Besides court-ordered special elections slated to take place later this year, five special elections will take place due to state lawmakers leaving their posts for other elected offices or retirement from the Legislature.
Two of those vacancies will be due to lawmakers winning mayor’s races and three are retirements.
Gov. Tate Reeves will have 30 days after the lawmakers officially leave their positions to call a special election, and counties where the election will take place must be given 60-days’ notice before the election.
If Reeves was to wait the full 30 days to announce those elections, it would put the election around mid-September. He could also set it for November, when other special legislative elections are slated to take place.
Below is what you need to know:
The House of Representatives meets in chambers to address the budget during a special session at the Capitol in Jackson on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. The Mississippi Legislature agreed on a $7.135 billion budget deal, but Gov. Tate Reeves called a special session to work out details.
Special session: MS Senate pushes through bills to approve $7 billion budget and end special session. See details
Lawmakers leaving Legislature for mayor’s office
At the conclusion of the June 2 municipal elections, two state lawmakers, Sen. John Horhn of Jackson, and House Rep. Orlando Paden of Clarksdale, both won their mayoral races. That means that as of July 1, their legislative districts will be without a lawmaker.
Horhn has represented Senate District 26 for more than 20 years, and Paden has been represented House District 26 since 2016. Both are Democrats.
Lawmakers leaving Legislature for retirement, personal reasons
As of Thursday, last week, the number of state senators announcing departure from the Legislature for personal reasons had grown to three.
The announcements came on the heels of a heated regular session that saw both Republican and Democrat fights and infighting among Republican leadership in the House and Senate.
Sen. David Parker, R-Olive Branch, said in a social media post he was leaving the Legislature to support his wife and local eyecare business in Olive Branch.
Parker, who was slated to run in a special election thanks to court-ordered legislative redistricting, also cited the death of a personal friend and business partner as being related to his decision to retire.
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“Their passing has served as a profound reminder of the limited time we are each given and has further reaffirmed my decision to focus more intentionally on my family and the next chapter of life,” Parker wrote in a June 5 Facebook post.
Parker most recently had been serving as the chairman of the Accountability, Efficiency and Transparency Committee, where he spearheaded several initiatives.
Notably, he tried several times to push through legislation that would have placed the management of Jackson’s water system in the hands of water board authority with leadership consisting of local and state appointees.
In 2022, the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant, which treats water for much of Jackson and surrounding cities for drinking, bathing and cooking, completely failed after the Pearl River flooded due to heavy rainfall. The ensuing crisis caused repeated outages for the city’s 150,000 residents who went days and weeks without water to drink, cook, bathe or flush toilets.
The United States Justice Department, as a result, stepped in and appointed Ted Henifin to oversee the system, and he subsequently created the management organization JXN Water. Currently no concrete timeline exists on when the federal government will relinquish control of the city’s water utility, but it is slated to end sometime in 2027.
Parker is joining two other state senators, John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, and David Jordan, D-Greenwood, who both announced retirement earlier this year.
Polk on the Senate floor during the 2025 regular session told his colleagues and members of the public that he was retiring due to personal and health reasons.
Polk, a member of Senate leadership, had been in office since 2012. He chaired the Business and Financial Institutions Committee and co-chaired on the Appropriations Committee.
Jordan announced his retirement from the Legislature during the May 28-29 special session. He chaired the Enrolled Bills Committee.
Jordan has been in the Legislature since 1993 and said he would officially retire around the end of June.
Other special legislative elections
Other than the five previously mentioned seats now being up for grabs, there will be 14 special elections, thanks to court-ordered redistricting.
In 2022, the NAACP filed suit against the State Board of Election Commissioners after the Legislature approved a redistricting plan that diluted Black voting power.
Earlier this year, the lawsuit concluded and some districts were redrawn, resulting in several special elections slated to take place later this year.
The qualifying period for those races has ended and state parties have until Friday, June 13, to verify their candidates.
Grant McLaughlin covers the Legislature and state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Lawmakers leaving Legislature for retirement, local elected office