Well, it’s Monday and the start of the first full week in June. I haven’t been able to shake the most recent case of the blues so I really haven’t paid attention to the outside world. Regardless, a man must carry on so let’s slap something together.
There’s something hinky going on in Tupelo. Various municipalities and counties across the state of Mississippi are holding elections for mayors, county supervisors, aldermen, and whatnot. We here at Enon Holler World Headquarter have no such constitutional obligations and, best I can tell, nothing really affects us. I seriously doubt the new mayor of Tupelo, whoever he is, will shake things up all that much and that’s about the only place we go that isn’t this hill.
Regardless, it’s Mississippi politics so, if nothing else, one pays attention for the possibility of a good, if melancholy laugh. For example, one of the places having an election is a little town an hour or so northwest of here, between Hickory Flatts and Holly Springs, called Potts Camp. There isn’t much to it, really. There are maybe 500 people there and it’s just another small town on Highway 78. There’s a high school and a Church of Christ, the inevitable Dollar General, a truck stop, and a barbecue joint that’s supposed to be pretty decent.
But what’s amusing that, in this town of 328 registered voters – beating us by 128 – twelve people are running for alderman and four are running for mayor. It isn’t unusual for small towns to have big candidate pools, mind you, but that’s usually because the incumbent mayor and/or aldermen are retiring. That’s not so in this case, though, as every incumbent is running for re-election. There seems to be some dissatisfaction in the way things are run by the challengers, so I bet those Dollar General trips are interesting. And yes, the guy who owns the barbecue joint is running for an alderman spot.
Anyhow, let’s bring this all back to Tupelo. During a campaign event this weekend, incumbent Councilwoman Nettie Davis offered up a cash raffle for voters. Basically, if you vote, you’re name goes in a bowl, and they’ll draw it out after the election. How much is donated would determine how much the raffle winner would get.
Now. This is most likely illegal. According to state law, it’s illegal for any candidate to “put up or in any way offer any prize, cash award or other item of value to be raffled, draw for, or played for or contested for in order to encourage a person to vote or refrain from voting in any election.” That seems pretty unambiguous, really. District Attorney John Weddle flipped his shit and contacted Secretary of State and bullshit artist Michael Watson to look into it.
Davis hasn’t responded to requests for statements from the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal. In a video posted on and since removed from Facebook concerning the raffle, she doesn’t encourage voting for any particular candidate. That all being said, the wording in the state code looks pretty unambiguous and ignorance of the law is no excuse. Time will tell what sort of punishment Davis will face or how this will affect tomorrow’s election, but let this be a lesson, friends and neighbors. Read the rulebook before you play the game, y’all.
Moving on. Finding time between embarrassing himself on national television by being dishonest, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has come out in support of Initiative 65 which would’ve introduced medical marijuana to the state. If you’ll recall, the state overwhelmingly passed the initiative in the November 2020 election. Out of 1.3 million voters, over 766,000 voted for it. That’s 10,000 more votes than Trump got.
Anyway, it passed but Mary Hawkins Butler, the four-decade mayor of white-flight Jackson suburb Madison, had filed a suit three days before the election against it. Her reasoning was that since the initial initiative process required signatures from the five congressional districts Mississippi had at the time. However, we lost a district after the 2000 census due to people losing the state. Hard to believe, right?
Butler’s argument was that it was mathematically impossible to get the requisite signatures with the new set up and since the initiative would take power away from cities to decide where dispensaries were placed and, most importantly, who’d get the money from it. So, the state supreme court took up the case and, back in may, ruled 6-3 against it. This effectively scuttled that initiative and, in the process, crippled the initiative process in general, robbing the voters of Mississippi of one of the few voices we have.
The legislature spent the early part of the year trying to pass something to protect against this while at the same time making sure the Proper People got their share of the profits regardless of the benefit – or lack thereof – to Mississippians. They’ve kicked around the idea of a special session to address the issue, but that lies in Reeves’s hands. So far, he won’t commit though the Senate Public Health Committee met last week to discuss how to get something going. Reeves says he supports the “will of the people,” so that’s something, I suppose.
Dear Y'all 