Turmoil as 'white Republican bastion' in Mississippi turns mostly Black
It seemed to her like the city could use her accounting expertise, but she was uncertain if a young Black woman could be a viable candidate in Ward 1, an area long known as Jackson’s “white Republican bastion.”
“I knew that if you’re gonna run against a white Republican in a ward like this, you’re gonna have to have your A-game,” she said.
In an attempt to convince Barnes, her campaign manager and friend sent out a poll in late December, asking frequent voters in the ward if they were satisfied with the incumbent Ashby Foote, the founder of a financial services company who was elected to the council in 2014 as a Republican and has not faced a serious challenger since.
Over half of respondents said they would consider somebody else, Barnes said.
Now, as Ward 1 residents start voting for the June 3 general election, Barnes and fellow challenger, independent Grace Greene, are creating stiff competition for Foote who is also running as an independent.
The hotly contested race reflects what political observers and ward residents have known for years now: Northeast Jackson is not quite the “white Republican bastion” it once was.
In 2024, Ward 1 was recorded as having 1,000 more Black residents than white, a ratio of nearly 50% to 45%, after redistricting prompted by the 2020 census. That same year, the ward voted overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump during the presidential election.
To be sure, Ward 1 is still the city’s whitest ward, home to influential Republican donors who live in some of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the state. And these voters carry greater weight in municipal races, where turnout is lower, a trend that historically favors the affluent and conservative. In this year’s Democratic primary, Ward 1 recorded the highest voter turnout in the city – 30% versus 23% citywide – leading some pundits to cry Republican interference.
Jackson's demographics by U.S. Census block group
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Ward 1 is economically diverse, with some of Jackson’s biggest mansions as well as several apartment complexes.
But many of the ward’s civically engaged residents, regardless of race, political party or the nexis of the two, are united by shared interests, such as preserving property values in an area that has not suffered as much as other parts of the city from population loss, crime or divestment but where there is financially more at stake.
“I’m gonna go back to: We need help,” Madeline Cannon, a Ward 1 resident for nearly 60 years, said as she was leaving a candidate forum at the Briarwood Presbyterian Church last week. “Right now, I’m looking for a leader. I am a Democrat. I’ve been a Democrat all my life. But we’re just looking for a leader.”
For residents, their relationships with their council person matters much more, Cannon said, than political party.
Greene said she recently experienced this firsthand at a meet-and-greet at the Country Club of Jackson hosted by a friend who is involved with the neighborhood association. Greene was prepared for residents to ask her questions about Rodney DePriest, a white businessman who is running as an independent candidate for mayor.
Instead, Greene said nearly everyone wanted to know if she knew Horhn, who had just secured the Democratic nomination.
“Then some of the people who were coming up to me, introducing themselves to me were like, ‘We’ve already spoken to John Horhn about this, we’re doing this … or we worked with John for years about this or he’s been supportive about this in the Senate, whatever business or philanthropic thing these people had worked on, and it was very obvious they had good relationships with him and a respect for him,” she said, “and like, in their minds, it was almost settled, even though we had a general election.”
When Jackson adopted a mayor-council form of government and created the city’s seven wards 40 years ago, Ward 1 voters elected a Democrat. But ever since 1993, when insurance agency president Derwood Boyles stepped down, Ward 1 has been represented by a Republican.
Political scientist Steve Rozman, a retired Tougaloo College professor who lived in north Jackson for years, has a few possible explanations for why northeast Jackson became and has remained the whitest, wealthiest and most conservative part of the city.
Jackson was developed as a segregated city, and Rozman speculated the city’s desirable land was close to the Pearl River. Indeed, one of Jackson’s most premier neighborhoods, Eastover, was developed in 1949 by Leland Speed Sr., a former mayor of Jackson, on a horse farm on low-lying land near the river.
“Whites set up on the land that they regarded as best in the area,” he said. “A lot of the Black neighborhoods historically have not been near the Pearl River. With the municipal water system, maybe it was advantageous under more primitive conditions to be near water.”
As the 20th century wore on, factors like redlining, higher property values and significant opposition from racist white people would have kept Black Jacksonians from purchasing homes in the city’s northeast until the 1990s and 2000s, Rozman said.
Today, northeast Jackson is home to large apartment complexes near County Line Road and I-55 as well as a growing Hispanic population, a diversity that Barnes said people don’t often acknowledge. Instead, folks still tend to associate northeast Jackson with its tennis courts, private schools and gated neighborhoods.
“I don’t know if it’s like a perception thing,” she said.
Jasmine Barnes, 32, joined others vying for mayor and city council seats to voice their positions and answer questions from the public during a Meet the Candidates forum held Tuesday evening, May 27, 2025 at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson.
In reality, the ward’s demographics represent a marked shift from 1992, when Ward 1 was 92% white, according to the Northside Sun.
Back then, Ward 1 was one of three majority white wards in the city, along with wards 4 and 6 in southwestern Jackson. But by 2000, before the city had even received the final Census tally, Ward 1’s councilperson, Ben Allen, was telling his constituents that would no longer be possible.
“It would be very difficult for us to get three white wards, unless some fancy gerrymandering goes on,” Allen told the Northside Sun.
Come 2002, redistricting dropped Ward 1’s white population to 76%, according to newspaper archives. The balance would shift again in 2010, to 55.9% white and 39.7% Black.
With the exception of a few closely contested special elections, the ward has remained a Republican stronghold this century, as Democrats often failed to field any candidates. But when they did, the race could be close: In 2014, Foote was elected by a little over 100 votes against construction attorney Dorsey Carson. It was technically a nonpartisan special election, and Carson, a Democrat, reportedly “strayed from discussing his political affiliation,” while Foote emphasized his conservative values.
Now the sole Republican on the council, Foote said when it came time for him to participate in drawing new ward lines last year, he didn’t do so with his reelection chances in mind in part because the process did not affect his constituency’s racial balance.
Of the couple thousand voters that Ward 1 had to give up, Foote said they were about 50-50 Black-white.
Instead, Foote said his goal was to keep the shape and cohesiveness of Ward 1 “in a way that made logical sense and not get gerrymandered into something that looks like a lizard or whatever.”
Ward 1 city council candidate Ashby Foote, 73, joined others vying for city council seats and the Mayor's office, voicing their positions and answering questions from the public during a Meet the Candidates forum held Tuesday evening, May 27, 2025 at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson.
The distant cousin of author Shelby Foote moved to Jackson in 1980. In 1999, he bought a home with his wife on Calnita Place, close to Jackson Academy — a feature Foote said he didn’t appreciate at the time because his children attended other schools, but has since come to see as protecting his property values.
Plus, the cul de sac was good for his dog, Skip, a Jack Russell mix.
“Your dog’s life expectancy goes up,” Foote said jokingly.
As she has canvassed the ward, Barnes said she’s loved walking through the neighborhoods close to Jackson Academy.
“I was like, man, this is a really cool community, and I just kind of love that aspect of kids walking by themselves because they feel safe enough to do that,” she said.
That’s not the only similarity between Democrat and Republican in the Ward 1 race. When Barnes reads news articles about the city, she often ends up finding herself asking the same questions as Foote about financial transparency and accountability.
“Jackson is in a vulnerable position, but we’re not a vulnerable city,” she said. “We have a lot that we can do internally to build our credibility, build our leverage first, and then we can go out and seek other resources.”
Foote noted that if he were to lose reelection, the lack of a Republican on Jackson’s city council would not impact the issues of the day.
“It’s not really about Republican values or Democrat values,” he said. “It’s really about let’s get the roads fixed, let’s make sure we have running water, let’s make sure the garbage is picked up, and let’s make sure we do it in a cost efficient manner.”
At the same time, Foote has touted in campaign materials that he is endorsed by the Hinds County Republican Party. He said his first run for office was financed by a generous donation from Billy Mounger, an architect of the state’s GOP who was good friends with Foote’s father.
Greene, an entrepreneur who has worked as a doula, an online reseller, and an economic developer in Peru, said she chose to run as an independent so that residents of Ward 1, regardless of their political affiliation, will know she supports them.
Greene moved to the ward in 2020 with her family after looking at homes in Belhaven, Fondren and LOHO, the neighborhood just outside of Eastover. They landed on a home in Heatherwood in part because it had an attached garage, a feature the older homes in Fondren lack.
Grace Greene, 43, joined others vying for city council seats and the Mayor's office, voicing their positions and answering questions from the public during a Meet the Candidates forum held Tuesday evening, May 27, 2025 at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson.
Plus, she wanted to raise her kids, who are enrolled in Jackson Public Schools, in a diverse environment, a decision she has talked about with other white residents during the campaign.
“There was somebody in the neighborhood who knew me from childhood and he made a comment about the changing demographics of the neighborhood. He said how initially he thought it was going to be a negative thing, but it just turned out to not be a negative thing. I just told him, I said, ‘Well that was a positive to us when we moved here,’” she said during an interview at her office in Highland Village.
Greene also noted that everyone in the ward is impacted by the city’s actions, regardless of whether they live in an apartment or a gated community. For instance, she said she had two kids in diapers with no trash pick up for 18 days in 2023.
“That was a leveler across the city, cause no matter where you lived, no one had trash pickup, and we all had to figure out what to do with this,” she said. “And the fact that there was truly, really no explanation to the citizens as to why this was happening? There was no response when we reached out about it.”
Another leveler? When it’s the state versus Jackson, that includes the Republicans who live here, too.
Foote shared a story about the controversy surrounding the Smith-Wills Stadium. At one point, frustrated by what he characterized as a lack of transparency from the city administration around a deal to forgive $500,000 in past-due rent from the stadium’s vendor, Foote said he asked Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office for an opinion on whether the vote the council took to do so was legal.
Even though Fitch is a fellow Republican, Foote said her office told him it would be a conflict of interest to opine on his question, since Fitch is representing the state in its fight to take the stadium.
