Mississippi: the Land of Many Elections

By: Hannah Walker

Running for office is always a complicated undertaking. There is fundraising, strategic planning, and countless hours spent canvassing and phone banking. However, for the candidates in Mississippi’s Senate race, things just got more complicated. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) was appointed by Mississippi’s governor in April. Now, in order to hold on to her seat, she will face not one, but three challengers.

The insider challenger is Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel. The two Democratic challengers are former U.S. Sec. of Agriculture Mike Espy and Tobey Bernard Bartee. All the challengers will appear without a party affiliation.  

However, there’s a snafu: if no one wins a majority of the vote,then the top two will get to do the election all over again at the end of November.

While the race is for the U.S. Senate, the winner won’t get a standard 6-year Senate term. Instead, the winner will finish out the last two years of the term. Which mean the winner will be running 3 elections in less than 3 years.