Taylor Vance, Mississippi Today

Two former Democratic candidates in Mississippi will be running for office under different affiliations.

Ty Pinkins, a former Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in 2024, announced recently that he would run as an independent candidate for the U.S Senate in 2026. Shuwaski Young, a former Democratic candidate for Congress and Mississippi secretary of state, announced that he will campaign as a Republican for secretary of state in 2027.

The announcements from the two politicians come in an election cycle where the Democratic Party is trying to make inroads in a state dominated by Republicans.

Pinkins, a Rolling Fork native, unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker in 2024.

The Delta resident in a recent blog post attributed the lack of support from the state Democratic Party and Democratic officials as part of the reason for his poor performance. Pinkins wrote that certain party leaders were “gatekeepers” who attempted to block him from advancing in politics.

“Gatekeeping is how the party protects its fragile status quo — by silencing anyone who might disrupt it,” Pinkins wrote. “Candidates who challenge convention or dare to ask hard questions are often ignored, undermined, or outright punished.”

If he qualifies to run for the seat, he will challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who has announced she is running for reelection and has the endorsement of President Donald Trump.

Scott Colom, a state prosecutor in the Golden Triangle area, is considered a likely candidate in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, but he has not publicly announced his plans.

Young, a Neshoba County native, has worked in various roles at the California Democratic Party, the Department of Homeland Security under President Barack Obama's administration, and the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office under former secretaries Eric Clark and Delbert Hosemann.

The Democratic Party nominated Young for secretary of state in 2023, but after the Daily Journal and Secretary of State Michael Watson’s office raised questions about Young’s residency, he withdrew from the race due to medical reasons.

Other candidates who are considering running for secretary of state are Republican state Sen. Jeff Tate of Meridian and Republican state Sen. Joel Carter of Gulfport. Current Secretary of State Michael Watson has not announced his plans, but is widely considered a top contender for lieutenant governor.

Candidates for U.S. Senate and other congressional offices can begin qualifying in January, and candidates for Mississippi’s statewide elections can begin qualifying for those offices in January 2027.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

When representatives of Alcorn State University, one of the oldest historically Black colleges in the state, came to the Capitol recently to recognize Hiram Revels’ importance in Mississippi history, members of the House of Representatives offered a round of applause during the presentation.

The special recognition came after the majority-GOP House unanimously passed a resolution honoring Revels, a Natchez resident, the first president of Alcorn State and the first Black person to sit as a member of Congress in Washington.

“In 1868, Revels became a delegate to the Mississippi State Republican Convention where he played a pivotal role in advocating for the rights of freedmen and ensuring their participation in the political process,” Democratic Rep. Gregory Hollaway of Hazelhurst said in his remarks about the groundbreaking figure.

Legislation pending in that same chamber could honor Revels more prominently. Yet, House leadership has declined to advance it out of a committee and will likely let it die, as they have for the past several years.

Rep. Robert Johnson III, the Democratic leader, authored a resolution to replace Mississippi’s two statues of Jefferson Davis and J.Z. George in the U.S Capitol’s National Statuary Hall Collection with statues of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer and Revels.

Johnson told Mississippi Today he is open to other replacements or other proposal to replaces the statues.

House Rules Chairman Fred Shanks, who could advance the measure, told Mississippi Today last year he would consider legislation to replace the statues during the 2025 session, but he recently said he does not plan to address the issue this year.

“There hasn’t been a lot of talk about it,” Shanks said. “The big thing leadership is pushing this year is tax cuts.”

Each U.S. state is allowed to place two statues of people “illustrious for their historic renown” or “distinguished civil or military services,” after Congress passed a federal law in the mid-nineteenth century establishing the national collection.

Some Democratic House members who participated in the event honoring Revels noticed that the measures to install a statue of Revels in Washington have stalled during the session.

“It would speak volumes about our state racially and historically if we honored him with a statue in Washington,” Democratic Rep. Grace Bulter-Washington of Jackson said of Revels.

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, also let two Senate measures that would have replaced the statues in the U.S. Capitol die in his committee.

Mississippi remains an outlier for its statues, even among other Southern states. The Magnolia State is currently the only state in the nation to honor two Confederate leaders in the National Statuary Hall Collection.

Several Southern states have replaced their original statues with more inclusive figures.

Alabama replaced a statue of Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry, a Confederate officer, with one of Helen Keller, a political activist and disability rights advocate.

Florida approved a measure to replace Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith with Mary McLeod Bethune, a civil rights activist and founder of a Florida university.

Arkansas replaced statues of Uriah Milton Rose, a Confederate sympathizer, and James Paul Clarke, a former U.S. senator, with statues of civil rights activist Daisy Bates and musician Johnny Cash.

But Mississippi, whose leaders often fret that the rest of the nation does not recognize the state for its many contributions to music, literature, and civil rights activism, continues to honor the legacy of people who fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy during their day.

Both Davis and George were leaders of the Confederacy, and their vivid racism is well documented.

Davis served in the U.S. House and Senate from Mississippi before becoming the first and only president of the Confederate States of America, which fought to preserve slavery. Davis later said in a speech to the Mississippi Legislature that if he had the chance to change his past actions about secession, he would not do anything differently.

George was a member of Mississippi’s Secession Convention in 1861, and he signed the secession ordinance that included these words: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world.”

George served in the Confederate Army and was also the architect of the 1890 Constitution that sought to reestablish white supremacy in the state and disenfranchise Black citizens from voting or holding elected office.

Mississippi’s legislative leaders could easily replace the two statues, as many Southern states have done.
To change a statue, federal law requires a majority of lawmakers in both legislative chambers to vote to approve the replacement, and the state is required to pay for the costs of replacing the two statues.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola over the weekend rejected a challenge by the Republican National Committee and others to Mississippi’s practice of counting mail-in absentee ballots received up to five days after Election Day.

Guirola, a senior-status judge first appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, ruled in a 24-page opinion that the political parties had legal standing to bring the suit, but disagreed with their claim that Mississippi’s statute clashed with federal law.

“Mississippi’s statutory procedure for counting lawfully cast absentee ballots, postmarked on or before election day, and received no more than five business days after election day is consistent with federal law and does not conflict with the Elections Clause, the Electors’ Clause, or the election-day statutes,” Guirola wrote.

The state and national Republican parties, a Harrison County election commissioner and the state Libertarian Party were the plaintiffs in the litigation and argued that Guirola should strike down Mississippi’s five-day window because only Congress gets to determine regulations for federal elections.

Conor Woodfin, the attorney representing the GOP, and Rusell Nobile, an attorney representing the state Libertarian Party, did not immediately respond to requests for their response to the ruling and whether they plan to appeal it to the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The law in question is a 2020 state law passed by the Legislature amid the COVID-19 pandemic that allows local election workers to process mail-in absentee ballots for up to five days after an election. The law only permits workers to count the mail-in votes if the ballots were postmarked by the election date.

Both chambers of the GOP-majority Legislature voted in favor of the bill, and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed it into law.

The suit put Secretary of State Michael Watson, the named defendant, in the peculiar situation of arguing with his own political party in federal court and defending a law passed by a Republican-supermajority Legislature by using attorneys from Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office.

The litigation comes at a time when voter confidence in elections is at an all-time low and when candidates have started to dispute election results more frequently.

If the plaintiffs appeal the litigation, a prompt resolution before November’s presidential and congressional election would be vital. The appellate process is lengthy and time-consuming, and different rulings from the district and appellate courts could lead to voter confusion.

Mississippians can request an absentee ballot application starting September 6, and the earliest day they can vote by absentee is September 23, according to the secretary of state’s elections calendar.