Mississippi voters on Tuesday will adopt or reject the “In God We Trust” state flag.
Mississippi voters on Tuesday will adopt or reject the “In God We Trust” state flag, a design with a magnolia blossom instead of the Confederate battle emblem that flew over the state for the last 126 years.
An appointed commission reviewed thousands of public submissions for flag designs over the summer and chose the new design with a magnolia and stars — a combination of multiple submissions.
The Legislature in June, after decades of debate and under mounting pressure from religious, business, sports and community leaders, removed the 1894 flag with its divisive Confederate emblem. It left ratification of a replacement up to voters.
The new design before voters has a magnolia — the official state tree and flower — blossom on a blue background surrounded by stars with gold and red vertical stripes on the ends. It has one prominent star made of diamonds, representing Native Americans who first inhabited the area, and a ring of smaller stars denoting Mississippi becoming the 20th state in 1817.
The Legislature, when it voted to remove the old flag, stipulated in law that whatever design is put before voters, it must have the words “In God We Trust” on it, and that it could not have the Confederate emblem.
If a majority of voters do not approve the new flag on Tuesday, the redesign commission will go back to the drawing board and pick another design to put before voters next year.
One group, Let Mississippi Vote, hopes to overturn the Legislature’s removal of the old flag. It plans to mount a petition drive to place on the ballot — as early as 2022 — an initiative that would allow voters to restore the 1894 flag, or select other options including the one on the ballot Tuesday. The group said it plans to have people at polls on Tuesday collecting names and information for its drive.
On the last day to do so, voters waited patiently in long lines to cast their absentee ballots Saturday at the Hinds County Courthouse in downtown Jackson.
As of Sunday, a record of more than 231,000 Mississippians had voted absentee — about 19% of the more than 1.2 million total people who voted in the 2016 election.
By comparison, in 2016, a little over 101,000 absentee votes were counted, about 8% of the total turnout that year. Although some of this year’s absentees are likely to be rejected, the number received marks a 128% increase over 2016’s absentee count.
Secretary of State Michael Watson on Monday reported that as of Sunday 248,335 absentee ballots had been requested, 247,650 had been sent out and 231,031 had been returned to circuit clerk’s offices.
Saturday was the final day to vote absentee in person, but mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received within five business days will still be counted.
Circuit clerks statewide have reported heavy absentee voting and most expect a heavy in-person turnout on Tuesday. Some, including more populous counties, have seen astounding increases in absentee voting this year. For instance, Hinds County in 2016 counted 5,255 absentee votes. As of Sunday for this election, the county had received 16,917 absentee votes.
Watson said last week that more than 113,000 new voters had registered in Mississippi this election cycle.
Mississippi’s early voting laws are among the most restrictive in the nation, and it’s the only state not to provide all citizens an option to vote early rather than go to crowded precincts on Election Day during the pandemic. Only people who are going to be away from their home area on Election Day, those 65 and older, and people with disabilities are allowed to vote absentee, either in person or by mail.
A federal lawsuit filed against the Mississippi secretary of state this year and settled last week resulted in two new rules for this election.
Voters must receive correspondence from election officials about any problems with the signature verification on their absentee ballots, and the voter will have 10 days to correct it.
Also, election officials must provide curbside voting opportunities on Election Day for people experiencing COVID-19 symptoms or who have been exposed to the coronavirus.
Voters wait their turn to cast absentee ballots on Oct. 31, the last day to do so in person, at the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson.
Mississippians are expected to vote in record numbers on Tuesday, and already have set absentee voting records for this election, typically a bellwether for in-person turnout.
Here are some tips and rules for Mississippi voters as they prepare to vote:
• Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. statewide. State law says anyone in line by 7 p.m. must be allowed to vote even if polls are closing.
• To make sure you know where to vote, go to the secretary of state’s Polling Place Locator.
• Secretary of State Michael Watson said people wanting to avoid long lines, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, should avoid going to the polls in the early morning, during lunch, or after 5 p.m.
• Mississippi voters are not under a mask mandate, although they are urged to wear them and most precincts will have them available for voters. Both Watson and Gov. Tate Reeves say such a mandate would be unconstitutional infringement on voting rights, although the federal district court that covers Mississippi has ruled it would not be unconstitutional.
• Poll workers will be wearing masks, and additional workers have been added at many precincts to ensure social distancing guidelines and to ensure the polls and the voting machines are continuously sanitized.
• Voters must have a government-issued photo identification. But those without an ID are allowed to vote, and they will have five days to go to their county circuit clerk’s office to provide proof of their identification. People needing to vote curbside because they believe they might have COVID-19 or because of other issues should call their local circuit clerk before voting. Telephone numbers for circuit clerks can be found on the secretary of state’s web page.
• People who for whatever reason are not on the poll books can request to vote by affidavit and they also will have five days to resolve issues surrounding why they were not on the poll books.
• A new rule issued by Watson says curbside voting must be available for anyone showing symptoms of COVID-19, including coughing, headaches, fever, sore throat and loss of taste or smell.
• Another new rule says election officials must notify a voter about problems with their signature on an absentee ballot, and must give the voter a chance to fix the problem. The voters must be offered an “absentee cure form” by email, mail or fax within one business day, and the voter has 10 days to correct the problem.
• People with questions about where they vote can visit the polling place locator or Y’all Vote on the secretary of state’s web page. The office also has a telephone line at 1-800-829-6786 to answer elections-related questions. County circuit clerks also can answer questions about the election.
• Rules prevent people from wearing campaign-related clothes or caps into the polling place. And people campaigning for a person or issue on the ballot must remain 150 feet from the polling place. Watson said this rule applies only to signage or clothing pertaining to “anything that’s on the ballot,” but would not prohibit other messaging not directly up for a vote. So any candidate-specific gear like MAGA or Biden hats are prohibited, but generic “Black Lives Matter” T-shirts are permitted.
Xavier Showers, 8, joins classmates via Zoom for math class Wednesday morning at the Mississippi Children’s Museum.
A total of 24 day cares, nonprofits, churches and other organizations from across the state received a total of $5.4 million in funding this fall to care for and educate children under 5-years-old during the pandemic.
Gov. Tate Reeves issued the first round of allocations from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund in recent weeks. The purpose of the money, a part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, is to enable governors to decide how best to meet the needs of students, schools and other education-related organizations impacted by COVID-19. Mississippi received a total of $34.6 million.
The largest amount in the first allotment of funding was to Waterford.org, a Utah-based education nonprofit that has been piloting a virtual program for pre-kindergartners in Mississippi for several years. The group received nearly $2 million to expand its existing program to nearly 2,500 preschool-aged children.
The next largest awards were to the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Gulf Coast for around $870,000, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Mississippi for about $436,000.
Waterford.org has been operating in collaboration with partners across the state, including the Mississippi Head Start Association, to offer a supplement to pre-kindergarten, said LaTasha Hadley, vice president of state education partnerships. Since 2016, the program has been offered to 3,639 low-income children in areas of the state where literacy scores were low.
The GEER funding has made it possible to serve additional students who were on the waiting list to participate in the existing program, explained Hadley. All Mississippi families with 4-year-olds are eligible to enroll regardless of income, and the deadline for application is Nov. 1.
“Mississippi is taking the lead in not only investing in innovative early education efforts during the pandemic, but also in recognizing the need for wide educational partnerships such as the Waterford Upstart Pandemic Recovery Path program,” said Reeves in a press release. “By providing a strong foundation through early education, the State of Mississippi and its partners are working together to help ensure all children in our state are afforded the ability to get the same start to academic, life and career success.”
Waterford.org’s program will serve 2,500 preschool-aged children from Nov. 1 of this year to Feb. 5, 2021. The program will provide a laptop or internet access to any family that needs it, and children will receive an adjusted version of Waterford’s flagship at-home kindergarten readiness program, Waterford Upstart.
Students will use the program’s reading software for 20 minutes a day, five days a week. Families will also be connected with a program coach that will help monitor the child’s progress and provide other guidance.
For parent Kyesha Clark of Lena, the program has been helpful to her 4-year-old who also attends pre-kindergarten in Flowood.
“He really likes it. He’s learning how to use a computer, how to use a mouse, follow directions, things like that,” Clark, a former teacher, said.
She noticed an improvement in his recognition of letters and in spelling.
“I gave him tracing paper with his name on it to start learning how to write his name, and he knew more letters than I thought he did,” she said. “I think it’s really from him doing Waterford every day.”
Several other early childhood organizations received GEER funding, including Funtime Afterschool and Preschool of Clinton, New Horizon Childcare Center in Jackson and Save the Children, a statewide organization that provides services for children under 5-years -old.
The Children’s Museum of Jackson, which has long offered educational programming for students in the metro area, also received funding to serve students in the Jackson Public School District, which is currently operating entirely virtually.
From the beginning, the staff at the museum knew they wanted to be a resource for children during the pandemic, said President Susan Garrard.
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Kaylen Wade, 8, uses a laptop and tablet to participate in class via Zoom while at the Mississippi Children’s Museum.
After talking through several different iterations of what the museum’s role would be in 2020, they ultimately landed on creating a tuition-based program offering tutoring, after-school and day camp services for children in the metro area. The program was made by possible by generous private donations.
“We couldn’t just not use this great space with great WiFi and great staff and great educators. We knew we needed to be part of that (solution) and be a resource,” said Garrard. “We had already created this framework and had decided we wanted to be of service to children for their virtual learning.”
And now, thanks to around $165,000 in GEER funds, that programming is available to 40 pre-kindergarten through sixth grade students in the Jackson Public School District free of charge. The group represents 12 different schools, and the funding will last for these students for 16 weeks.
The impact of the pandemic on students in the capital city is huge. The all-virtual mode of school – in a high-poverty district where 25% of students currently do not have access to a device – was a major and challenging transition.
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Twin brothers Armani and Amari Johnson, both 9, listens as academic tutor Marilyn Terrell, explains the math lessons for the boys after a glitch with the Zoom call. “Not to worry. Either way, we will get it done,” said Terrell.
Several weeks into the programming, at the end of the first nine weeks of school, Director of Museum Experiences Patti Reiss and other staff members were celebrating a win for one of the museum’s students.
“We learned today that one of the third graders is on the honor roll for the very first time,” said a beaming Reiss, who is also a certified teacher.
“We have (students from) 12 different JPS schools here,” Reiss said. “Usually in a public school district, who you go to school with is very much decided by geography.”
She said she’s seen students from different schools, like Isabel and Pecan Park Elementary Schools, discuss and help one another with schoolwork.
“This also puts everybody on an even playing field. You’ve got students in academic performing arts, magnet, traditional schools, and they’re all getting the same support and the same resources,” Monique Ealey, director of education and programs at the museum.
Ealey said the museum was able to purchase devices for students who did not have one.
Reiss and Ealey are very aware that many of their students’ needs stretch beyond the classroom.
“We have children who’ve experienced losses in their family, who may be displaced (due to COVID-19),” Ealey said.
In addition to the academic offerings the museum provides – including three certified teachers and two retired teachers and a host of staff members and volunteers —their past work with community partners such as the Center for Advancement of Youth means they can connect children with needed resources, she said.
“Having these GEER funds puts us in a position to not just support them academically, because right now in the middle of a pandemic, it’s much greater than that,” she said.
Students in the museum’s Launch into Learning program have the option of attending full-day ( 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m) or part-day and after-school options. The children are grouped into age appropriate, socially distanced classrooms and begin each day with their virtual work, assisted by their museum teacher.
The students also received two meals and two snacks a day — a major benefit for an area where food security is often a challenge.
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Children amuse themselves playing with the “Toppling Tortoise” and learn how different animals burrow underground.
Older children continue virtual work after lunch and the younger children engage in museum-directed instruction, including Spanish, health, nutrition, and literacy, among other subjects.
The remainder of the day is free play in the museum’s 20,000 square feet of indoor exhibits and 15,000 square feet of outdoor exhibits.
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Jayden Brooks, 8, listens to his math teacher via Zoom.
Karen Cotton, the mother of 8-year-old Jayden Brooks and 11-year-old Adrian Brooks, said she’s grateful for the program. Adrian started the program using GEER funds in October, and Cotton said she’s noticed a difference in her son.
The ability to socialize and have more reliable internet access has been good for him, but virtual school remains a struggle.
“I can see a happier side of him — that’s a plus,” she said. “But school wise … we’re still working on it.”
Applicants for GEER funding that were not funded in the first round will have an opportunity to revise the application and re-submit in a third round taking place no later than Jan. 31 of next year, said Parker Briden, a spokesperson for Reeves’ office.
Throughout the month of October, Mississippi Today is hosting some of Mississippi’s most celebrated authors in conversation with Mississippi Today editors and journalists.
The third event in the Mississippi Writers on Mississippi Politics series was a conversation between Mississippi author Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Emerging Reporters Fellow Brittany Brown.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of a book of nature essays, WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS, which was recently named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in non-fiction, and four poetry collections. Awards for her writing include fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Council, Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for poetry, National Endowment of the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her writing has appeared in NYTimes Magazine, ESPN, and Best American Poetry. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
Brittany Brown is the inaugural Mississippi Today Emerging Reporters Fellow. Brittany is currently an MA student in Southern Studies at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.
Democrat Mike Espy will benefit from record turnout among Black voters next week, according to several of the state’s top Democratic insiders. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
To have a shot at defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Nov. 3, Democratic challenger Mike Espy needs record turnout from Mississippi’s Black voters.
He will get it, according to several of the state’s top Democratic insiders who are working on the ground in the 2020 cycle.
“I’ve looked closely at the data, and I think Black turnout in Mississippi will be higher than it was when we had President Obama on the ballot,” said Charles Taylor, a political data consultant who is managing the canvassing effort for the Mississippi Democratic coordinated campaign this year.
“Black voters have struggled in this country and in this state for a very long time. Any opportunity or chance we get to increase our collective power, we’re going to do everything we can to do so,” Taylor continued. “Trump is the most divisive president and the worst president to people of color that we’ve had in modern history, and you’ve got a chance to help get him out of the White House. And you’ve got Espy at the top of the Mississippi ticket. There’s organic excitement that I haven’t seen in Mississippi in a long time.”
Black Mississippians make up about 37% of the state’s voting-age population and are the most critical voting bloc for Espy this year as he seeks to become the state’s first Black senator elected by popular vote. No African American has won a statewide election in the state’s history.
Espy — who was the first African American elected to Congress since Reconstruction and has made race a central theme of his 2020 campaign — maintains that he will win if, among other things, Black voters make up at least 35.5% of the total electorate.
The highest share of Black voters in the state’s modern history was 2012, when they made up 36% of the electorate. That was the year President Barack Obama was running for re-election. The record voter turnout in 2020, projected by the political insiders, would likely surpass that mark and exceed Espy’s target.
This year, Obama’s former vice president Joe Biden — popular with Black Mississippi voters — is at the top of the ticket running against Trump, along with running mate Sen. Kamala Harris, who would be the nation’s first Black vice president.
Not every Black Mississippian who votes next week will check the box next to Espy’s name, but it’ll be close.
In the 2018 runoff for U.S. Senate, Espy received 95% of the African American vote, which made up about 32.5% of the total electorate. Top-of-ticket Democratic candidates in recent Mississippi elections have received from 88% to 95% of the Black vote, depending on the candidate.
Dating back to 2008, Black Mississippi voters have made up 30% to 36% of the overall turnout, based on exit polls and commercial voter files, according to Chism Strategies, a Mississippi-based political consulting firm. The low mark was 30% in 2014, and the high mark was 36% in 2012.
Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Irish Simmons and her brother Tyrone Mayes fill out their ballots at the Hinds County Courthouse in late October.
Voter turnout during the COVID-19 pandemic remains uncharted and unknown, but Mississippi continues adding to its record pace with absentee ballots, which are typically an indicator of in-person turnout. As of Tuesday, more than 190,000 absentee ballots had been requested, compared to less than 111,000 requested in the entire 2016 election.
Though racial disparities have lessened during the pandemic as cases have surged in white, rural pockets across the country, Black Mississippians are still disproportionately diagnosed with and killed by the coronavirus. Several advocates have expressed concern that maskless voters might deter Black voters concerned about spread, or worse, cause voters to risk contracting the coronavirus simply by exercising their right to vote.
Several have suggested that Mississippi’s Republican leaders choosing not to expand early voting options during the pandemic, letting a statewide mask mandate expire even as COVID-19 cases spike, and not requiring masks to be worn at polling places are examples of voter suppression.
“It is voter suppression, but it’s also dumb,” said Congressman Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s lone African American elected official in Washington who last week predicted “tremendous” Black voter turnout this year. “… Why would you risk your life just to vote, unless you felt that all precautions were being met? A simple precaution like a mask could be the encouragement necessary for a person to go and vote.”
But some politicos say any perceived effort by Republicans to suppress the vote by not expanding safe voting options during the pandemic may backfire.
Longtime Mississippi political strategist Pam Shaw, in a September interview with Mississippi Today, surmised that the pandemic could hurt Black voter turnout, particularly among older voters. But she’s recently seen trends that changed her mind.
“I have been pleasantly surprised over the last 30 days at the energy I am seeing and hearing in the Black community,” Shaw said. “… I think you’re going to have in terms of the Black community almost the turnout you had with Obama. Maybe not quite, but close. It’s a combination of Kamala (Harris), and the pandemic and just the energy, a combination of all those things.”
Shaw said she’s seeing and hearing about many older Black voters voting absentee and, “I think people are trying to do work-arounds with the virus.”
White Mississippians have driven recent COVID-19 case growth. Over the last two months, white cases have more than twice outpaced growth among Black Mississippians. But within that breakdown, Black women in particular have borne the brunt of the virus in Mississippi, accounting for nearly 30% of all cases where race is known, but only 20% of the population.
The irony is not lost on advocates that these are the very women who have driven the Democratic vote and voter rights campaigns for decades.
“People who were deemed essential workers, on the frontlines, who live in multi-generational households … who have been impacted by the virus or know people who have, they lay this on Trump, lay it at his feet,” Shaw said. “I think Black women have in many ways embraced the narrative, ‘We can make a huge difference.’ Lots of Black women’s organizations, formal and informal networks, are saying, ‘Wait a minute, I don’t like what’s going on with kids, with schools, with conversations around pandemic unemployment.’”
While anti-Trump sentiments and excitement for Espy are evident among Black voters, operatives also point to political strategy as a reason to expect record turnout.
Espy this year has raised more than $9 million — by far the highest amount raised by a Democrat in the state’s history — and he has strategically targeted Black voters with television, radio and digital advertising and in-person outreach the past few weeks. A robust Democratic field strategy has placed paid canvassers in 52 counties since September, and many of them have been focused exclusively on reaching Black voters.
“The investment Espy’s made specifically to Black voters, I think he’s going to see a return on it,” Taylor said. “He put his money where his mouth was. This is the first time we’ve really seen people trying to turn out Black voters in this state in a presidential election cycle.
Taylor continued: “Win, lose or draw, whether there’s immediate satisfaction with the numbers on Tuesday or not, Espy’s campaigns in 2018 and in 2020 will leave a legacy and real infrastructure in Mississippi politics. His candidacy has helped to modernize the Democratic Party in Mississippi.”
Kenny Griffis and Latrice Westbrooks are running for a Mississippi Supreme Court seat on Nov. 3.
Supreme Court Justice Kenny Griffis claims his opponent in Tuesday’s election illegally voted on the same day in two different cities during the most recent municipal elections.
But his opponent Court of Appeals Justice Latrice Westbrooks denies the allegation, and said state and county records showing she voted twice are incorrect. Through a spokesman, she said Griffis is “scrambling days before the election to steal an election.”
Griffis, temporarily appointed to his high court seat by the governor last year, said Westbrooks voted on May 2, 2017, in primaries in both the city of Lexington in Holmes County and the city of Jackson in Hinds County.
The Griffis campaign supplied records from the two county circuit clerks’ offices that indicate two votes on the same day. Voting records on file at the Mississippi secretary of state’s office obtained by Mississippi Today through a public records request match this.
Westbrooks campaign spokesman Phelton Moss, after viewing the files shared with Mississippi Today, said in a written statement on Wednesday: “We can say with confidence and certainty this did not happen. Judge Westbrooks unequivocally and unconditionally denies that she voted in Hinds County in 2017. Several months ago, when a member of the media asked her about the existence of some record indicating that she voted in Hinds County in 2017, Judge Westbrooks told the member of the media that if such a document exists, it is a result of a clerical error.”
Moss said: “Further, she told the member of the media that an inspection of the Official Poll Book for any 2017 Hinds County Election would not contain her signature, showing that she voted and therefore support that she did not vote in Hinds County in 2017. Since Judge Westbrooks communicated that information to the member of the media, no 2017 Hinds County poll book containing her signature has been produced.”
Neither the Holmes nor Hinds circuit clerks immediately responded to several requests for comment on Wednesday. Hinds County Election Commissioner James Reed says the county typically shreds voting records after two years, and he’s uncertain whether the commission would have municipal voting records regardless. The Jackson city clerk could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday.
According to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History list of records retention regulations, poll books and voter receipts are to be kept for two years after an election, but can then be destroyed. Counties send electronic versions of their voter records after an election to the secretary of state’s office.
State law says that any person voting in more than one place in any county or city in the same election … “shall, upon conviction, be imprisoned in the county jail not more than one (1) year, or be fined not more than One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00), or both.”
Griffis, through a spokesman, declined to comment on the allegations, but his campaign issued a statement.
Conrad Ebner, Griffis’ campaign treasurer, said in a statement: “It’s a normal, routine course of action for campaigns to check the voting history of their opponent. After months of waiting on requested documents to be produced by the Holmes County Circuit Clerk, the campaign finally received the official documentation on October 27 that Latrice Westbrooks voted on the same election day on May 2, 2017, in Holmes County and also in Hinds County. Mississippi needs judges who follow the law, not break the law. Election integrity is a foundation of our democracy and we need judges who are held to the highest standards.”
The Griffis campaign said it had to file a public records complaint with the state Ethics Commission before the Holmes County circuit clerk’s office would provide its records of Westbrooks’ voter profile, months after its initial request. The Griffis campaign said it received the Holmes County voter profile on Oct. 27. This, the campaign said, is the reason the public allegations are coming so late in the campaign before the Nov. 3 election.
The Westbrooks campaign statement from Moss continued: “Judge Westbrooks, a long-time champion for voter rights and voter education, knows the law. This is nothing more than our opponent and his campaign scrambling days before the election to steal an election from the voters of Central District One. Mississippi voters are tired of the old tricks — the future of Mississippi is on the ballot and our opponent knows such. We have an opportunity to elect a proven judge on Nov. 3rd. Judge Westbrooks would put her experience against that of her opponents anytime, and that should be the focus as we march towards Election Day.”
Westbrooks, of Lexington, was elected to the Mississippi Court of Appeals in 2016. She previously served as an assistant district attorney for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties — the first African American woman to serve there as assistant DA. Westbrooks served as prosecutor for the city of Durant and as city attorney for Isola. She served as a public defender in Holmes County for nearly 10 years and has served as legal counsel for the Jackson Police Department and as a municipal judge for the city of Lexington.
In 2012, the state Supreme Court removed Westbrooks from the ballot for a Court of Appeals race. The state Board of Elections — the governor, secretary of state and attorney general — ruled that Westbrooks did not live inside the district for which she was running. Westbrooks appealed and a Hinds County Circuit Court judge ordered her name be placed back on the ballot, but the state’s high court overturned that decision, removing her name from the ballot.
Griffis, of Ridgeland, was appointed to the Supreme Court by then-Gov. Phil Bryant to fill out the term Chief Justice Bill Waller Jr., who left the bench at the end of January 2019. Griffis was a Mississippi Court of Appeals judge from 2003 until his appointment to the Supreme Court and was serving as chief judge of the appellate court at the time of his appointment.
Although Mississippi Supreme Court races are nonpartisan, Griffis has been endorsed by the state Republican Party, and Westbrooks has the support of numerous Democratic state leaders and groups.
The race is for the District 1, Place 1 high court seat for central Mississippi. The district of about 1 million people is nearly evenly divided by race, partisanship and urban/rural population. It covers the counties of Bolivar, Claiborne, Copiah, Hinds, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Jefferson, Kemper, Lauderdale, Leake, Madison, Neshoba, Newton, Noxubee, Rankin, Scott, Sharkey, Sunflower, Warren, Washington, and Yazoo.
Only one woman currently serves on the nine-member Mississippi Supreme Court, despite women making up more than 51% of the state’s population. And Westbrooks, if elected, would be the first African American woman to serve on the state’s high court, which currently has only one Black justice.
It would also mark the first time in the state’s history that two African American justices sat on the court at the same time.
FILE – This file photo combination shows Mike Espy, left, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, on Oct. 5, 2018, and U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., on Nov. 5, 2018, both in Jackson, Miss. If Espy and Hyde-Smith win their respective party’s primaries, they will face each other in the November 2020 general election. Hyde-Smith defeated Espy in a November 2018 special election. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)
Mississippi faces voting barriers during a historic Senate race
Mississippi’s only woman in Congress is running against the state’s potential first Black senator since Reconstruction. Will COVID-19 get in the way?
Camille Green, 20, burst into tears the first time she met Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. In March, right before the pandemic shut most of the country down, she traveled to Washington, D.C., with a nonpartisan, politically engaged student association at Mississippi State University.
“Most people know that I’m a big Cindy Hyde-Smith fan,” she said. “We met her in Congress, and I boo-hoo cried … It was really embarrassing, because who does that?”
In a state where White men dominate most political positions — from Congress to governor to the state legislature — Hyde-Smith has been the first, and often the only woman, in her political roles. In 2018, she became the first woman to represent Mississippi in either chamber of Congress. She was the first woman to be elected state senator in her district — first as a Democrat, then as a Republican — a seat she held from 2000 to 2012, when she was elected as the state’s first female commissioner of agriculture and commerce.
Green grew up as “a big country kid,” and was just a preteen when Hyde-Smith took the helm as agriculture commissioner. She’s always looked up to Hyde-Smith for being the first woman in that role, she said. Green, who is majoring in both political science and the wildlife, fisheries and agriculture program, has toyed with the idea of following in Hyde-Smith’s footsteps as agricultural commissioner.
“We do get a rep as a state that is so anti-woman with some of our past and some of our laws that we used to have,” Green said. “It’s just so amazing that we have a woman in the Senate, it means a lot. For it to be Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith means even more to me.”
But, between a string of compliments, Green admitted Hyde-Smith has made some “questionable” remarks, and has a tendency to say things that are easily taken out of context. That was on full view during her first campaign for the Senate.
In March 2018, after longtime Sen. Thad Chochran stepped down due to health concerns, then-Gov. Phil Bryant appointed Hyde-Smith to fill the vacant seat. That November, Hyde-Smith ran in a special election against Democrat Mike Espy, who had served as a representative from Mississippi’s 2nd congressional district from 1987 to 1993 — he was the first Black Mississippian to serve in Congress since Reconstruction — and then as U.S. secretary of agriculture under the Clinton administration.
The 2018 race went to a runoff, giving a Democrat a fighting chance in red Mississippi. However, the historic nature of the race was soon eclipsed by controversy when a video surfaced of Hyde-Smith at a campaign event in Tupelo.
“If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be in the front row,” she said of a cattle rancher standing beside her. Hyde-Smith later categorized the remarks as an “exaggerated expression of regard,” but it landed sorely in the Blackest state in America that faced the most lynchings of any other state.
The runoff gave Mississippi Democrats a jolt, and with the hanging comment in the national spotlight, an Espy victory might have also signaled a Mississippi on the brink of closing a dark chapter of the state’s history for good. Major donors to Hyde-Smith’s campaign like Google and Walmart asked to be refunded.
Hyde-Smith won the runoff anyway with a 7-point margin.
Green shook her head when she got a mailer from the Espy campaign recently that featured the Hyde-Smith’s now-infamous quote. With Mississippi’s history of lynching it got taken out of context, she said, but she also felt the response to the senator’s comment confirmed for people both inside and outside of the state that Mississippi hadn’t progressed.
“They don’t know the Mississippi that I know, and that so many love and adore,” Green said. “And when things like that happen it’s easy to say, ‘Oh look, they haven’t changed one bit.’”
Espy and Hyde-Smith are squaring off again, this time during a presidential election in the middle of a pandemic, which has made voting even more challenging.
Mississippi is the only state that offers in-person voting on Election Day as the only option for all voters, according to the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of 75 civic organizations. Absentee voting is the closest Mississippi has to early voting, which is surging in other states. Those who will be away from their home county on Election Day, residents over the age of 65, and disabled people can vote absentee. This summer, state lawmakers also allowed for anyone under — or caring for someone under — a physician-imposed quarantine to vote via absentee ballot.
More than 190,000 Mississippians have requested absentee ballots in this election, with 142,591 of them received by the state as of Oct. 25. The state is far ahead of the 103,000 absentee ballots counted in 2016. Secretary of State Michael Watson said 113,000 new voters registered before this election.
Julie Wronski, a political science professor at the University of Mississippi, said in an email that most people in Mississippi will still vote in person on Election Day, but that the lack of a mask mandate at polling places will help depress turnout in a state that already sees low numbers because of hurdles to voting.
And that could be particularly detrimental to Espy’s campaign. Wronksi says that in general, the voting breakdowns in Mississippi are based predominantly upon race rather than gender — most White people are Republicans, and most Black people are Democrats. Espy’s campaign may be banking on what it’s called a “secret weapon”: a data set of 100,000 Black voters who have not voted since they cast a ballot for President Barack Obama in 2008. Espy lost the runoff by almost 66,000 votes.
“My sense is that turnout matters for Espy’s chances this year,” Wronksi said. “Things need to align really well for demographic groups most supportive of Espy to turn out in droves. The presidential race, and more nationalized politics, seems to be driving general enthusiasm.”
Exit poll data from the 2018 special election showed that, overall, Hyde-Smith trended better with male voters, and Espy better with women. Fifty-eight percent of White women voted for Hyde-Smith two years ago compared to 93 percent of Black women, who voted for Espy. There is no exit poll data from the runoff.
Kim Robinson, 46, said that Hyde-Smith lost ground with her as a Black woman with the public hanging comment, and also her subsequent remarks about voter suppression: In 2018, video surfaced of Hyde-Smith saying it’s a “great idea” to make voting “just a little more difficult” for liberal folks.
“As women, we’ve been suppressed for a long time,” Robinson said. “I no longer looked at her being elected as a milestone because she was pro so many things I was against. When you talk about lynching and public hangings, those are very sensitive to people that are Black. So, to say that it was a joke or something that you can say in jest, to me, was insulting. I felt insulted as a woman that this was the person that would represent, put forth the best in Mississippi.”
Robinson likes Espy as a candidate. She feels that he listens to the needs of Mississippians, especially around the health care coverage gap. Espy wants to expand Medicaid; Hyde-Smith does not.
Health is at the forefront of Robinson’s mind, including in her voting plan, as someone at higher risk of contracting the coronavirus due to pre-existing conditions. She says she thought about going to vote early via absentee at the courthouse, but her daughter, who will be returning from basic training with the Army, will be voting in her first presidential election this year. Robinson wants to share that moment with her.
“Even though I am high risk, I will go out there with my PPE,” Robinson said.
Robinson votes in Hinds County, which is home to Jackson, Mississippi’s capital. Over the weekend, video on social media showed voters in long lines outside of the county courthouse waiting to cast their absentee ballots. Seventy-seven percent of Hinds County voted for Espy in the 2018 runoffs.
Espy has been able to capture national support in a way that Hyde-Smith has not. In the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, Espy raked in $1 million. An analysis by Mississippi Today says Hyde-Smith’s campaign raised less than $3 million through the beginning of October, amounting to less money raised during the 2020 campaign cycle than any sitting U.S. senator who isn’t retiring.
Karen Augustus, 47, a native of Greenville who now calls Texas home, wants to see the entire Senate swing back to the Democrats. She is one of the out-of-state donors who added to the surge in Espy’s funds. She’s familiar with Espy as a “force” within Mississippi politics, and she likes his record of longtime work with farmers in the Delta, where she’s from.
Augustus also recognizes the history Hyde-Smith made as her home state’s first woman in Congress, but the senator’s views on abortion and her public support of Confederate history turn her off. It’s important to have women in these spaces, Augustus added, but it has to be the right woman, with the right ideology.
“I think where she and I kind of have anything in common is gender — I think that ends it,” Augustus said. “For me to go out and give my money to Espy, it was bigger than just, ‘Oh, he’s going to be the first Black senator [from Mississippi]. Not only is he going to make history, he’s the right man to make the history.”
Anne Twitty, 40, a history professor at the University of Mississippi, found herself in “abject terror” as she filled out her absentee ballot with the “Byzantine” instructions the state provided. The professor will be out of town on Election Day, which qualifies her for voting absentee.
A couple weeks ago she got her ballot, opened it up, glanced over the pages of instructions, and immediately felt like her stomach had jumped into her throat. As a teacher, Twitty said, so much of her life is dedicated to providing the clearest possible instructions to her students. So when the absentee ballot application and the ballot itself, each of which have to be notarized and mailed back separately, came in a single envelope along with long paragraphs of instructions, she was frustrated.
A notary had to witness Twitty fill out her ballot, and both of them had to sign across the flap of the envelope. She knew that she would set aside the time to find a notary and mail everything in before the election, but, she wondered, did it have to be this hard?
“All these people who, you know, are trying their hardest to do their civic duty, and it’s just made really difficult for them,” Twitty said. “Voting should feel good.”
But Twitty just feels mad. It’s a sharp contrast to two years ago, when Twitty said she was “really, really fired up.” She canvassed for the Lafayette County Democratic Party, personally knocking on 400 doors. Espy had come close, but still ultimately fell short, so she’s delighted that he’s running again against Hyde-Smith, whom Twitty considers to be an “absolutely ludicrous candidate.” In recent weeks, Hyde-Smith emerged on the campaign trail after near radio silence. She’s refused to debate her opponent, and in at least one instance she walked out of a scheduled media interview.
“She doesn’t ever seem to really know anything,” Twitty said. “And she won’t debate Mike Espy, again, because I think … she doesn’t have any command of the policies.”
She hopes her vote makes it safely in the mail. With no ballot tracking in the state, her best bet is to call her circuit clerk’s office and ask if they’ll confirm receipt.
“That’s yet another thing that I, an individual voter, need to do,” Twitty said. “In 2020, it’s hard enough to remember to do even the basic things. We’ve all got so much on our plates. This entire process just gets that much harder during a pandemic.”
Twitty takes some relief in the fact that for the first time ever in Mississippi, circuit clerks have to notify voters who filled out absentee ballots incorrectly and give them an opportunity to rectify their vote with a “cure form.” Within a day of a ballot being rejected, voters are supposed to receive notice about the error, and must return an absentee cure form within 10 days of the election.
Watson, Mississippi’s secretary of state, implemented the “cure” rule after being sued in August for not expanding absentee ballot access or clarifying guidelines on voting during a pandemic. The lawsuit has since been dismissed, but Watson also expanded curbside and open-air voting to those exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19, including — but not limited to — coughing, vomiting, headaches, fever, sore throat, congestion or loss of taste or smell.
The named party in the lawsuit against Watson is Cynthia Parham, a 51-year-old Black woman from Oxford living with her 62-year-old husband who suffers from pulmonary disease. Parham herself also lives with heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and has undergone five heart bypass surgeries and has two stents in her heart. “These health conditions put us at higher risk of contracting, suffering severe complications, and potentially dying from COVID-19,” she wrote in a declaration to the court. Despite all of this, Parham doesn’t qualify to vote absentee. Voting is extremely important to her — people have died for this right — but there’s high risk.
“If I cannot vote by absentee ballot, I will have to decide whether to vote in person – risking my health and my husband’s health – or not at all,” Parham wrote. “To not vote would be devastating to me.”
The League of Women Voters Mississippi is one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit brought forth by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Christy Wheeler, the co-president of LWVMS, penned a declaration on behalf of her organization, which primarily serves women over the age of 55.
“Current Mississippi law will disenfranchise thousands of voters — including many of our LWVMS members — if it is not modified to allow citizens to vote safely by absentee ballot during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Wheeler wrote.
In an interview with The 19th, Wheeler was pleased with Watson implementing the “cure” rule, but she remains aggravated that his office refused to make a mask mandate a requirement for voting. A FAQ on the secretary of state’s website says voters will not be denied entry to their polling place for not wearing a face mask. In a press conference on October 27, Watson said it is a constitutional right to vote, but voters cannot be forced to wear a mask. Poll managers have to wear face protection, however.
“To me that’s just another form of voter intimidation,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler, who at age 72 has already cast an absentee ballot in person at the circuit clerk’s office, is channeling her energy toward expanding voting in Mississippi during the 2021 legislative session — COVID is not going away any time soon. She said that folks nationwide are angry with the current administration for failure to control the pandemic, and that’s true in Mississippi, too. The governor recently let the statewide mask mandate lapse, and has begun putting it back in place piecemeal in counties with surging cases.
This anger, Wheeler said, may make for an even more engaged electorate in a year featuring a historic Senate race.
“I think that the race is even closer now than it was two years ago,” Wheeler said. “And I think the impassioned people are going to the polls … for a variety of reasons. One, they just don’t want to give up their right to vote.”
This year marked Green’s first time voting in a presidential election. Two weekends before Election Day, she drove three hours from Mississippi State University in Starkville to Lamar County in the southern part of the state. As a student, Green fits into one of the narrow requirements for voting absentee in person in Mississippi.
“I got in there and got it done and left on cloud nine,” Green said. “I love celebrating our constitutional rights. I can’t wait to one day actually do it on Election Day.”
In addition to voting for Republican leadership, locally and nationally, she was also excited about some of the amendments on the ballot that she believes will move Mississippi forward. She voted in favor of Amendment 2, which would eradicate a Jim Crow-era provision of the state constitution that requires statewide candidates to win both the popular vote and the most votes in the majority of the House districts. Green also said she voted in support of the state’s proposed new flag design. Earlier this year, lawmakers voted to remove the Confederate emblem from the flag’s canton. Mississippi was the only state in the nation with such insignia in its flag.
“I was so excited to see the flag change, Green said. “I was really active on my social media about encouraging it and informing people.” Green said she engaged with family members who felt the flag change was an affront to their heritage. She wanted them to understand the flag wasn’t a good image for the state. You can still acknowledge the past, while progressing toward a better future, she said.
Green considers herself to be a free thinker, who educates herself on the issues, even if she ultimately decides she doesn’t agree with the Republican Party in the end. She thinks it’s a part of being a young Republican, especially in the college setting. For instance, she thinks Amy Coney Barrett is “fabulous,” but she also thinks Mitch McConnell’s decision to rush the vote was hypocritical, even if he did so while acting within the boundaries of his job. “It doesn’t mean there wasn’t egg on our face for what we did back in 2016 as a Republican Party preventing President Obama from filling a Supreme Court seat,” she said.
By similar logic, she doesn’t hold it against Hyde-Smith for changing parties in recent years. Political views are something that can change over time, and that can mean something as drastic as a party switch, Green reasoned.
Still, Green takes issue with Espy, less because he’s a Democrat and more because she finds him untrustworthy. As U.S. secretary of agriculture, Espy resigned over an interrogation into accepting improper gifts. Although indicted for the offense in 1997, Espy was acquitted of all charges.
Despite being an unabashed Hyde-Smith supporter, what matters most at the end of the day to Green is seeing Mississippi cared for in Congress.
“Say he were to win, and he gets in there and he is putting Mississippi first, that’s all I ask for from a candidate,” Green said. “We already get belittled and put last on the list by so many, but on a national scale we need somebody who’s going to go in there and make sure we’re taken care of. And if he gets the job done, then I will be more than happy.”
Democratic U.S. Senate challenger Mike Espy greets a supporter while canvassing the Valley North subdivision on Oct. 23 in Jackson.
VICKSBURG — Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy, facing long odds in defeating incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, was recently reminded during a campaign stop in Warren County that he had overcome long political odds before.
During a weekend rally in the parking lot of the Greater Grove Missionary Baptist Church, Vicksburg Mayor George Flaggs recalled how a Jackson television station had first reported on election night in 1986 that Espy had been defeated in what was his history-making campaign to become the state’s first African American U.S. House member since Reconstruction.
“But Warren County had not been voted, had not been counted,” Flaggs said. “(The television reporter) had to apologize” after Espy received enough votes in Warren County to carry him to victory against three-term Republican incumbent Webb Franklin.
Of the reversal, Espy told the crowd assembled outside the church, “I’m not saying God is a Democrat or a Republican, but God is good.”
Flaggs intermittently led the crowd in chants of “Go vote,” before adding, “We can do this. Let nothing stop you on Nov. 3.”
While an African American has won the 2nd District U.S. House seat every election since Espy first won it, there was skepticism in 1986 about whether a Black Mississippian could win a seat in Congress. Time and again, past candidates had come up short. Espy faces the same skepticism as he attempts to become the first Black Mississippian elected to statewide office as a U.S. senator.
But on the cool and overcast day where light mist was still occasionally falling, a small but enthusiastic crowd of about 75 showed up in the church parking lot wearing masks and socially distancing to hear from Espy. They believe Espy can make history again.
“I love Mike Espy,” said Lily Fae Pierre of Hinds County, who came out for the rally and was a vocal cheerleader as Espy spoke. “It is time for Mississippi to prove it is not so backward.”
Espy will begin a bus tour of the state on Wednesday, starting at 9 a.m. at the auditorium of the Boys and Girls Club in his hometown of Yazoo City. It is scheduled to end Sunday afternoon. Hyde-Smith also reportedly plans a campaign bus tour of the state this week, but information on the event was not immediately available.
Before speaking to the crowd this past weekend in Vicksburg, Espy did a live segment on MSNBC from the church. His segment was cut short because of a rally by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Espy was still able to appear briefly on the national cable news network between a speech by Biden’s wife, Jill, and Joe Biden. The short interview resulted in campaign contributions of more than $125,000 from across the nation before Biden left Vicksburg Saturday.
While Espy was campaigning over the weekend, incumbent Hyde-Smith was in Washington, D.C., as she and her Republican colleagues prepared to vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Hyde-Smith, who returned to Mississippi after Monday’s vote to confirm Coney Barrett, is one of the few incumbent U.S. senators up for re-election this year who chose not to debate her opponent.
“That is not disrespecting me. It is disrespecting you,” Espy told the crowd.
While Hyde-Smith might not be debating Espy, she recently made sure Mississippians remembered that just as Espy has broken down racial barriers, she has done the same in terms of gender.
“First woman to be elected state senator in my district, first woman to chair the Mississippi Senate Ag Committee, first woman to be elected Mississippi Ag commissioner, first woman to be elected to Congress from Mississippi,” she recently tweeted. “I’ll never stop working to move Mississippi forward.”
Meanwhile in Vicksburg, Espy looked back on his bouts of asthma in the 1950s growing up in segregated Yazoo City with the death from an asthma attack in 2019 of Houston resident Shysteria “Shy” Sharder Shoemaker. She was transported first to the hospital in Houston to receive treatment only to learn that the emergency room had been closed. Shoemaker died before she received the treatment she needed in another northeast Mississippi town.
In the 1950s, Espy was rushed to the hospital for Black Mississippians in Yazoo County because of an asthma attack. He was near death because the hospital, started by his grandfather in the 1920s, was out of oxygen canisters. But his father rushed to the white hospital in town and successfully pleaded for an oxygen canister. Espy said that effort by his father saved his life.
Espy went on to tell the crowd that a Black child in Yazoo City had access to better emergency room care in the 1950s than many Mississippians — of all races — do today because of the closure of rural hospitals. He said expanding Medicaid to provide coverage to Mississippians who work in low paying jobs where health insurance is not provided would help to solve the problem by providing a source of revenue for rural hospitals.
Espy cited past U.S. senators from Mississippi for their area of expertise. He said in the 1960s-70s, James Eastland was known for his influence of federal judicial appointments, while during the same time period John Stennis was known for his efforts to site Ingalls Shipbuilding on the Gulf Coast. Later, Thad Cochran was known for his efforts to improve agriculture in the state.
“I want to be the father of Medicaid expansion in Mississippi,” Espy told the crowd.
