Mississippi Today
State Republican Party raises fees for candidates to run for some public offices
If Mississippians want to qualify to run for state office as a Republican, they'll first have to open their wallets wider than ever.
Mississippi Republican Party leaders voted last year to increase candidate qualifying fees, the amount a candidate has to pay to run for office, to the maximum amount allowed under state law for all federal, statewide and regional offices in the state.
Mississippi GOP Chairman Frank Bordeaux told Mississippi Today the fee increase is comparable to the figure the Republican Party in other states requires for their candidates to run for office.
“This increase is a way for us to make sure we can continue to provide quality resources to our Republican nominees,” Bordeaux said.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, opted to keep their fees the same as prior years.
Qualifying fees for all political offices, regardless of party affiliation, were previously spelled out in statute. But state lawmakers in 2022 voted to give political parties a range for how much they can charge candidates and allow the party leaders to choose the specific amount.
The minimum fee parties can charge gubernatorial candidates, for example, is $1,000, and the maximum amount is $5,000. The Democratic Party opted to keep their fee at $1,000, while the GOP decided to raise the fee to $5,000.
New GOP candidate qualifying fees:
- U.S. Senator: $5,000 (previously $1,000)
- U.S. Representative: $2,500 (previously $500)
- Governor: $5,000 (previously $1,000)
- Other statewide offices: $2,500 (previously $500)
- Transportation Commissioner: $2,500 (previously $500)
- Public Service Commissioner: $2,500 (previously $500)
- District Attorney: $250 (unchanged)
- State Legislature: $250 (unchanged)
Republican state Sen. Joey Fillingane of Sumrall argued in favor of the 2022 legislation during the legislative session and said at the time that the main reasons for the new law was to give parties more latitude to conduct their primary elections and ensure only serious candidates run for office.
“I think we had a situation not too long ago where maybe a truck driver put his name on the ballot, didn't campaign, didn't really run,” Fillingane said. “He was running his 18-wheeler truck and ended up winning a major party primary for a major office in Mississippi. And I think you can argue that was a direct result of having extremely low filing fees in that particular race.”
Fillingane was referring to Robert Gray, a truck driver who won the 2015 Democratic nomination for governor and was handily defeated by former Republican Gov. Phil Bryant.
Opponents of the recent legislation believed higher qualifying fees could bar candidates from running for office and deter a competitive democratic system.
The final version of the bill passed the House 84-31 and the Senate 33-10. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed it into law.
Bordeaux doubted increased fees would keep candidates from entering the Republican primary because serious candidates are usually able to raise larger amounts of money. He pointed to the state's recent gubernatorial election, when the Republican and Democratic nominees for the office collectively raised over $17 million this past year.
This is now the first time under the new law that the state Republican Party has raised its qualifying fees. The new fees will primarily impact the Mississippi's U.S. Senate race next year, when incumbent U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker is up for reelection.
Wicker, a Tupelo resident, has previously announced he's running for reelection. But two lower-profile candidates, Republican state Rep. Dan Eubanks of DeSoto County and retired Marine Col. Ghannon Burton, announced they intend to challenge Wicker in the Republican primary.
The qualification period for the U.S. Senate, according to the Secretary of State's website, opens on Jan. 2 and closes 10 days later on Jan. 12.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi
Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
MAY 20, 1961
A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them.
“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled.
After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders.
“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled.
As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.”
The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood.
“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.”
To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
2024 Mississippi legislative session not good for private school voucher supporters
Despite a recent Mississippi Supreme Court ruling allowing $10 million in public money to be spent on private schools, 2024 has not been a good year for those supporting school vouchers.
School-choice supporters were hopeful during the 2024 legislative session, with new House Speaker Jason White at times indicating support for vouchers.
But the Legislature, which recently completed its session, did not pass any new voucher bills. In fact, it placed tighter restrictions on some of the limited laws the state has in place allowing public money to be spent on private schools.
Notably, the Legislature passed a bill that provides significantly more oversight of a program that provides a limited number of scholarships or vouchers for special-needs children to attend private schools.
Going forward, thanks to the new law, to receive the vouchers a parent must certify that their child will be attending a private school that offers the special needs educational services that will help the child. And the school must report information on the academic progress of the child receiving the funds.
Also, efforts to expand another state program that provides tax credits for the benefit of private schools was defeated. Legislation that would have expanded the tax credits offered by the Children's Promise Act from $8 million a year to $24 million to benefit private schools was defeated. Private schools are supposed to educate low income students and students with special needs to receive the benefit of the tax credits. The legislation expanding the Children's Promise Act was defeated after it was reported that no state agency knew how many students who fit into the categories of poverty and other specific needs were being educated in the schools receiving funds through the tax credits.
Interestingly, the Legislature did not expand the Children's Promise Act but also did not place more oversight on the private schools receiving the tax credit funds.
The bright spot for those supporting vouchers was the early May state Supreme Court ruling. But, in reality, the Supreme Court ruling was not as good for supporters of vouchers as it might appear on the surface.
The Supreme Court did not say in the ruling whether school vouchers are constitutional. Instead, the state's highest court ruled that the group that brought the lawsuit – Parents for Public Schools – did not have standing to pursue the legal action.
The Supreme Court justices did not give any indication that they were ready to say they were going to ignore the Mississippi Constitution's plain language that prohibits public funds from being provided “to any school that at the time of receiving such appropriation is not conducted as a free school.”
In addition to finding Parents for Public Schools did not have standing to bring the lawsuit, the court said another key reason for its ruling was the fact that the funds the private schools were receiving were federal, not state funds. The public funds at the center of the lawsuit were federal COVID-19 relief dollars.
Right or wrong, The court appeared to make a distinction between federal money and state general funds. And in reality, the circumstances are unique in that seldom does the state receive federal money with so few strings attached that it can be awarded to private schools.
The majority opinion written by Northern District Supreme Justice Robert Chamberlin and joined by six justices states, “These specific federal funds were never earmarked by either the federal government or the state for educational purposes, have not been commingled with state education funds, are not for educational purposes and therefore cannot be said to have harmed PPS (Parents for Public Schools) by taking finite government educational funding away from public schools.”
And Southern District Supreme Court Justice Dawn Beam, who joined the majority opinion, wrote separately “ to reiterate that we are not ruling on state funds but American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds … The ARPA funds were given to the state to be used in four possible ways, three of which were directly related to the COVID -19 health emergency and one of which was to make necessary investments in water, sewer or broadband infrastructure.”
Granted, many public school advocates lamented the decision, pointing out that federal funds are indeed public or taxpayer money and those federal funds could have been used to help struggling public schools.
Two justices – James Kitchens and Leslie King, both of the Central District, agreed with that argument.
But, importantly, a decidedly conservative-leaning Mississippi Supreme Court stopped far short – at least for the time being – of circumventing state constitutional language that plainly states that public funds are not to go to private schools.
And a decidedly conservative Mississippi Legislature chose not to expand voucher programs during the 2024 session.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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