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Republican Michael Cassidy’s $48 trillion social spending platform

It’s not the ambitious social spending platform of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

But little-known Republican Michael Cassidy, who forced a runoff with incumbent U.S. Rep. Michael Guest in one of the nation’s most conservative districts, proposed social spending programs would cost taxpayers at least $48 trillion over 10 years, according to a Mississippi Today analysis.

Among Cassidy’s ideas are Medicare for All, stipends for married couples, and universal basic income for families with children.

Cassidy, a Naval reserve pilot whose campaign slogan is “America First for Congress,” garnered 48% of the vote in Tuesday’s Republican primary, while Guest received 47%. Thomas Griffin earned just 5% of the vote. Because no candidate reached 50%, Cassidy and Guest will duke it out in a June 28 runoff.

A Mississippi Today analysis of several ideas Cassidy proposed on his campaign website shows that his platform — focused on social spending — would cost taxpayers at least $48 trillion over 10 years.

On Wednesday, after several people posted to social media about some of the ideas listed on his website, Cassidy removed them from his site. But Mississippi Today saved an earlier version of the website that was publicly available to voters ahead of the June 7 primary.

Some of Cassidy’s ideas, now scrubbed from his website, include: 

  • “Allowing all citizens to enroll in Medicare, regardless of age.” Kaiser Health News, forecasting the “Medicare for All” platform idea of Bernie Sanders in 2020, estimated that the policy would cost $44.8 trillion over 10 years.
  • “Providing newlyweds with a $20,000 wedding gift, paid back if the couple divorces.” Across America in 2020, there were 1.68 million marriages — down from about 2 million in 2019. $20,000 per 2020 marriage is $33 billion a year, or $330 billion over 10 years.
  • “Giving married citizens a $250/month stipend for children under 10, and $500/month for children 10-17.” There are 72.9 million American children in these categories. Assuming an equal distribution between the two groups, that’s $318 billion a year, or $3.18 trillion over 10 years.

Cassidy, meanwhile, has focused energy on touting himself as a “fiscally sane representative” for the district. Ahead of the primary, Cassidy ran a TV attack ad that sharply criticized Guest for voting to provide $53 billion in aid to Ukraine to assist its defense efforts against Russia — all while “the national debt is over $30 trillion and inflation is raging,” Cassidy said in the ad.

Cassidy, whose modest campaign has been bolstered by more than $200,000 he loaned himself, had few other supporters. At least 87% of his total receipts through May 18, 2022, came from personal loans.

READ MORE: Prominent 2020 election denier is aiding Cassidy campaign

After Facebook and Twitter comments blistering much of Cassidy’s original platform on Election Day, Cassidy removed his entire fiscal platform from the website sometime on Wednesday. 

By end of business on Wednesday, Cassidy’s campaign consultant Matt Braynard issued a press release announcing an “improved pro-family policy” and posted it to Cassidy’s campaign website.

Noticeably missing from Cassidy’s new platform is any mention of Medicare for All, stipends for married couples and universal income disbursements for families with children.

“Based on helpful feedback from many conservatives in the 3rd District of Mississippi, I’ve improved my America Dream policies by focusing on lowering the tax burden for working families with children,” Cassidy said in the press release.

The principle idea of Cassidy’s new-and-improved platform is expanding the current child tax deduction from a maximum of $3,600 to $10,000 “for working families not currently receiving government assistance.”

Cassidy’s idea for the child tax credit is remarkably similar to one of President Joe Biden’s chief economic focuses — a program the president fought to include in the American Rescue Plan Act.

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Mississippi, where college baseball tickets are like gold

More than 6,300 fans at Pete Taylor Park watch a game against the Ole Miss Rebels on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. They probably could sell three times that many tickets this weekend. (Photo by Joe Harper/BigGold Photography)

Toughest ticket in Mississippi sports history?

If not, tickets to this weekend’s Ole Miss-Southern Miss NCAA Super Regional baseball series in Hattiesburg are certainly in the first sentence of any conversation on that subject.

Tickets with a face value of $60 are going as much as $1800 on StubHub. It goes back to the old economics principle of supply and demand. In this case, the demand for tickets is far, far higher than the number of tickets available for sale. The seating capacity at USM’s Pete Taylor Park is just over 5,000. Southern Miss could probably sell 15 or 20 thousand tickets if that many were available.

Ole Miss (35-22) and Southern Miss (47-17) play Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. in Games 1 and 2. A third game, if necessary, will be played Monday at a time to be determined (by ESPN, of course). The winner of the series goes to the College World Series at Omaha.

Jeremy McClain

Says Southern Miss athletic director Jeremy McClain, “The bottom line is that we are not able to sell tickets to some people who have been very supportive of our baseball program.”

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter is in the same boat, if not one even more submerged. By NCAA rules, Ole Miss was allotted 600 tickets. About 250 of those are committed to players’ and coaches’ families, leaving about 350 to be sold to Ole Miss supporters. This will give you some idea of how insufficient that number is: Ole Miss baseball has more than 136,000 Twitter followers, about 8,200 season ticket holders. Carter said the Ole Miss ticket office received 3,500 Super Regional ticket requests — that, despite people knowing how unlikely it was to obtain tickets.

So it is tickets with a face value of $60 are selling online for several hundreds of dollars on. secondary ticket markets. So it is people are celebrating scoring a ticket on the various Internet message boards as if celebrating a national championship.

So it is both Ole Miss and Southern Miss are setting up different venues where their fans can watch the game in a crowd atmosphere. Ole Miss will hold watch parties at the school’s baseball stadium. Southern Miss will have watch parties at Spirit Park on the school’s campus, about a half mile from Pete Taylor Park where a 20-foot video wall will be set up for the ESPNU feed.

No doubt, Mississippians by the thousands will opt to view the game in their own living rooms in air-conditioned comfort.

McLain was asked if Southern Miss is considering an expansion of Pete Taylor Park — or “The Pete” as it often called — where the Golden Eagles shattered season ticket and attendance records this past spring.

“We’re exploring it,” McClain said. “Actually, we’ve been looking at it for several months. We are in the early stages and we have some issues with expansion because of the ballpark’s surroundings. But we are looking at it and feel like there are some ways to add quality seating.”

That won’t help disappointed fans this weekend, although any athletic director — or businessman — will tell you that when demand far exceeds supply, it is a nice problem to have.

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Anti-gun violence rallies planned in Mississippi Saturday

Three marches Saturday in Mississippi will join a national call for lawmakers to address gun violence and pass gun control measures. 

Demonstrations are scheduled in Jackson at the Mississippi State Capitol, Oxford City Hall and Fairpark in downtown Tupelo, each from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. They will happen alongside marches in Washington D.C. and across the country for March For Our Lives.

March For Our Lives formed in 2018 as a student-led organization after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. where 17 students and staff died. 

That year, students from the school and around the country went to Washington to demonstrate and call for gun control measures. 

The Saturday marches were scheduled in response to the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas where 17 students and teachers died, according to March For Our Lives.

Since the group’s 2018 demonstration, there have been countless other gun violence incidents and a lack of gun control to prevent shootings, according to the organization. 

So far this year, there have been 251 mass shootings in the United States, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which counts gun violence and crime incidents daily and verifies them. Five of  this year’s mass shootings occurred in Mississippi.

A mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot or killed during a single incident at the same time and location, not including the shooter.  

In 2022, there have been 450 school shootings in the county, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Five have happened in Mississippi this year. 

People who would like to participate are asked to register on the pages for Jackson, Oxford and Tupelo. Information about other marches can be found here

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Podcast: Super Baseball Weekend in Mississippi

The Cleveland boys discuss the Ole Miss-Southern Miss Super Regional in Hattiesburg this coming weekend. Ole Miss is fresh off a three-game dash through the Coral Gables Regional, winning impressively. Southern Miss had a fight to finish to win the Hattiesburg Regional over LSU. Who has the edge? People with tickets, that’s who. It might be the toughest ticket in Mississippi sports history.

Stream all episodes here.

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Every Republican challenger of Rep. Steven Palazzo endorses his runoff opponent Mike Ezell

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell announced Thursday he has been endorsed by all five other Republican challengers ahead of his June 28 runoff against incumbent U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo.

Ezell, who was one of six Republicans to challenge Palazzo in Tuesday’s primary election, was flanked in a Thursday press conference by four fellow candidates, including third-runner in Tuesday’s primary businessman Clay Wagner and distant fourth-runner state Sen. Brice Wiggins.

“My campaign slogan was we deserve better than what we have, and we’ve got the man right here who will be better,” Wagner said at the Ezell press conference. “He’s got my full endorsement.”

Wiggins noted he and Ezell have been longtime friends and worked together when Wiggins was an assistant district attorney.

“He is an honorable, stand-up law enforcement guy,” Wiggins said. “He knows how to get the job done. He knows how to take on the things we’ve seen in D.C. … 63% of the voters in South Mississippi (in the Tuesday primary) chose somebody other than the incumbent. That’s a mandate for change.”

Palazzo, who has held the 4th District U.S. House seat in South Mississippi since 2011, received about 32% of Tuesday’s primary vote in unofficial results — a poor showing for a longtime GOP incumbent in a district considered safely Republican. Ezell received 25% and Wagner 22%.

The Republican primary race for the 4th District has not centered on major policy differences to date, but more on Palazzo. He has been under a congressional ethics investigation for a year and a half over allegations of misspending campaign and congressional money and misuse of his office. Over years, Palazzo has also faced criticism for not holding town halls or attending many public events in his district, garnering a nickname of “No-show Palazzo” among detractors.

While endorsing Ezell on Thursday, challenger Carl Boyanton said: “I ran with one thing in mind: to get Palazzo out of office.”

READ MORE: Ethics complaints against Rep. Steven Palazzo likely to ‘evaporate’ in Congress

Palazzo, who left the district headed back to Washington on Tuesday before primary votes were counted, did not immediately respond to a request for comments to his campaign spokesman on Thursday.

In a press release after Tuesday’s vote pushing him into a runoff, Palazzo said: “It’s an honor to serve south Mississippi, and it’s something I do not take for granted. I’m grateful for our supporters and volunteers who worked hard in this election and who will work hard to help us over the next three weeks. We now turn our attention to the run-off, and we will not be out-worked. We will continue talking to voters about what we’ve been able to accomplish and our plans for promoting policies to restore economic growth, secure our borders, and keep Americans safe.”

READ MORE: Trump coming to Mississippi. Will he endorse in GOP midterm runoffs?

Ezell, in a new runoff ad, continued to hit Palazzo on the ethics allegations and complaints of being inaccessible in his home district.

“You have a clear choice,” Ezell said. “Steven Palazzo has been under the cloud of an ethics investigation … Mike Ezell has served with honesty and integrity as a law enforcement officer for 40 years fighting crime, cleaning up corruption and saving taxpayers millions. On June 28, the choice is clear. Mike Ezell is the conservative Republican who will show up to represent our values every day.”

The winner of the June 28 Republican primary for the 4th Congressional District will face Democratic former longtime Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, who handily won Tuesday’s Democratic primary, in the Nov. 8 general election.

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Rep. Bennie Thompson, leading the public Jan. 6 hearings, has long worked to protect democracy

Reuben Anderson, Mississippi’s first African American Supreme Court justice of the modern era, had the responsibility of introducing former President Bill Clinton at the recent memorial ceremony for his longtime friends, Gov. and First Lady William and Elise Winter.

Before making that introduction, Anderson said he wanted to recognize “my congressman.” He described 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson as “the most unusual politician you will ever meet. He is not interested in getting rich. He is not interested in a higher office, and he shuns publicity.”

Reasonable people can differ on whether Anderson was being overly generous of “a fella I have known for over 50 years,” but what is not debatable is that Thompson will not be able to shun publicity this week.

Thompson, the Bolton native who has held the 2nd Congressional District post since 1993, will be at the center of attention as the special committee he chairs holds prime-time hearings beginning Thursday on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by those trying to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election. A big part of the committee’s work centers around the role of former President Donald Trump and his allies in the attack.

READ MORE: Rep. Bennie Thompson tapped to lead committee investigating Jan. 6 riot

Thursday’s hearing begins at 7 p.m. It and a separate hearing next week will be carried live by most major networks and cable news channels — with the notable exception of Fox News.

“I want, as an African American, to be able to say to the world that I helped stabilize our government when insurrectionists tried to take over,” Thompson recently told CNN of the hearings.

Thompson — the dean of the Mississippi congressional delegation and indeed someone who has worked to avoid the limelight — has built his long political career on protecting democracy.

As a young adult in the 1960s, he worked to register African Americans to vote and to ensure votes were counted. Now leading the Jan. 6 Commission, he is effectively doing similar work: ensuring that legally cast votes are counted and that the nation’s representative democracy is protected from any future efforts to overturn the results of an election.

During a 2018 Mississippi Today interview, Thompson recalled in the 1960s as a Tougaloo College political science student working in the Mississippi Delta trying to register people to vote on behalf of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer’s congressional bid.

“I was talking to my mother, and she was saying you know we don’t vote here in Bolton,” Thompson recalled. “It was a shock to me that I was up in Sunflower County helping register Black people to vote, and even in my hometown they didn’t enjoy the same luxury.”

Thompson’s auto mechanic father, who died in 1964 — the same year of passage of the federal Voting Rights Act designed to ensure racial minorities were not denied the right to vote — never got to vote. His mother, a schoolteacher, did, and most likely her first vote cast was for her son when he ran and was elected to the board of aldermen in his hometown of Bolton in 1969.

While Thompson won that election, it took a ruling of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to ensure victory for him and for two other African Americans elected that year in Bolton.

Thursday’s Jan. 6 Commission hearings could be viewed as a continuation of Bennie Thompson’s life’s work in terms of trying to ensure fair elections.

“I’m a passionate believer that in a democracy you have to follow the rule of law,” Thompson recently told NPR. “It has nothing to do with individuals. It has nothing to do with wealth. It has nothing to do with status in the community. It’s the law. The law is colorblind.”

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How an ex-Marine named Billy helped Pearl River CC win the national championship

You know about Ole Miss and Southern Miss baseball teams winning NCAA Regionals and facing off this weekend in a Super Regional at Hattiesburg. You know about Mississippi State winning the national championship of college baseball last season. You know about the tradition of success at Delta State.

Rick Cleveland

College baseball: It gets no better than what we have here in Mississippi. And it goes a lot deeper than those aforementioned. Last week, Pearl River Community College, 30 miles south of Hattiesburg in Poplarville, won the national championship of junior college baseball.

At Enid, Okla., the Wildcats, coached by Jackson native Michael Avalon, lost to Madison (Wisc.) College 11-4 in the first game of a best-of-three championship series and then came back and smoked Madison 19-1 and 7-2 the next two games. Madison entered the championship series having lost only eight of 56 games the entire season.  Pearl River beat them twice in two days by a total of 23 runs.

There’s so much to tell you about those Pearl River Wildcats, including the fact that 12 players off the team have either signed or committed to play for Division I teams in college baseball. That’s not even counting centerfielder Tate Parker of Gulfport, who should be named national junior college player of the year any day now and hasn’t committed to any four-year college yet. He may just go pro.

All those guys will follow a path so many Wildcats have taken over the past few seasons under Avalon. Slugging outfielder Reece Ewing and closer Landon Harper, former Wildcats, are two of the keys to Southern Miss’ success this season. Pitcher Cole Tolbert, who earned the most outstanding pitcher award of the national championship series (16 strikeouts in nine innings), has signed to play at Ole Miss.

The Wildcats lose a slew of players off the championship team, but Avalon believes he has “some really outstanding players waiting in the wings” to make another run next season.

“Pearl River will win as long as he’s there,” says Harper, the Southern Miss closer from Meridian. “Coach Avalon is a winner. No matter where I go or what I do, I am going to remember that man the rest of my life. He makes you not only a better player but a better person.”

The acronym “S.O.A.P.” is all over the PRCC locker room.

Avalon, who grew up in south Jackson and pitched for Forest Hill, operates the Pearl River program, basing every aspect of his coaching on a four word mantra: “Success = Organization, Attitude, Pride.” The acronym is S.O.A.P. You’ll find it anywhere you look in the Pearl River locker room, dugout and clubhouse.

Michael Avalon didn’t come up with the slogan. No, he took it from his dad, the late Billy Avalon, who was a much-beloved English literature teacher and coach in the Jackson area for decades.

Billy Avalon, a gruff-voiced ex-Marine who loved his family, words and sports (probably in that order), was the best coach Michael Avalon ever had, Michael says. And if you talk to students who had Billy as their English or literature teacher at St. Joseph or Madison Central, most will tell you he was the best teacher they ever had. 

Billy Avalon used the S.O.A.P. mantra as a teacher, coach and parent. “I remember him asking me that of success, organization, attitude and pride, which was the most difficult to sustain,” Michael Avalon said. “I said success, and he said, ‘No, it’s pride, pride in everything you do, doing everything the best you can do. That’s the hardest.

“And that’s what we stress in this baseball program. I don’t want them to just be the best players they can be. I want them to be the best students, the best citizens, the best sons, the best teammates they can be.”

Says Harper, the USM closer: “S.O.A.P. was part of everything we did there. I mean, it’s stuff like, if you see a piece of trash on the side of the road, don’t pass it by. Pick it up.”

His players describe Michael Avalon as “intense” as a coach. He apparently got that from his father, too.

Michael (left) and his father Billy Avalon.

“This will tell you how intense my dad was,” Michael Avalon says. “Once, when he was coaching his girls basketball team, he broke a finger calling a timeout.”

He did what?

“Really, he broke his own finger calling a timeout,” Avalon says, chuckling. “When he made the ’T’ sign with his hands, he slammed his fingers on one hand into the other hand too hard. I’m telling you, he was intense.

“At the same time, he was a man who would do anything he could to help anybody he encountered. Not just his students or his players, but somebody he just met on the side of the road.”

Billy Avalon, friends say, was intensely proud of Michael’s coaching success. He made every game he could make. He was there for all the state and region championships his son’s teams won at Pearl River. He was in Enid, Okla., in 2019 when the Wildcats were eliminated from the national championship tournament.

Last July, Billy and Michael were having one of their typically brief daily phone conversations when Billy said, “You know what you gotta do next season?”

“What?” Michael said.

Said Billy, “You gotta go back to Enid and win the whole damned thing.” 

A couple days later, Billy Avalon, 72, was killed in an automobile accident.

This season, as Pearl River won 45 games and ranked at or near the top of national polls, Michael missed his father terribly — at least partly because he knew how much Billy would have enjoyed the success.

Billy missed the Region 23 championship. He missed his son’s team ascending to No. 1 in the national polls. He missed them winning three straight games at Enid to reach the three-game national championship series. He missed the ultimate victory.

Or did he?

Pearl River was leading the championship game 7-2 going into the ninth inning. On the P.A. system, the recording of Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days” blared. Besides Proust, Dickens, Tolstoy and Joyce, Billy Avalon loved Springsteen. “Glory Days” was his favorite song.

Says Michael Avalon, “When Glory Days came on, I knew dad was there, knew he was watching. You couldn’t even make that up.”

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Trump coming to Mississippi. Will he endorse in GOP midterm runoffs?

Former President Donald Trump, headlining his “American Freedom Tour,” is scheduled to be in Southaven on June 18.

This visit comes ahead of Mississippi’s June 28 GOP primary runoffs, with two incumbent Republican congressmen struggling to keep their seats. With Trump remaining popular with Mississippi Republicans, his endorsement in either race could be a deciding factor for incumbents or challengers.

Incumbent Rep. Michael Guest trailed Republican challenger Michael Cassidy in unofficial results from Tuesday 46.6% to 47.8%, forcing a runoff with no candidate breaking 50%. Cassidy, a former Navy pilot, tried to run to the right of Guest, including criticizing Guest for voting with Democrats to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by those trying to overturn Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden.

Incumbent Rep. Steven Palazzo is headed to a runoff with Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell. Palazzo led Ezell 31.6% to 25.2% in unofficial results, with the two topping a crowded field of Republican challengers to Palazzo. Palazzo drew numerous challengers in part because he has faced an ethics investigation over allegations he misspent campaign and congressional money and misused his office.

Trump’s only endorsement in Tuesday’s Mississippi midterm primaries was for incumbent 1st District Rep. Trent Kelly, who handily won his primary with 90% of the vote.

Trump carried Mississippi with 58% of the vote in 2020, and to date, candidates he has endorsed and campaigned for here — including Gov. Tate Reeves and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith twice — have won. On Tuesday, all 16 candidates he endorsed for midterm primaries held by seven states won, although most were, like Kelly, strongly favored to win.

Trump’s American Freedom Tour event is billed as being for Memphis on the group’s website, but is set to be held at the Landers Center in Southaven on June 18 from 8:15 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The event includes some free access with pre-registration required, but also includes special paid access and seating ranging from $1,295 for the “chamber” level to $3,995 for the presidential level.

The daylong event schedule includes roundtable discussions, meet-and-greet and photo ops and speeches. Speakers include Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, conservative commentators and authors Candace Owens and Dinesh D’Souza.

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Two of Mississippi’s four U.S. House incumbents face runoffs

Two of Mississippi’s four incumbent U.S. House members on Tuesday were forced into June 28 runoffs with challengers.

Neither Michael Guest, representing the 3rd Congressional District based in central Mississippi, nor Steven Palazzo, representing south Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District, could garner a majority in the Republican Party needed to avoid the runoff.

While it was expected that Palazzo would face a tough re-election campaign in a six-candidate primary field, Guest’s troubles were more surprising.

Based on late but incomplete results, it appeared Guest will finish second in the three-candidate field. Michael Cassidy, a former Navy pilot who now lives in Meridian, was leading with 47.8% of the vote compared to 46.6% for Guest.

Guest, a former district attorney representing Rankin and Madison counties in suburban Jackson, is seeking his third two-year term.

The upstart Cassidy ran an aggressive campaign, loaning himself more than $200,000 to challenge Guest. He especially focused his campaign on the fact that Guest was the only member of Mississippi’s Republican congressional delegation to vote in favor of creating a special congressional commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. That attack was carried out by those trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, in which Democrat Joe Biden defeated Republican incumbent Donald Trump.

Cassidy’s campaign has been aided by Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign data specialist, who has been a leading voice in trying to perpetuate the myth that Trump won the election.

Cassidy held his own in Guest’s home turf in the Jackson metro area and dominated the vote count in the Meridian area and in many rural counties on the eastern side of the district.

In south Mississippi, Palazzo was leading Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell 31.6% to 25.2% in late — but also incomplete — results.

Palazzo, a former state House member who first was elected to the U.S. House in 2010, was believed to be vulnerable because of an ethics investigation over accusations he spent campaign funds on personal expenses. Palazzo has repaid some funds to his campaign and it appears that Palazzo will survive the investigation, though it is far from a given that he will succeed in his reelection effort.

Palazzo was the top vote-getter in most of the counties in the district, but not by wide enough margins to avoid the runoff.

Mississippi’s other two incumbents — Democrat Bennie Thompson of the 2nd District and Republican Trent Kelly of the 1st District — won by comfortable margins.

Thompson, the chair of the Jan. 6 Commission, won with 96% of the vote, while Kelly, a former district attorney in northeast Mississippi, garnered 90% of the vote.

All winners of this summer’s party primaries will face opposition in the November general election. The 2nd District, which includes much of the Jackson area and nearly all of the western side of the state along the Mississippi River, is viewed as a safe Democratic district while the other three are viewed as safe for Republicans.

It appears the Republican primary in the 2nd District will head to a runoff between Brian Flowers and Ronald Elder.

Diane Black was an easy winner of a two-candidate field in the 1st District Democratic primary, while Democrat Shuwaski Young ran unopposed in the 3rd. Johnny DuPree, a former Hattiesburg mayor and former candidate for governor and secretary of state, handily won a two-candidate race in the Democratic primary in the 4th District.

Primary runoff elections will be held June 28. The general election, pitting primary winners against one another, will be held on Nov. 8.

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