Democrat Joe Biden won the Central District of the Mississippi Supreme Court by a comfortable margin of 220,405 votes to 193,785 votes against Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
While he lost the 2020 national election, Trump won Mississippi by an equally comfortable margin of 756,764 votes to 539,393 votes. But the central district was a different story.
In high-turnout elections, especially presidential elections, the central district is often a Democratic stronghold.
It’s a safe assumption that Vice President Kamala Harris will lose the state of Mississippi in November but do as well, if not better, than Biden in the central district.
And if Harris plays a strong role in the 22-county Central District, that should bode well for Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens, who is currently campaigning for a third term on the state’s highest court that covers the aforementioned district. represents.
What may be the easiest way for Kitchens to win reelection is to convince voters in the central district that he is more aligned with Harris than his main and best-financed opponent, state Sen. Jenifer Branning, R-Philadelphia.
Ceola James, a former Mississippi Court of Appeals judge, and Hinds County private practice attorneys Byron Carter and Abby Gale Robinson are also running for the Central District seat.
If no candidate receives a majority of votes on November 5, a runoff will take place between the top two votes. Kitchens’ best chance to win the seat is in the primary election on November 5, when all Harris voters go to the polls. A runoff election for a Supreme Court race days before the Thanksgiving holiday is the definition of a low-turnout race.
Mississippi isn’t expected to see many competitive races this election cycle, but the Supreme Court race in the Central District stands out. It is also vital. Supreme Court justices have significant influence over many aspects of the state.
Kitchens, a former prosecutor, and fellow Central District Judge Leslie King are not as conservative as the other seven justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court. Some might describe Kitchens as a middle-of-the-road lawyer, while others might argue he’s a liberal.
In any case, a non-conservative name is less likely to hurt him in the Central District than in other parts of the state.
The problem Kitchens could face is communicating his credentials and philosophy to voters.
Legal races in Mississippi are nonpartisan, and candidates have more restrictions on what they can say during the campaign. And frankly, voters often don’t pay attention to judicial races.
Although judicial races are nonpartisan, this does not mean that political parties cannot endorse candidates. Branning has the support of the Republican Party of Mississippi.
Branning, who was elected to the Senate in 2015, currently chairs the Transportation Committee. She has been one of the more conservative members of the Senate and has touted her conservatism during her campaign.
In the Senate, Branning voted against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the design in 2020 and earlier this year voted against expanding Medicaid to provide health insurance to the working poor. In 2023, she voted against a measure that eventually became a law allowing women to stay on Medicaid for 12 months after giving birth, instead of 60 days.
In TV commercials, she bills herself as “a constitutional conservative.” Kitchens’ first television commercial followed Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann’s approach by turning the ad into a play on his name. His wife claims in the commercial that he needs to be at the Supreme Court to keep him out of her kitchen.
Whether a cute commercial and a district stacked in his favor will earn Jim Kitchens a third term on the state’s highest court remains to be seen.
This analysis was produced by Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization covering state government, public policy, politics and culture. Bobby Harrison is Mississippi Today’s senior Capitol reporter.
