leaders and emails shared with Mississippi Today.
Irving and state executive director Andre Wagner had a phone call Thursday morning with DNC staffers to discuss the $250,000 donation — a substantial amount from the national party intended to assist with political programs that could help statewide candidates, according to multiple people with knowledge of the call.
Later that morning, DNC senior advisor Libby Schneider followed up with both Irving and Wagner via email.
“Thank you for hopping on the call,” Schneider wrote to Irving and Wagner, copying two of her DNC colleagues. “Confirming that we are excited to make this historic investment in the state party to support Democrats up and down the ticket in 2023 and 2024 and look forward to working together.”
A few hours later on Thursday night, Irving replied to Schneider. Wagner, DNC attorney Andrea Levien and DNC Director of States Ramsey Reid were copied on the reply.
Irving wrote: “We thank the DNC for the financial investment in the Mississippi Democratic Party, but just to be clear, it is my understanding that it is the hope and desire of the DNC that the Mississippi Democratic Party will make an equal investment in the Brandon Presley campaign, although that is not a requirement for the investment that you are making.”
Several party officials who have since read that email told Mississippi Today that Irving’s email would have raised eyebrows — and perhaps even legal questions — following a routine phone call about general party investment. People with knowledge of the call said that there was no specific talk of sending that money to Presley, the Democrat challenging incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves this year.
So on Friday morning, Wagner replied to the email thread with Irving and the DNC officials in an apparent attempt to clear the air.
“Hey Team,” Wagner wrote. “I think the chair (Irving) misunderstood, we plan to use the funds in accordance with Mississippi law and will use the funds in support of electing Democrats up and down the ticket. And we also acknowledge that the DNC has not earmarked any funds for any particular candidate. Thank you.”
In reply to that email, Irving levied a nasty personal attack on Wagner and again copied the same DNC officials.
“Mr. Wagner, you do not speak for the chair, and you are out of order,” wrote Irving, a 77-year-old former Mississippi Court of Appeals judge. “I am an accomplished jurist. I know and understand things that you cannot know or understand because: you do not have the education level, you do not possess the personal or vicarious experience that I have, and you know nothing about the historical political landscape of Mississippi. You are not in a position to speak for the Mississippi Democratic Party or say how the Mississippi Democratic Party will spend any funds without being granted that authority to speak, and it has not been granted to you. You are a salaried employee and nothing else. You need to find your place and stay in it.”
Irving’s emails were not received well by the party officials. Less than an hour later on Friday afternoon, Wagner forwarded the email exchange to several executive leaders of the Mississippi Democratic Party along with a troubling prediction.
“Because of the Chair’s actions, the DNC will not be sending the money to support our candidates and the Presley campaign,” Wagner shared with the state party leaders on Friday afternoon.
Mississippi Democratic Party officials who have seen the email exchange and spoke with Mississippi Today said that they were not expecting the DNC to follow through on the commitment. The officials, including multiple members of the state party’s executive committee, declined to comment on the record.
DNC officials did not respond to requests for comment about the exchange and the national party commitment. Wagner declined to comment. Irving, when reached on Saturday, said he had not heard concerns about the DNC’s commitment.
“The DNC has confirmed to me via email that they are sending $250,000 to the Mississippi Democratic Party to elect candidates up and down the ballot,” Irving told Mississippi Today on Saturday. “Nobody from the DNC has informed me that they are reneging on that commitment. I have no knowledge that that is the case. I’m operating on the assumption that the DNC is sending the money.”
When asked to comment on the content of his emails or whether he worried they might spook national party officials, Irving replied: “No comment.”
The commitment of $250,000 to aid Democratic campaigns in Mississippi would be a boon to a state party that has long struggled to raise money, has been strapped for cash to pay for basic political operation, and has been plagued by administrative dysfunction for years.
Presley, in particular, could use political or financial support. The Democratic candidate for governor has been heralded nationally as a candidate with a real chance to defeat incumbent Republican Gov. Tate Reeves. But to win in November, Presley will have to overcome name ID problems across the state and Reeves’ monstrous campaign war chest: $9 million as of the latest campaign finance reports. The Presley campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Sources told Mississippi Today that the $250,000 donation would nearly double the state party’s current cash-on-hand in a critical election year, when all eight statewide offices and many of the state’s 174 legislative seats are up for grabs. The 2023 commitment would far surpass the DNC’s $140,000 investment to the state party in 2019, when Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood was challenging Reeves for the governorship.
Irving was elected chairman of the party in 2020 to serve a four-year term. As of Monday morning, he had not scheduled the next meeting of the state party’s executive committee.
