OurTupelo

What if they didn’t play the Super Bowl one season?

In Simpson County, in 2020, they are not.

Rick Cleveland

In this weirdest of football seasons, the Simpson County Super Bowl – the one that matches close neighbors Mendenhall and Magee – has fallen victim to COVID-19. In Simpson County, where Magee and Mendenhall high schools are seven miles apart and the rivalry has endured for nearly a century, that’s far more meaningful than that other Super Bowl the NFL puts on.

Here’s the story: Magee coach Teddy Dyess said he had one player test positive for COVID. As a result, the entire Trojan team has been quarantined for 14 days. Therefore, Magee will forfeit its games with Natchez this Friday night and with Mendenhall on Sept. 19.

Mageenews.com

Magee football coach Teddy Dyess

“Our kids are devastated,” Dyess said Thursday morning. “When I told them at practice (Tuesday), they were all over the field squalling. Football is important to them. You grow up in Magee, playing Mendenhall is huge. Not playing that game is devastating. There were tears all over our practice field.”

Mendenhall players took the news hard, as well. Coach Monroe Allen delivered the news to his Tigers after receiving a call from Dyess.

“I think most of us went home and went to bed early last night ’cause losing the chance to play our rival hurt,” Allen said Wednesday. “That game is a big deal around here, and it’s something our kids look forward to every year.”

Allen should know. He played football at Magee. He now coaches at Mendenhall. And he will tell you the rivalry is as fierce as any in Mississippi.

It has been that way for a long, long time. This would have been the 98^th renewal of the rivalry. Magee leads the series 49-45-2. The rivalry might best be illustrated by the huge manufacturing plant that sits about halfway between the two towns of the east side of U.S. 49. City fathers of Magee and Mendenhall once argued at length over the site of the plant that originally housed Universal Manufacturing. Finally, both sides agreed the only way both towns would support a bond issue was to locate the plant midway in between. So that’s what happened.

This pandemic has played havoc with high school football across the state. First, the Mississippi High School Activities Association (MHSAA) delayed the start of the season for two weeks. Jackson Public Schools canceled their football season. So did Greenville and Greenwood schools. North Forrest, too. Nearly every day, a game is postponed, canceled or rescheduled. For games that are played, attendance is limited to 25 percent of capacity.

And who knows how the pandemic will affect the playoffs at season’s end? For one thing, we know the championship weekend site will change. This season’s six championship games were supposed to be played Dec. 4-5 at Starkville, but Mississippi State now plays Missouri at home on Dec. 5 because of SEC scheduling changes forced by the pandemic. As it now stands, the MHSAA has not named a championship site, although Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium appears the most likely site.

You should know there is a domino effect to each postponement or cancellation. For instance, Collins High also has had to quarantine its players because of exposure to COVID-19 during a 34-0 loss to Magee last week. Guess who Collins was supposed to play this Friday night? Mendenhall. So Mendenhall has lost not one game, but two. But wait, Collins was supposed to play at Taylorsville on Sept. 19. Instead, Mendenhall will go to Taylorsville that night.

Monroe Allen

“I am glad we were able to put that together,” Allen said. “It’s another tough game, but we just need to play. Our guys want to play.”

And maybe they will. And maybe they won’t. Remember, it only takes one positive test to change everything. The only thing certain about this 2020 season is uncertainty.

For that matter, future cancellations could occur that would give Mendenhall and Magee the opportunity to have their Super Bowl after all.

“We’d welcome the opportunity to play it if it were to happen,” said Mendenhall’s Allen.

Said Magee’s Dyess, “You bet we would.”

The post After 97 years of games, COVID-19 cancels Simpson County’s Super Bowl for 2020 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Cassandra Wilson holds up a voter registration form and voter registration drive flyer in downtown Clarksdale days before her first drive.

CLARKSDALE — Frustrated by the response of elected officials after the pandemic slowed her business, Cassandra Wilson has used her down time for something she’d never done before: registering Delta residents to vote.

Wilson, the 35-year-old mother of three whose taxi and tourism business went from more than 50 rides a week before the pandemic to zero, was not qualified to receive COVID-19 relief funds.

She blamed the lack of federal, state and local government leadership to ensure the financial security for people in the Mississippi Delta, where the pandemic has heightened economic and health disparities.

“I felt like a lot of little people kind of got left out the loop,” Wilson said. “If you didn’t fall on the right end of the spectrum, you lost your house, you lost everything because of these big people who could not relate to everyday, average working people who were born into poverty. There are households around here with two full-time, 40-hour working people who are barely able to stay above water.”

She wanted to change how politicians’ decisions affected her life and those around her. So with the challenge of prohibitive voting laws and a deadly pandemic, she initiated the first step: registering people to vote.

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Cassandra Wilson poses at her first voter registration drive in Clarksdale

In June, Wilson set up a tent and a table on a Clarksdale street with voter registration packets, snacks, pens, masks, and sanitizers laid across the tables. Whether residents walked up to register or drove through, each individual received masks and sanitizer. With her taxi business at a halt, she decided to drop registration packets off to others who could not attend the drive due to work, she said.

She took off from work at her other full-time job, sacrificing income to work on these voter registrations drives. With help from her 13-year-old daughter and 12-year-old niece, the trio has helped 20 people register to vote so far across three Delta towns: Lula, Friars Point and Clarksdale.

Wilson’s goal is to get 200 people registered ahead of the Oct. 5 registration deadline.

One challenge Wilson has experienced is a lack of education around government and the voting process prevents people from voting.

“I think this young lady was maybe like 22 years old and she asked me, ‘What is voting? Who do you vote for?’ and I love that,” Wilson said of a registrant at one of her drives. “(I said), ‘This is how you vote, this is why you vote’ … We have a lot of that in the Delta.”

More than 23,000 people reside in Coahoma County, which has about 15,000 eligible voters. But voter turnout has remained fairly low. For example, in the March primaries, only 23% of eligible voters cast a vote, according to data from the Circuit Clerk’s office.

Ray Sykes, chair of the Coahoma County Democratic Party, said he’s heard “no one is coming out” to the polls because community members fear going grocery shopping, church and gathering in large groups.

Despite this, he expects a record turnout, but he said it falls on the local leaders to get folks out.

“Elected officials have a duty to push the turnout,” Sykes said. “Pastors have a duty to get the public involved.”

Some Delta-based political leaders expressed more concern with getting people to the polls rather than voter registration, especially now during a pandemic.

“Everyone wants to press voter registration … which is great. I’m not knocking it. The real problem is getting people out to vote,” said David Rushing, chair of the Sunflower County Democratic Party. “We’re under-resourced, and the state is under-resourced.”

But Mississippi doesn’t make it easy for people to vote.

The state has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the nation, and is one of only six states which has not taken action to make voting safer during the pandemic. For instance, Mississippians must provide an excuse in order to vote early.

In July, Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill into law stating people could only vote early during the pandemic for two reasons: if they are under a physician-imposed quarantine or providing care for a dependent under quarantine.

“It’s not the intent (of the legislation) to make it harder to vote,” Senate Elections Chair Jennifer Branning, R-Philadelphia, told Mississippi Today.

Currently, two lawsuits have been filed against state officials challenging Mississippi’s absentee voting requirements.

To register to vote, an individual must be 18 or older, a resident of Mississippi, and cannot be convicted of disenfranchising crimes. On Election Day, voters must present a Mississippi voter ID, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Pam Shaw, a longtime Democratic political strategist and president of P3 Strategies, said it should be incumbent on circuit clerks and county supervisors to create innovative and safer ways to do voting. She suggested creating curbside voting and expanding voting hours in the weeks prior to the election.

“You do it in a way that does not compromise staff of the clerk’s office and the people who come,” Shaw said. “If you say, five days before, or two weeks before, it gives them time. … It gets rid of all of the people who may be hesitant and eases the burden you’re going to have on Election Day.”

But by taking matters into her own hands — battling a public health crisis, small town politics and what many call modern-day voter suppression — Wilson said she hopes that her small efforts will make an impact during the upcoming election, even if just one person goes to the polls because of her work.

“I just want to see a better Clarksdale, want people to do better, especially African Americans,” Wilson said. “We don’t know how this election is going to go in November, but I can tell you one thing — it’s going to be very difficult for us to go to the polls the way we used to.”

The post Upset with elected officials after COVID-19 halted her business, Delta woman registers people to vote appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Eric J. Shelton, Mississippi Today/ Report for America

Mike Espy speaks to media after his debate against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith inside the Farm Bureau Federation auditorium Tuesday, November 20, 2018.

Mike Espy, in a new television ad that first aired Thursday, sharply critiqued U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith for her response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Espy, the Democratic former congressman who’s running against the Republican senator in the November election, attacked Hyde-Smith over comments she made in March in which she said the coronavirus pandemic would be “over in two weeks.”

The first COVID-19 cases were confirmed in Mississippi the same week she made that comment.

“Hyde-Smith has simply not done her part to stand up for Mississippi,” Espy said of the senator’s COVID response in a fundraising email on Thursday morning. “This is a sitting senator who is actively hurting her own people.”

Espy also said Hyde-Smith “voted to take money away from unemployed workers while our unemployment rate doubled, and took off for summer recess without providing any additional relief for those struggling.”

When asked for comment, a spokesman for the Hyde-Smith campaign fact-checked several lines of the ad and said of the unemployment critique: “Not true. (Hyde-Smith) supported unemployment benefits. It is Democrats who are blocking the latest relief bill.”

“The increasingly false and desperate campaign being run by Corrupt Mike Espy is shameful. There’s not a single part of this ad that’s true,” Hyde-Smith campaign spokesman Justin Brasell said. “If Mike Espy thought he had any realistic chance to win this race, he would not resort to these kinds of despicable tactics and lies. Senator Hyde-Smith has fought for billions in relief funds to assist unemployed workers, healthcare providers, and small businesses as we all work to safely reopen our economy and fight this global pandemic.”

READ MORE: Here’s where Cindy Hyde-Smith and Mike Espy stand on healthcare.

This is Espy’s second television ad in as many weeks. Meanwhile, Hyde-Smith has not yet purchased airtime — an unusual reality for an incumbent senator less than two months from Election Day.

Espy has outraised Hyde-Smith in all but one campaign finance reporting period this year. And Hyde-Smith has raised less money this year than 96 incumbent U.S. senators. The three who have raised less than her announced they were not seeking re-election.

The Hyde-Smith campaign hasn’t scheduled events, Brasell recently told Mississippi Today. And this week, the Espy campaign is ratcheting up pressure on Hyde-Smith to debate. The Hyde-Smith campaign has not yet accepted debate invitations.

The post ‘Hurting her own people’: Mike Espy blasts Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith over COVID-19 response appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Errol Harmon is the fifth individual charged in connection to a conspiracy to defraud the Mississippi Department of Education through bid rigging, false quotes and fake purchase orders.

Mike Hurst, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi

Cerissa Neal, the former director of the Office of Educator Licensure at the state education department, is accused of conspiring with several others to circumvent the state’s contract procurement process and award contracts to individuals in exchange for kickbacks. U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst brought the charges against Neal and the others in February, but court records were sealed until August.

A request for comment from Hurst’s office was not immediately returned Wednesday.

The contracts first drew scrutiny from the state’s legislative watchdog committee, the state auditor’s office and media reports in 2017.

READ MORE: Former MDE director indicted in contract kickback conspiracy

Neal pleaded not guilty to 12 total counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and bribery.

In the initial indictment, three other Tennessee-based individuals were named as Neal’s co-defendants. In a separate document filed Aug. 25, Harmon was accused of working with Neal, Joseph Kyles, David Hunt and Lambert Martin in the scheme.

Attempts to reach Harmon on Wednesday were not successful.

Neal is accused of splitting contract requests from one contract into smaller contracts to avoid the competitive bidding process. Then, using her position in the department, she would allegedly award the contract to her co-defendants’ businesses at an inflated price, then personally receive a check from the business that won the contract.

Joseph B. Kyles, whose company The Kyles Company was paid more than $650,000 in a three-year period, paid Harmon on numerous occasions in 2014 and 2015. Harmon would then pay Neal soon after, the indictment stated.

Harmon is being charged on one count of conspiracy, one count of bribery and a third count of crossing state lines and using the mail to distribute unlawful funds. His arraignment is scheduled for Sept. 24 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Linda Anderson.

The post Another charged in former MDE director’s alleged kickback scheme appeared first on Mississippi Today.