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William Brown and Millard Bingham, standing with their arms crossed, are waiting in a hallway of classrooms for the executive session to end, hoping it’ll bring some information about who is going to be the next president of Jackson State University. 

But Brown and Bingham know it probably won’t. At least not today.  

The two professors have waited many times before. In their two decades of teaching at Jackson State, they’ve seen four permanent presidents come and go from the historically Black university. And each time, they’ve watched as the search process used by the university’s governing board, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees, has become more and more secretive — to the point that now, transparency “just seems like an unattainable dream,” Bingham said. 

“It feels like the fix is in, to be honest with you,” he added.

“Well, I can tell you that God is not pleased,” Brown stated. “It’s sort of like we’re in the dark ages.” 

One thing is certain: Acting president Elayne Hayes-Anthony is not a finalist for the position, she confirmed to Mississippi Today. 

About an hour earlier, at 8:30 a.m., with two sharp bursts of a gavel, Steven Cunningham, the only Jackson State alumnus on the IHL board and the trustee chairing the search, brought the special-called meeting to order in a small conference room packed with people at the University of Mississippi’s School of Pharmacy, a few miles away from the board’s usual meeting place. 

Sitting at the table with Cunningham were two other trustees, the commissioner and William Kibler, a consultant for Academic Search, the executive headhunting firm that IHL had contracted, who had a white binder closed in front of him. 

“Thank you trustees for taking the time to participate in this very important meeting,” Cunningham said, reading a printed statement. 

Then he made a motion for executive session, which passed. 

“If you’re not an IHL trustee, you’re welcome to wait in the lobby or in one of the classrooms in the adjacent hallway,” Cunningham read. 

With that, about 15 members of the public were shepherded from the room as seven security guards watched. Uncomfortable with the guards, some people left. 

Behind them, Glynn Babb, an emergency and safety officer for IHL, and a UMMC security guard shut the conference room door and, for good measure, automatically locked the double-doors that lead to the hallway, the windows taped-up with paper. 

“So they don’t get pictures of them coming in and out,” Babb told the guard before requesting members of the public to move away from the doors.  

“It’s the secrecy,” he tells a reporter. “Not really protection.” 

“Glynn’s not authorized,” interjected Kim Gallaspy, a spokesperson for IHL.

A few feet away, Dawn McLin, a Jackson State professor and the faculty senate president, stood off to the side. She had come hoping to ask Cunningham and the IHL commissioner, Al Rankins, a few questions. Namely, she wanted to know why they had not responded to her repeated emails asking for basic information about the presidential search, such as a rough timeline, which she did not see until Mississippi Today published it. 

Even though she was a member of IHL’s search advisory committee, IHL had not provided McLin with any notable information about the search. 

But they had asked her and other advisory committee members not to talk to the media. 

“They said we should all be speaking in one voice, but it’s concerning when that one voice isn’t giving all of us information about the search process,” she said.  

If there were one thing she could tell IHL, McLin said, it would be in line with the title of a book about corporate management called “Absolute Honesty” that, if given the opportunity to comment, she had planned to read. 

She had also hoped to express her support for Hayes-Anthony.

“This feels like we have a pilot that you all put on this seat to fly this plane and now halfway to our destination you’ve told this pilot to eject,” she said. “What measures are you putting in place for those on the plane to keep us from crashing? You’re getting some stability but it’s like everyone has to hold their breath. You know you can’t hold your breath waiting forever.” 

Without more transparency, McLin said she feels like IHL is setting up the next president of Jackson State for failure. She doesn’t want a repeat of William Bynum Jr., whom IHL appointed president even though he was not initially a finalist, or Thomas Hudson, who resigned for reasons that still have not been shared with the public. Bynum, who was hired from Mississippi Valley State University, resigned in 2020 after he was arrested in a prostitution sting.

“Their past appointments have shown you their results,” she said. “The proof is in the pudding.”

Other attendees were just as disappointed. Monica Wilson, a Jackson State graduate, thought she’d pop over to the meeting — but she was quickly disabused of that notion. 

“My surprise was it was such a small room,” she said. “I’m not even in the room. I’m at the door looking in. That told me this is not going to be for the public.” 

By the time Nike Irving and her husband, Shelton Pittman, had arrived at the meeting around 8:45 a.m., the trustees were already in executive session. They had rushed over after dropping their son off at school. But when they arrived, security guards directed them to a classroom down the hall. Irving, who has a master’s degree from Jackson State, expected one of the TVs to turn on with a broadcast of the meeting. 

But it never did. 

“I just want to know what they plan to do for the university,” Irving said. 

On a whiteboard, Pittman, a military veteran who graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi, wrote out his thoughts on IHL’s search process, which he referred to as “foolishness.” 

“At this particular moment,” Pittman said, “I don’t think IHL nor the kids and young adults can withstand—” 

“Another person quitting on them,” Irving concluded. 

When they left, the doors to the School of Pharmacy building locked behind them.

Five-and-half hours after closing the doors, trustees emerged. Cunningham said they took no action.

Cunningham couldn’t say if every finalist has a doctoral degree — which the search profile stated was preferred but not required — and wouldn’t say how many finalist there were. He added that he didn’t know how the community was coming up with rumors.

“Nature abhors a vacuum,” he said.

The post JSU waits for news from IHL as trustees interview finalists behind locked doors appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Former NFL quarterback Brett Favre’s deposition in the ongoing welfare fraud civil litigation has been postponed until December.

Days after local and national news outlets reported that Mississippi Department of Human Services had scheduled the time and place for Favre to give sworn testimony in the case, both parties agreed to push the date from Oct. 26 to Dec. 11.

The initial date would have meant that the face-to-face Favre inquiry, a national media event, would have taken place just days before a heated gubernatorial race, for which the welfare scandal has emerged as a centerpiece.

But both Favre and Mississippi Department of Human Services, the state agency suing him and 46 others, requested that the testimony transcript be held confidential, at least initially.

The latest notice, filed Friday, does not name a location for the planned deposition.

READ MORE: Welfare agency set to depose Brett Favre, but both want to conceal transcripts

The post Brett Favre testimony in welfare case postponed until December appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Hundreds of capital city residents attended a community meeting Monday night to discuss the proposed consolidation plan for Jackson Public Schools, with nearly every speaker asking district officials to save Wingfield High School.

Last week, JPS district leadership introduced a plan to close 16 school buildings because of declining enrollment in the district. The district has lost around 9,500 students between the 2015-16 and 2023-24 school years, about a third of the district population. The district has also previously consolidated schools.

District leaders hosted the first of four community meetings Monday night at Forest Hill High School, where about 20 people spoke to share concerns about the school consolidation plan. At various points during the meeting, attendees applauded and reacted enthusiastically to statements made about saving the schools on the proposed closure list.

Samaya Johnson, a current student at Wingfield, spoke about the positive experience she’s had at the school and asked the district to not take it away.

“Y’all are talking about money and everything else but you’re not going off of how your students feel,” Johnson said. “You’re not just tearing down a school, you’re breaking up a family.” 

Errick Greene, the superintendent of Jackson Public Schools, shared additional financial data Monday night, which showed the district had lost $107.7 million over that same nine-year period because of enrollment decline and payments to charter schools. The new plan would be expected to save around $18 million annually.

Greene told Mississippi Today that schools were identified for closure or consolidation based on enrollment declines being steeper in some areas, estimated costs to address facility issues, and related impacts on feeder patterns. He emphasized the academic performance of schools was not a factor in the process.

The following buildings are on the proposed closure list: 

• Clausell Elementary School
• Dawson Elementary School
• G. N. Smith Elementary School
• Green Elementary School
• Key Elementary School
• Lake Elementary School
• Lester Elementary School
• Oak Forest Elementary School
• Obama IB Elementary
• Raines Elementary School
• Shirley Elementary School
• Sykes Elementary School
• Wells APAC Elementary
• Chastain Middle School
• Whitten Middle School
• Wingfield High School

After an overview of the proposed plan from Greene, students, parents, staff and community members asked questions and offered comments for over an hour, with several people emphasizing the social toll these changes will have on the community. 

About 30 Wingfield students were in attendance Monday night, with several more offering testimonials of the support they have received from teachers, the positive experience of the athletic programs, and their concern they may lose class rankings and opportunities for scholarships if merged with another school. 

The impact of merging rival high schools was a repeated concern, with some students saying attendance would become an issue if students were forced to attend rival Forest Hill or Jim Hill. 

“The merger of these scholars … will definitely increase violence and it will affect their education,” said Valencia White, an alumnus of Wingfield.

She listed recent incidents between students of the schools, suggesting that JPS instead merge Whitten Middle School into the Wingfield building, similar to the approach taken at Lanier High School. 

Greene responded to the concern about rivalries. “I resent and resist that language that says our scholars cannot get along,” he said.

After being met with grumbles from the audience, he continued. 

“We can agree to disagree on this point, but I do want to strongly urge you to think about what we’re saying about our children, children who live in our city, and the implications of this assertion that it cannot work.”

He continued that it will take work and changes to help students make the shift, but that he does believe it is possible. 

Multiple people also asked about plans from the district to stem the declining enrollment and prevent future closures. Greene said the city and state are also declining in population, making it likely JPS will continue to lose students, but it is unclear at what rate. He said he wants to be a part of making Jackson successful and highlighted the improved performance of the school district in recent years, which he hopes will attract more people to the area.

READ MORE: Jackson schools, on verge of state takeover just 5 years ago, earns ‘C’ rating

“At some point, the investments that are starting to be made and needing to be made in the city, as well as the investments we’re making, as well as our increased performance, will catch fire,” he said. 

Other people pointed out the majority of the schools on the consolidation list are located in south Jackson, saying it will further harm conditions in the neighborhood if more schools are closed. 

After the meeting adjourned, JPS leadership said they were pleased by the turnout and engagement from students.

“I was very, very excited to see the amount of support that came out for their schools, especially the students and the teachers and the coaches,” said Cynthia Thompson, JPS board member for Ward 6. “To hear that kind of support makes us really think about what we have to do, but what I am hoping we were able to convey is that something has to be done.”

Greene said he appreciated specific questions about data, which the district will be publishing answers to in a FAQ document. He said that as the district hosts the three remaining community meetings, leadership will be looking for trends in the feedback to make adjustments. 

“There’s some (room for change), but they’re tradeoffs,” he said. “At the end of the day, I can’t name a building that doesn’t require some level of investment.” 

Greene asked community members to continue looking at the data the district shared as they continue to gather feedback at the additional community meetings, which are Oct. 30 at Callaway High School, Nov. 6 at Provine High School, and Nov. 14 at Murrah High School.

“This is nothing that I wanted to bring. I really hate that we are in a position where this is even a conversation because it drums up so much emotion and angst, but this is a real issue that we simply can’t ignore,” he said. “Most of the folks here … have had experiences in our buildings that are not so great in terms of HVAC failing or water pressure or restrooms that don’t work. We sometimes have short memories about those things.”

The post ‘You’re breaking up a family’: Hundreds attend community meeting about proposed Jackson school closures appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Last month, Charles Young told a prison guard he needed medical attention not long after he first saw bright blood in his urine. 

It was a day before a nurse treated him, took a urine sample and concluded that he had a urinary tract infection. Young said she gave him two shots for the pain and antibiotics and sent him back to his cell at the South Mississippi Correctional Institute in Leakesville with some antibiotic pills, which tend to clear up symptoms within a few days. 

But as the week went by, he felt pain in his abdomen and lower back and could barely eat or drink. Six days later, he was taken to the nearby Greene County Hospital, where Young said a doctor in the emergency department told him he needed to be seen by a specialist and that his condition was serious. 

It’s been more than three weeks since that hospital visit. The first time he saw a doctor at the prison was Oct. 3 – after Mississippi Today and an advocacy group began reaching out to the prison and Mississippi Department of Corrections asking questions about his lack of care. He said he underwent a procedure where a catheter was inserted, but he has not been given the results or any updates since.

Officials told him after the hospital visit an appointment with a urologist has been made, but Young said the doctor he saw last week told him it was unlikely he would see the specialist because of “transportation issues.”

 “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Young said by phone last week.

While the blood in his urine has subsided, he still has terrible stomach pain, little to no appetite and irregular bowel movements, he said. 

Federal health privacy laws prevent the Department of Corrections from commenting directly on Young’s medical case. But more broadly, VitalCore Health Strategies, the state’s contracted medical provider since 2020, provides care to more than 19,000 people in the prison system. 

“VitalCore provides primary care services on site,” Mississippi Medical Director Dr. Raman Singh said in a statement. “When a patient needs a higher level of care, VitalCore medical staff take those patients to the specialty clinics and hospitals in the area.”

“With these arrangements, we ensure that our patients have the same level of access to specialist care as other Mississippians.”

An ongoing lawsuit filed by Disability Rights Mississippi in 2021 suggests otherwise. The advocacy group filed the federal lawsuit against VitalCore, the department and Commissioner Burl Cain on behalf of 31 incarcerated men and women across the state’s prisons, including South Mississippi Correctional. 

The lawsuit alleges the defendants don’t provide treatment, medication and medical equipment for those in custody. Incarcerated people experienced worsened health conditions or death from ignored or refused calls for treatment and delayed outside appointments and follow up exams, the complaint says.  

The lawsuit highlighted dozens of situations, including a delayed diagnosis that led to the death of a woman at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl. Similar to Young, she made several sick calls about her symptoms, including blood in her urine, and complained of shortness of breath and passed out the week she died, according to the lawsuit. 

A MDOC spokesperson declined to comment because the lawsuit is ongoing. In court records, the department and VitalCore denied most of the allegations. 

Disability Rights Mississippi has gotten involved on behalf of Young, though Communications Director Jane Walton said she can’t comment on his situation specifically.

Walton said because of the nonprofit’s status as a protection advocacy agency, it has unique access to places many people don’t, including prisons. When the group began looking into how disabled people were being treated in Mississippi prisons, it found “egregious” violations and instances where incarcerated people – both with and without disabilities – went without basic medical, mental health and hygiene care. 

The lawsuit is in the “class certification” stage, where attorneys must demonstrate certain facts to obtain class action status. These include demonstrating that the plaintiffs have been harmed in similar ways and the class is appropriately defined. 

This phase of the lawsuit will likely continue into 2024, Walton said.

Sick calls were often ignored due to lack of staff, the lawsuit alleges. The first time Young needed to see a medical professional about his condition, he was told to come back the next day because there was not one available. 

Three doctors, three nurse practitioners, 18 registered nurses and 12 licensed nurse practitioners who exclusively cover South Mississippi Correctional, according to VitalCore and MDOC. 

In the two years since the lawsuit has been active, two of the plaintiffs have died, according to court records. 

Although Young is no longer seeing blood in his urine, he knows he isn’t entirely better. The pain, weakness and shaking he is still feeling can be connected to an infection in the kidney and bladder. 

The 30-year-old said he’s never had a health condition like the one he’s experiencing. He said cancer doesn’t run in his family, but there is no way to rule out the disease until he gets further treatment. Continued blood in the urine and pain can be symptoms of kidney or bladder cancer. 

Young said the visit to the outside hospital felt like a ray of hope. 

“It felt great to actually know there was a deeper issue wrong with me, and they were trying to get me to proper medical care,” he said. 

Greg Havard, CEO of the George Regional Health System, could not comment on Young’s medical case, but said the hospital doesn’t see many patients from the Leakesville prison. 

Greene County Regional is able to treat urinary tract infections and bladder conditions, including by using a CT scan and running lab work to make a diagnosis, he said. For more specialized treatment, the hospital refers patients – incarcerated or not – to specialists. 

Singh, of VitalCore, said when a patient needs a higher level of care, medical staff take them to specialty clinics and hospitals in the area. For those at South Mississippi Correctional, they would be taken to medical facilities in the Hattiesburg area, which is about 50 miles from the prison. It’s unclear why Young was taken to the small Leakesville hospital. 

For more complex conditions, VitalCore sends people to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. 

Not long after Young started having symptoms, his family began calling the prison to talk with wardens, nurses and other medical staff. Kathy Williams, Young’s aunt, even traveled from Washington to Mississippi to try and help her nephew get medical care. 

Officials wouldn’t answer or share information about Young’s condition and treatment with her or other family members due to medical privacy laws, she said. Young said he didn’t know how to provide permission to allow the prison to disclose his health information. 

Young has been at South Mississippi Correctional since 2019. He was sentenced to 20 years for manslaughter and aggravated assault and a five-year enhanced penalty of cocaine possession.

Though prison records list a 2033 tentative release date, Young said he has earned time off his sentence to be released in three years. He said he did that by enrolling in educational and skills programs as well as having jobs in the prison. 

In his free time, he reads the Bible, prays and preaches, but with his recent health condition, he hasn’t been able to do that as much. 

Young’s recent medical and safety concerns have renewed his family’s efforts to get him transferred to a regional facility closer to home. South Mississippi Correctional is hundreds of miles away from Greenville, where Young is from. 

Williams said her nephew was told he needed to get medical treatment before being moved because the regional facility likely wouldn’t pay for it. So she, other family members and Young’s 

girlfriend are begging for him to be seen by a specialist outside of the prison. 

“I just never would have thought the prison system was like this,” said Williams, who is a health care worker.

The post Outside doctor told an inmate he needed to see a specialist, but MDOC medical provider has yet to get him to one appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Oct. 10, 1871

Octavius Catto, a 32-year-old educator and civil rights activist who had pushed for Black Americans to be treated as equal citizens, was assassinated during an election day uprising in Philadelphia, which had the nation’s largest population of free African Americans. 

Born free in Charleston, South Carolina, he moved north with his family, where he became an educator, minister, activist and athlete. 

When the Civil War came, he recruited Black soldiers for the Union Army. After the war ended, he fought for the desegregation of Philadelphia’s trolley cars. He played a role in the passage of a bill that barred segregation on transit systems. A conductor’s refusal to admit Catto’s fiancée to a streetcar helped bring about the new law. 

On election day, a mob of white thugs roamed the community, attacking Black residents who tried to vote. One of those men, Frank Kelly, confronted Catto, shooting him in the heart. Kelly escaped, but was arrested and returned to trial, where an all-white, all-male jury acquitted him. 

Catto’s headstone remembers him as “the forgotten hero.” The city of Philadelphia has erected a monument in his honor outside the city hall. It was the first public monument in the city to honor a specific Black American.

The post On this day in 1871 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The outgoing leader of the legislative committee responsible for criminal justice issues plans to hold a hearing Thursday on how Mississippi provides constitutionally required legal services to poor people accused of a crime.

House Judiciary B Chairman Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth, said on Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast on Sept. 25 that the hearing this week will center on reforming the state’s disjointed public defense system. 

“We lag behind in public defense, indigent defense in Mississippi,” Bain said. “We don’t have a uniform system all over the state. That is as much of a constitutional right as your right to bear arms, your freedom of speech or your right to the press.”

Recent reporting from ProPublica, The Marshall Project and the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal shows that Mississippi’s indigent defense network is disjointed with no uniform system in place. 

“In other states, any discussion of policy change takes place at one or two systems,” David Carroll, director of the Sixth Amendment Center, told the news outlets. “There are nearly 500 indigent defense systems in Mississippi.”

Mississippi is one of only a handful of states without direct state oversight of public defense. Instead, local governments bear almost all the responsibility of providing poor criminal defendants with an attorney, as guaranteed by the Constitution.

In many counties, defendants aren’t appointed new lawyers until they’re indicted, a process that can take years. And by the time defendants receive a court-appointed attorney, so much time has passed that the lawyer is unable to locate crucial witnesses or evidence that could exonerate them. 

To combat these deficiencies, Bain believes the state needs a public defense organization with counties grouped together into districts that parallel how state prosecutors, called district attorneys, function. 

Numerous task forces dating back to 1995 have highlighted the state’s fractured system that leaves defendants in jail for long periods of time without an attorney. But state leaders haven’t done much to change the system.

Bain, a part-time public defender, believes counties and cities are hesitant to spend a significant portion of resources on public defense because of a “tough on crime” mentality in Mississippi that makes public officials queasy about spending tax dollars on people accused of committing serious offenses. 

However, the three-term lawmaker argues if local and state governments provide more money to indigent defense, it can save them more money in the long run. 

“It’s beneficial to your cities and your counties to do this,” Bain said. “For whatever cost it may have, it certainly outweighs, I think, liability down the road. Not to mention, it’s the humane thing to do, to help these people.” 

But even with an upcoming hearing, there’s no guarantee that Bain’s dream will ever become reality anytime soon. The Alcorn County lawmaker recently lost his reelection bid when his Republican challenger defeated him by around 26 votes in a runoff race. 

READ MORE: House chairman Nick Bain loses by 26 votes, becoming seventh incumbent legislator defeated

When lawmakers convene at the state Capitol in January for their 2024 regular session, presumptive Speaker Jason White will appoint new House members to lead the chamber’s legislative committees, including the Judiciary B Committee. 

Whoever becomes the new leader of the committee Bain currently leads will help determine the future of the notoriously fractured defense system.

The post Outgoing House leader to hold hearing about state public defense system reforms appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In this edition of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down fellow editorial cartoonist, Scott Stantis. Stantis, the editorial cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, lives in Birmingham, Ala. and was once the cartoonist for the (Memphis) Commercial Appeal and the Birmingham News.

He and Ramsey talk about what makes cartooning in the South so special, their careers, and what it is like to obtain a dream only to experience the demise of the editorial cartooning profession.

The post Mississippi Stories: Scott Stantis appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: A Good Sign appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves’ campaign on Friday aired a new TV ad accusing Brandon Presley, his Democratic opponent, of illegally accepting money from leaders in solar energy companies. 

“Here’s Presley’s signature approving a solar energy plant,” a narrator on the Reeves ad says. “Here’s the solar businessman who funds Brandon’s campaign. Check after check, thousands of dollars, breaking the law.” 

Presley is currently north Mississippi’s representative on the three-member Public Service Commissioner, which is responsible for regulating public utilities in the state. 

The basis for Reeves’ allegations stems from a state law enacted to ensure ethical regulatory practices forbidding commissioners from accepting donations from public utilities they oversee.

Presley strongly denied the Reeves campaign’s accusation, telling Mississippi Today at an event in Jackson Friday morning that every campaign contribution his campaign has accepted has been “completely legal.”

“He’s the only candidate in this race that’s funding his campaign off of money from people that are going to jail for stealing dollars in the welfare scandal,” Presley said of Reeves. “This is typical for someone as corrupt as Tate Reeves.”

Presley is referring to Reeves accepting donations from Nancy and Zach New, two people who have pleaded guilty in connection to Mississippi’s welfare scandal where state officials have said millions of dollars meant for the state’s poorest citizens were unlawfully squandered. 

Reeves accepted the donations from the News before they were accused of a crime, but after the allegations against them surfaced, the first-term governor said he donate the contributions to a charity.

The Republican governor, however, did not give away the money and told media outlets earlier this year that he would donate them after the civil and criminal trials against them had concluded, a process which could take years. 

The Presley campaign in a press release also said that a document in the Friday ad that accused the Democratic candidate of wrongdoing was actually property code violation for a Florida address that’s been altered to appear as a campaign finance violation.

Voters will choose to vote for either Reeves or Presley in the general election on Nov. 7. 

The post New Tate Reeves ad accuses Brandon Presley of accepting illegal campaign contributions appeared first on Mississippi Today.

There appears to be much political jackassery afoot in the candidate haggling over debate(s) in the Mississippi gubernatorial race.

At this point, just weeks away from the Nov. 7 general election, it’s still unclear whether Mississippi voters will be treated to such a televised debate. In the meantime, they can enjoy some childish fear and loathing about it from the candidates and campaigns on social media.

Here’s the deal:

Incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves doesn’t want to debate. This makes sense, politically. When you’re a well-known incumbent sitting on a lead and a pile of cash, facing a lesser-known and funded challenger, conventional wisdom is you have little to gain and much to lose from debates.

Plus, Reeves himself has said that extemporaneous speaking and charming a live audience is not his strong suit. He’s right.

Presley, on the other hand, really wants to debate. This makes sense. He needs the exposure.

Plus, Presley is an excellent orator, silver tongued, has the gift of gab. Compared to Reeves, he’s a regular Daniel Webster. Many politicos figure he’ll mop the floor with Reeves in a debate.

Ergo, Presley has been calling for debates for months, vowing to spar with Reeves “any time, anywhere” and agreeing to any debate requests he’s gotten. He’s accepted five invites to date. These include invites from WJTV and Gray TV stations — outlets with wide reach across the state.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves, challenger Brandon Presley continue to debate over debates

Reeves had ducked the invites, and when pressed said he was busy and his campaign was working on it. Presley’s campaign made much political hay of this, saying Reeves was scared to debate or answer questions in front of Mississippians at-large. Presley’s campaign even ran an ad with a tracker and bloodhounds looking for Reeves, a la Sen. Mitch McConnell’s famous ads from the 1980s.

Facing these slings and arrows, plus the fact that Mississippi voters expect gubernatorial candidates to debate, Reeves had to do something. He recently told media his campaign was working with Presley’s campaign on debates — plural. Presley’s campaign promptly responded that this was a lie.

Then on Wednesday, T-minus 34 days until the election, Reeves announced he had accepted a debate invite, from Jackson television station WAPT, for a debate on Nov. 1 — just six days before the election.

Now, this appears to be a rope-a-dope move by the Reeves campaign. It appears likely his campaign invited itself to a debate with WAPT without any consultation of the Presley campaign.

Normally setting up a debate in a major race involves weeks of negotiations and agreeing to ground rules between the host and the competing campaigns. And most debates are held further out than six days from an election. That compressed timing would make it impossible for any candidate who mopped up in a debate to make political hay of it, or for voters to digest it and use it in choosing.

And the debate Reeves agreed to is, oddly, with the Jackson station with the smallest reach, lacking affiliates to broadcast the debates statewide. If only that station airs it, it would not be broadcast live in numerous key election battleground areas of the state.

This all raises some questions of whether WAPT practiced parity in formulating this debate, or worked with the Reeves campaign on organizing the event before even inviting Presley.

This prompted Presley to vow that he’s going to go ’round the state and have the five debates he agreed to, even without Reeves. He said he’ll bring an empty chair to stand in for the governor.

Now, as compelling as this would be to watch, it’s doubtful the media outlets would schedule valuable air time for Presley to argue with a chair.

And while Reeves’ desire to hold off on a debate until just days before the election and limit its reach seems absurd, Presley has gone around for months saying he’d debate Reeves anywhere, any time. He’s sort of backed himself into a corner on agreeing to whatever Reeves and WAPT cook up. The Reeves camp has already been chiding Presley on social media for wavering on whether he’ll do the said ridiculous last-minute debate.

One would think Mississippi voters deserve better than all this, and deserve to see candidates debate and answer questions. It remains to be seen if — and when — that will happen. Until then, it appears the political jackassery over debates will continue.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves says he’ll have ‘debates’ with challenger Brandon Presley

The post Mississippians deserve timely gubernatorial debate, not fear and loathing appeared first on Mississippi Today.