What you might not have known is this: Mississippi will have more natives playing in the 2023 Super Bowl than any other state. And, as you may notice, there’s no mention of per capita there. The Magnolia State will have more players in the game than any other state. Period.
Eight native-born Mississippians dot the rosters of the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs, who will play Feb. 12 in Glendale, Ariz.
Texas, Georgia and Ohio all tie for second in representation in this year’s Super Bowl with seven players each. The figures were provided by BetMississippi.com, citing ProFootballReference.com.
What you should know about all that is this: Texas has a population of just under 30 million. Georgia and Ohio have populations of more than 11 million. Mississippi’s population is just under 3 million.
Florida, with a population of more than 22 million, has six players in the Super Bowl. The nation’s most populous state, California (over 40 million population) is next with five.
Mississippians who play for the Philadelphia Eagles include All Pro defensive tackle Fletcher Cox and running back Kenneth Gainwell, both of Yazoo City; quarterback Gardner Minshew of Brandon; wide receiver A.J. Brown of Starkville and linebacker Nakobe Dean of Horn Lake.
Mississippians who play for Kansas City include All Pro defensive tackle Chris Jones of Houston, Willie Gay of Starkville and linebacker Darius Harris of Horn Lake.
Amazingly, the towns of Horn Lake (population 28,000), Yazoo City (10,000) and Starkville (24,500) all boast two players each on football’s biggest stage.
All will follow in the footsteps of so many small-town Mississippians who have made their marks in the Super Bowl, including the likes of Jerry Rice, Walter Payton, Brett Favre, Lance Alworth, L.C. Greenwood, Kent Hull, Sammy Winder and so many more.
In addition, the Eagles’ Cameron Tom (Southern Miss by way of Baton Rouge), Quez Watkins (Southern Miss by way of Athens, Ala.) and Darius Slay (Mississippi State by way of Brunswick, Ga.) played college football in Mississippi.
Democratic candidates have filed paperwork to challenge Republican incumbents for all eight statewide offices.
The deadline to qualify to run for office in the November 2023 elections was Feb. 1. Democrats, who have suffered an ongoing string of elections losses in Mississippi, have candidates to challenge all eight Republican statewide office incumbents.
But whether the Democratic candidates, who are mostly unknown statewide, can garner the voter support and financial resources needed to run competitive campaigns remains to be seen.
Northern District Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley of Nettleton announced last month that he would challenge incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves. Pundits believe Presley is the favorite to win the Democratic primary in August and advance to the November general election. But Presley will first have to defeat Democratic primary challengers Bob Hickingbottom and Gregory Wash, both of Jackson.
Reeves is being challenged in the Republican primary by John Witcher and David Grady Hardigree. Independent Gray Gwendolyn also will be on the November general election ballot for governor.
State Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville already has announced he is challenging incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann in the Republican primary. Also entering the primary will be Tiffany Longino and Shane Quick.
D. Ryan Grover of Hattiesburg has qualified to run for lieutenant governor as a Democrat.
For attorney general, Jackson attorney Greta Martin will challenge Republican incumbent Lynn Fitch.
In other races:
Secretary of state: Democrat Shuwaski Young will challenge Republican incumbent Michael Watson.
Treasurer: Democrat Addie Green will challenge Republican incumbent David McRae.
Auditor: Democrat Larry Bradford will challenge Republican incumbent Shad White.
Insurance commissioner: Democrat Bruce Burton and Republican Mitch Young are both vying against Republican incumbent Mike Chaney.
Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce: Four Democrats — Terry Rogers ll, Bradford Hill, Robert Briggs and Bethany Hill — will compete for the right to face Republican incumbent Andy Gipson in the November general election.
Democrat De’Keither Stamps will square off in the second consecutive election with Republican incumbent Brent Bailey for the Central District Public Service Commission post. Bailey defeated Stamps, now a state House member, in 2019 in a closely contested election.
Three Republicans but no Democrats are running to replace Presley for the Northern District Public Service Commissioner: Mandy Ganasekara, Tanner Newman and Chris Brown.
Incumbent Southern District Public Service Commissioner Dane Maxwell will face Nelson Wayne Carr in the Republican primary.
For the open seat of Southern District Transportation commissioner, Republican state Rep. Charlies Busby will face independent Steven Brian Griffin in November.
And Democratic Central District Commissioner Willie Simmons will face Republican Rickey Pennington Jr.
Former University of Mississippi Chancellor Dan Jones said that Gov. Tate Reeves once told him in a meeting that he understood how Medicaid expansion would benefit the state but couldn’t agree to champion it for political reasons.
Jones, who led the state’s largest hospital, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, before he served as chancellor from 2009-2015, divulged details of the 2013 or 2014 meeting during a Thursday press conference with Democratic legislative leaders about the Republican leadership’s inaction on addressing the state’s hospital crisis.
“A little while after I began explaining the benefits of Medicaid expansion, he (Reeves) put his hand up and said, ‘Chancellor, I recognize it would be good for Mississippians, good for our economy, good for health care if we expanded Medicaid,’” Jones recalled. “I had a big smile on my face and said, ‘I’m so glad to hear you’re going to support expansion.’ His response, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to support it because it’s not in my personal political interest.’”
The revelation about Reeves’ closed-door expression to Jones directly counters the governor’s long-held public stances. Reeves, who previously spent eight years as lieutenant governor and leader of the state Senate, has defiantly opposed Medicaid expansion for more than a decade.
Even earlier this week, the governor tripled down on his opposition to expansion in a speech.
“Don’t simply cave under the pressure of Democrats and their allies in the media who are pushing for the expansion of Obamacare, welfare, and socialized medicine,” Reeves said during his annual State of the State address on Monday. “You have my word that if you stand up to the left’s push for endless government-run healthcare, I will stand with you.”
Reeves unleashed on Jones — and journalists — in a Twitter thread after stories about Jones’ claim published.
“This is obviously a lie,” Reeves tweeted on Thursday afternoon. “I’d bet I hadn’t talked to this dude since well before he was fired by Ole Miss, and I never would have said this … The liberal media will print a lie about me all day, so Democrat activists lie.”
Lawmakers, working in Jackson until early April, face growing pressure to address the state’s worsening hospital crisis. State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney warned them in December that 38 hospitals across the state are in danger of closing in the short-term because of budget concerns. Meanwhile, Mississippi has the highest percentage of uninsured residents who cannot afford health care, so hospitals often have to cover those care costs themselves.
One hospital funding solution that 39 other states — including many Republican-led states — have implemented is Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. Economists estimate Mississippi would receive more than $1 billion per year in new revenue, and hospitals would benefit directly.
Meanwhile, public sentiment for Medicaid expansion is growing. A Mississippi Today/Siena College poll conducted in early January 2023 found that 80% of Mississippians, including 70% of Republicans, support expansion.
Despite the growing popularity of the measure, Republicans who run state government have not budged. More than 15 different bills that would have expanded Medicaid — all filed by Democrats in early 2023 — died in committee earlier this week without receiving a vote or even a debate by Republican committee chairs.
Speaker of the House Philip Gunn has been in lockstep with Reeves in his opposition of expansion, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who has said in the past he is open to some version of expansion, has not made the issue a priority this session.
“The governor and the party he leads have deflected, distracted, and attempted to discredit the merits of programs that have made real, positive impacts on health outcomes in other states that have adopted them — some, even, just as red as Mississippi,” Rep. Robert Johnson, the Democratic House leader, said at the press conference on Thursday. “They’ve downplayed the severity of the crisis, not only diminishing just how dangerous the lack of access to care is becoming across our state, but ignoring the economic damage closing hospitals will cause in communities.”
In 2010, Congress adopted President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid program that allowed states to opt into to draw down large amounts of federal funding to provide health coverage for mostly poor, working people.
One year later, then-state Treasurer Tate Reeves ran for his first term as lieutenant governor, and in 2015 ran for a second term. During Reeves’ first term is when, Jones said, the meeting occurred at the chancellor’s office in the Lyceum administrative building.
Jones, during the press conference on Thursday, said he was sharing details of the Reeves meeting now because the state’s hospital crisis has reached a critical point. In calling for immediate action from legislative leaders, Jones shared three imperatives to expand Medicaid: a moral one, an economic one, and a political one.
“Shame on us, shame on us, for allowing the citizens of Mississippi to have health care problems and not have access to health care solutions … it is immoral,” Jones said. “… It’s time for us to put the pressure on leaders of our state to move past the personal political interests and consider the interests of every Mississippian who needs access to health care.”
U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Credit: Courtesy of U.S. House
Less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court desegregated public schools, U.S. Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. rose on the House floor.
A Baptist preacher in Harlem, he was one of only three Black Americans in Congress. Since getting elected to Congress a decade earlier, he had introduced many civil rights bills.
None had passed.
After introducing legislation to desegregate the armed forces, then-President Harry Truman wound up doing it through an executive order. As Powell stepped to the microphone, he chastised Congress for failing to make a difference.
He and others had introduced civil rights bills, “pleading, praying that you good ladies and gentlemen would give to this body the glory of dynamic leadership that it should have, but you have failed, and history has recorded it,” he said. “This is an hour for boldness. This is an hour when a world waits breathlessly, expectantly, almost hungrily for this Congress, the 84th Congress, through legislation to give some semblance of democracy in action. … We are derelict in our duty if we continue to plow looking backward.”
He noted that when a House committee was considering legislation to end segregation in interstate travel, Lt. Thomas Williams was arrested and jailed, even though the Supreme Court had told bus carriers to end such segregation.
“About two weeks ago, while flying a jet plane, he was killed serving his country before he had a chance to see democracy come to pass,” Powell said.
Although his push for legislation failed, his words helped inspire change. The civil rights rider he introduced eventually became part of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964, which helped change America.
Though they haven’t been given the chance to vote on it, a majority of House members want to extend health care coverage for moms on Medicaid from two months to one year, a Mississippi Today survey shows.
Mississippi Today is polling all 174 lawmakers on the issue, which health care leaders say would save countless lives across the state that consistently ranks near last for maternal mortality and last for infant mortality.
More than a voting majority in both the House and Senate — including numerous Republicans — told Mississippi Today they support extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to 12 months.
Additionally, several lawmakers who said they were still officially undecided on the issue and would not give a direct “yes” or “no” answer appeared willing to consider it.
“I’m undecided, but the reason I’m undecided is that the leadership, for whatever reason up to this point, has prevented that from being brought up so we can ask questions,” said Rep. Jay McKnight, R-Gulfport. “I have some questions both ways on it that I would like to hear the answers.”
Though the support is evident, House members may not get the chance to vote on it.
Last year, the measure overwhelmingly passed the Senate, with Republican leaders in that chamber calling it “a no-brainer.” But it was killed by Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, who continues to say he has not seen data about how it would help save lives.
Gunn remains noncommittal this year about whether he will bring the issue to a vote, and he says he wants the Mississippi Division of Medicaid to take a position. State Medicaid officials, including executive director Drew Snyder, have refused to answer questions about the topic.
Several lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats in both the House and Senate — filed bills early this year to extend the coverage to one year. If passed, it would put Mississippi on the same page as 29 other states, including most of the Southeast. Eight additional states are currently considering full extended coverage or a limited extension of coverage.
The Senate, like last year, passed a postpartum extension bill out of committee before a key Jan. 31 deadline. But a similar House bill, filed by Republican Rep. Missy McGee, died in committee on deadline day without receiving a vote.
Rep. Joey Hood, a Republican from Ackerman who chairs the House Medicaid Committee, did not convene a single meeting of his committee before the Jan. 31 deadline, so the House bill died without a vote or even debate. Hood on Wednesday refused to say whether he supported the postpartum Medicaid extension.
The Senate bill, however, is expected to pass the full Senate chamber in coming days and move to the House, where Gunn and his leadership team will decide whether to bring it up in committee.
The Senate last year passed similar measures three times, and fairly broad Republican support in that chamber remains, according to the Mississippi Today survey.
“I’m pro-life, and I think being pro-life means you take care of these mothers and children,” said Sen. Chad McMahan, a Republican from Guntown. “I have voted for it three times and I plan to do so again.”
Gunn, who exerts broad control over the House chamber and legislation that moves through it, will have to designate the Senate bill to a House committee. Gunn’s hand-picked committee chair — perhaps Hood, the House Medicaid Committee leader — will then get to decide whether to take up the bill in committee. They could choose to let the bill die on the House committee calendar without consideration, or they could take it up in committee.
If a House committee passes the Senate postpartum bill, it would then move to the House floor for consideration and debate there. House leaders, including Gunn, could again decide to let the bill die on the House calendar without debate.
Mississippi Today is polling all 174 lawmakers on a measure to extend health care coverage for moms on Medicaid from two months to one year.
Health care leaders say passing the postpartum Medicaid extension bill, as 28 other states have done and several others are considering, would save countless lives across Mississippi, which consistently ranks near last for maternal mortality and last for infant mortality.
More than a voting majority in both the House and Senate — including numerous Republicans — told Mississippi Today they support extending postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to 12 months.
Editor’s note: The House and Senate vote charts below were last updated on Feb. 1 at 5 p.m. We have spoken with most lawmakers in person as well as emailed all 174 lawmakers about the postpartum extension, but we have not yet reached all of them. We labeled those we have not yet heard from as “no response,” and we labeled those who refused to answer our question as “refused.” We will update the charts as we hear from additional lawmakers.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and other Democrats in Washington are urging President Joe Biden to send federal appointments for the U.S. Senate’s approval, regardless of prior consent from senators in the nominees’ respective states.
Biden would have to ignore a longstanding tradition called “blue slips” – forms that senators submit to the Senate Judiciary Committee to affirm they’ll vote to approve the president’s candidates for vacancies in their home state.
This matters most in states with one or more Republican senators who are withholding their blue slips, stalling Biden’s nominations from moving through confirmation.
“It’s a custom rather than anything that’s in law. So it’s really a gray area. And in this instance, people who support Democrats are getting penalized in this process,” Thompson, the only Democrat in the state’s congressional delegation, told Mississippi Today on Tuesday.
Mississippi has five federal vacancies. In the fall, Biden made nominations for four of the positions – federal judge for the Northern District, U.S. attorney for the Southern District and two U.S. marshals – but Sens. Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith did not return blue slips for any of them. Biden had to recently reissue the nominations, along with dozens more in other states, to the current Congress on Jan. 23. Biden has not made a nomination for the U.S. attorney in the Northern District.
Biden’s nominations include Scott Colom, a district attorney in north Mississippi, for the U.S. district judge in the Northern District; Todd Gee, deputy chief of the Public Integrity Section of the U.S. Department of Justice, for U.S. attorney in the Southern District; Dale Bell for U.S. marshal in the Southern District; and Michael Purnell for U.S. marshal in the Northern District.
Gee, a Vicksburg native, would oversee the office currently prosecuting the Mississippi welfare fraud case involving the misspending or theft of at least $77 million in federal funds intended to serve the poor.
Scott Colom, the district attorney for Columbus and surrounding counties Credit: 16th Circuit Court website
Colom, a Columbus resident, has been the district attorney for the 16th Judicial District, which consists of Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Noxubee and Clay counties, since 2016. He previously worked for the Mississippi Center for Justice and was a municipal court judge.
Wicker has voiced his support for Colom, but that does not appear to have hastened the confirmation process for the district attorney.
“All of a sudden, people who build a career, do what’s right in the community, exhibit leadership traits that other people can identify with, and get an opportunity to be elevated to a higher level based on the hard work that they’ve done over their careers, and politics denies them of that opportunity,” Thompson said. “And we are a better country than that.”
A spokesperson for Wicker would not say whether the senator supported Biden’s nominations, directing Mississippi Today’s questions to the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee. Hyde-Smith’s office did not return Mississippi Today’s email Tuesday.
The White House did not respond to an email Wednesday.
There is no official rule or procedure in Congress requiring the use of blue slips, Thompson said.
And there is some precedent for rejecting the custom. President Donald Trump did away with blue slips for his judicial appointments to circuit courts of appeals, the second highest courts behind the U.S. Supreme Court.
“My personal view is that the blue slip, with regard to circuit court appointments, ought to simply be a notification of how you’re going to vote, not the opportunity to blackball,” then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a 2017 interview with The New York Times.
Some Democrats are arguing that the president’s party should not use the failure of Republican senators to return blue slips as a reason to become complacent about unfilled vacancies.
“I think they (Democrats) have basically allowed the custom to get in the way of excellent people being able to serve in those prestigious positions,” Thompson said. “I think they are acquiescing to an arcane custom that, in this instance, has no basis in law to start with.”
Nationally, discussion around stalled federal appointments has focused on judicial vacancies, considering the power that these lifetime appointments hold in shaping legal precedent and influencing public policy. Currently there are 88 total judge vacancies and 41 pending nominations.
But the U.S. attorney and U.S. marshal vacancies are consequential in their own right.
Thompson backs the nomination of Gee, who previously served as lead counsel on the House Homeland Security Committee that Thompson chaired.
If confirmed, Gee will inherit Mississippi’s blockbuster welfare scandal, in which two key defendants have pleaded guilty and flipped to aid the prosecution.
But since the initial arrests in 2020, federal authorities have not criminally charged any additional people. Sources close to the probe have questioned whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office is likely to take the step of charging new figures in the case before gaining a permanent leader.
And yet, when asked about the welfare investigation, Wicker told WLOX in August, “It’s not something I can have any effect on in Washington.”
“This is a state matter,” Wicker said in the WLOX report, which was following Mississippi Today’s reporting about Gov. Tate Reeves’ connections to welfare purchases targeted in ongoing civil litigation. “It’s just not something that I’m really qualified to talk about.”
Last year, Thompson wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, following the revelations in Mississippi Today’s series “The Backchannel,” urging federal authorities to investigate former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in welfare misspending.
“The Backchannel” revealed for the first time that welfare payments made to former NFL quarterback Brett Favre’s pharmaceutical company Prevacus – the Florida company at the center of the initial criminal indictment – were made in plain sight of Bryant, and that Bryant even agreed to accept stock in the company after leaving office.
While the 2020 charges by Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens described illegal activity regarding investments into the drug company, officials concealed information about Bryant’s involvement from the public until Mississippi Today published private text messages between Bryant, Favre and the founder of Prevacus last April.
“The fact that 100% of the TANF monies involved were federal monies means that the U.S. Attorney’s Office should have been aggressively prosecuting those individuals. And that has not been the case,” Thompson said. “They have actually deferred to the state office to handle federal prosecutions. And there’s a question as to whether or not Hinds County has the resources to pursue all of the areas necessary in that suit. I’m convinced that the investment of those TANF monies that went into the Florida drug company really need to be pursued. But you’ve got to have the staff on board or the reach, like a U.S. attorney’s office in Florida, to pass it off with the FBI and others to investigate it and bring it back. I’m just not certain that a local district attorney’s office has the reach or the finances … to give it what it needs.”
While the local district attorney’s office is still a partner in the ongoing investigation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District is the lead prosecutor. It is the office that most recently secured a guilty plea on new federal charges against the former welfare director, John Davis, in September.
But more than two years into Biden’s administration, the office still lacks a permanent leader at its helm.
“It means that the single largest criminal action that occurred in our state is being haphazardly pursued in a manner that all the people who are guilty and involved, potentially, will never get brought to trial, because of that lack of leadership in the Southern District office,” Thompson said.
“Look, if we can prosecute single women in Mississippi for food stamp fraud, surely we can prosecute everybody involved in a multimillion dollar scam of federal funds,” he added.
Legislation to revive Mississippi’s ballot initiative process was kept alive when it was passed out of committee late Tuesday, a key deadline day.
But the proposal as written does not appear to allow voters to completely circumvent the legislative process, as is generally the goal of initiatives. It simply lets voters make suggestions to legislators, who can later choose to alter the wishes of voters.
The proposal includes confusing language that seems to say the Legislature, by a two-thirds vote, could amend the proposal that was placed on the ballot.
“We (legislators) are still the gatekeeper?” asked Sen. Angela Turner Ford, D-West Point, of the proposal.
The author of the bill Sen. Tyler McCaughn, R-Newton, said under the proposal the Legislature would, indeed, be the gatekeeper.
Turner Ford continued: “What is the purpose of having an initiative process… if we can reject” the proposals offered by citizens.
“The whole point of the initiative process is to get around the Legislature,” said Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson.
McCaughn said he understands the concerns expressed by Turner Ford and Blount and said he is willing to work with them to improve the bill as it moves through the process.
He said the key was to pass something out of committee on Tuesday, which was the deadline to pass bills out of committee in the chamber where they originated.
“I think we are to a point where we have to do something,” said McCaughn, adding voters want an initiative process. “This is a starting point.”
Blount said the proposal “needs a lot of work” as it moves through the process.
The bill then passed out of the Senate Accountability, Efficiency, Transparency Committee, which is the committee where Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann sent the proposal instead of the more traditional Constitution Committee.
The Mississippi Supreme Court struck down the state’s ballot initiative process in 2021 because it mandated the number of signatures be gathered equally among five congressional districts as they existed in 1990. The state, though, has only four districts, losing one as a result of the 2000 census.
After the 2021 Supreme Court ruling, most of the state’s political leadership, including Hosemann and Speaker Philip Gunn, said the Legislature would fix and revive the process.
But in the 2022 session, the proposal died when Hosemann and Accountability Chair John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, wanted to more than double the number of signatures needed to place an issue on the ballot. Under the old initiative process that was struck down by the court, it required the signatures of 12% of the voters from the last gubernatorial election, or about 100,000 signatures, to place an issue on the ballot. The Senate leaders had supported requiring about 240,000 signatures be gathered to place an issue on the ballot.
The proposal passed out of committee on Tuesday would require gathering signatures of 12% of all registered voters, or about 240,000 voters.
“This should not be an easy threshold for them to make,” said Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, of increasing the number of signatures needed to place an issue on the ballot.
The legislation also required at least 100 signatures of registered votes from each of the 82 counties and 10 signatures each from the about 300 municipalities. Blount pointed out there are municipalities in the state that have 50 residents or fewer and might not have 10 registered voters.
Blount asked why some legislators appear to be so fearful of the initiative process.
Blount said the old process was in effect for more than 30 years and “it was not out of control.” During that time, seven initiatives made the ballot and three of those were approved by voters.
House Constitution Chair Fred Shanks, R-Brandon, did not pass a House proposal by Tuesday’s deadline. He said he had been working with the Senate leadership and was certain an initiative proposal would come out of the Senate to be considered by the House. But the proposal, as it stands now, would not meet the criteria of what the House supported last year.
Golf has been described as a good walk spoiled, but the sport has meant much, much more to Children’s of Mississippi, the state’s only children’s hospital.
The Sanderson Farms Championship, Mississippi’s only tournament on the PGA Tour, Tuesday presented a $1 million check to Friends of Children’s Hospital from proceeds from the 2022 tournament last fall. Tuesday’s donation brings to $15.7 million the total the golf event has raised for the hospital since Sanderson Farms, now Wayne-Sanderson Farms, became the tournament’s title sponsor in 2013. Century Club Charities, the host organization for Mississippi’s PGA tournament, has raised more than $23 million for statewide charities since 1994.
Children’s of Mississippi, which also includes clinics around the state, treats more than 200,000 children annually. The donation was announced at a news conference at the Kathy and Joe Sanderson Tower on the campus of the University of Mississippi Medical Center.
The 2023 Sanderson Farms Championship will be held Oct. 2-8 at Country Club of Jackson.
Jackson and Hinds County community members, elected officials, pastors and advocacy groups hope to stop legislation that would expand the boundaries of the Capitol Police and create a court system within the force’s district.
Opponents of House Bill 1020 say it is an unprecedented attempt to strip power away from the city of Jackson, which has one of the largest Black populations in Mississippi. They say the bill is racist and it implies that Black leadership is incapable of governance.
“We get to put all the action in someone else’s hands and pay the taxes to the king,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said during a Tuesday press conference on the Capitol steps.
The bill, proposed by Rep. Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, has passed through the Ways and Means Committee and is up for consideration by the full House.
Speakers at the news conference said they are against the existence and expansion of the Capitol Police, which was involved in several shootings last year that led to injuries or deaths, including the death of 25-year-old Jaylen Lewis, who died after a traffic stop by a Capitol Police officer.
The current boundaries of the Capitol Complex Improvement District where the Capitol Police operates include downtown, Jackson State University, the University of Mississippi Medical Center, Fondren and Belhaven. HB 1020 would push the district north.
The district started out as a way to provide funding for infrastructure in the Capitol area. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Legislature used federal relief funds to create a patrol fleet for the Capitol Police and have four appointed judges help address case backlogs within the Hinds County Circuit Court, said Attorney Paloma Wu from the Mississippi Center for Justice.
She said this set the stage for HB 1020. The bill proposes creating a court system for the district with judges appointed by the Mississippi Supreme Court chief justice and prosecutors appointed by the state attorney general. The chief of the Capitol Police District would also be appointed by the Department of Public Safety commissioner.
“It impacts you whether you live within the red line or the blue line,” Wu said about how the district court system would cover not just people living in the district, but around Hinds County.
Wu said the power of over 200,000 Hinds County residents would be placed in the hands of one person – Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Randolph. He did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Opponents also said the bill will empower a slate of all white and unelected officials for Hinds County.
The entire Hinds County Democratic delegation and Mississippi Senate Democratic Caucus are against the bill, according to statements from the groups.
The county’s circuit, chancery, county and justice court judges released a statement Monday evening calling the bill unconstitutional and one that would disenfranchise the county’s voters and remove power from elected judges.
“House Bill 1020 removes authority of the Circuit, Chancery, County and Justice Court judges from hearing and presiding over cases within the proposed Capital Improvement District and takes the constitutional power of elected judges and gives it to Judges appointed by the Supreme Court,.” according to the statement.
On Tuesday on the steps of the Hinds county Courthouse, the judges flanked Senior Circuit Judge Winston Kidd. He said the residents of every judicial district elect their judges, but HB 1020 would make Hinds County the exception.
Kidd said if the Legislature wants to add more judges, it should add ones that are elected.
HB 1020 also proposes sending 18.75% of sales tax that would otherwise go to Jackson to a Capitol Complex Improvement District project fund.
At the Capitol news conference, several speakers said what could happen with the legislation is similar to what happened in the 1800’s when lawmakers sought to disenfranchise Black residents.
Rep. Edward Blackmon Jr., D-Canton, evoked the names of Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers as people who fought for the right of Black people to vote.
“We are united in our effort and our voice to stop this atrocity because if you don’t do it now, you’ll be marching tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll be marching for what we’ve won, what our forefathers and grandmothers and granddaddies fought for for so many years and gave up their blood and tears. You’ll be letting down their effort.”
