The tin roof of the Founder’s Square reverberated with a lot of political rhetoric this week – some of it
serious and relevant and some of it, well, not so much.

While 2024 is a presidential election year, the White House race between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic incumbent Vice President Kamala Harris has not been forecast as particularly competitive.

In the 2016 presidential election, Trump took 57.86 % of Mississippi’s votes against Democrat Hillary Clinton with 40.06 percent – a margin almost 12 % better than Trump got nationally.

In 2020, Trump took a slightly lesser percentage of Mississippi’s vote with 57.60 % of the voters but earned some 56,000 additional Magnolia State votes in that win.

Mississippi hasn’t voted Democratic in presidential politics since giving fellow southerner Jimmy Carter of Georgia the 1976 nod 48 years ago.

Incumbent Mississippi Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker faces a general election challenge from Democrat Ty Pinkins, but Wicker is expected to win re-election handily.

The state’s four U.S. House of Representatives races carry little political intrigue with all four incumbents – 1st District U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly (R), 2nd District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D), 3rd District GOP U.S. Rep. Michael Guest (R), and 4th District U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell (R) – expected to win re-election.

Since the 1994 state legislative reforms gave Mississippi the modern iteration of “nonpartisan” judicial
elections, the laws have been effectively the target of the old political wink-and-nudge.

Mississippi’s laws don’t preclude partisans from expressing support for judicial candidates. The laws do preclude judicial candidates from labeling themselves as members of a particular party, but the law says
nothing about the partisan leanings of their supporters.

Since the state’s first constitution was drafted in 1817, Mississippians have argued over whether to appoint or elect judges. In 1832, a constitutional convention fight erupted between three groups — the “aristocrats” who favored the appointment of all judges, the “half hogs” who wanted to elect some judges and have others appointed, and the “whole hogs” who wanted all judges elected.

History shows that the “whole hogs” won in 1832, and Mississippi has been electing judges ever since. Of the state’s current 545 judges from the Supreme Court to the municipal courts, only municipal judges are appointed. But Mississippi judicial races are supposed to be nonpartisan — meaning that candidates don’t run under the cloak of any political party.

As noted before, Mississippi’s “nonpartisan” judicial races are likely to remain — legally at least — as partisan as they are today.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.