OPINION: Horhn leads Lumumba in the field of Democrats, but voter questions remain

On the evening of April 1, it was announced that Mississippi State Senator John Horhn received 11,909 or 48% of the votes in the Democratic Primary compared to incumbent Mayor Chokwe Lumumba’s 4,124 or 17%. All other mayoral candidates received a total of 8,769 votes. 

That 48% places Horhn at the front of the pack, with Lumumba as his opponent for the April 22 run-off. A run-off is required because no candidate received 50% + 1, which is needed to be declared the Primary winner. 

Horhn’s 48% victory is quite impressive, being 48% of the 24,802 votes cast in the Democratic Primary. At the same time, this 11,909 vote total is only 10% of the number of registered voters in Jackson (111,543) and less than 10% of the city’s total population (143,709). An even smaller percentage is reflected in Lumumba’s numbers. The vast majority chose neither. This suggests a lot of work must be done before either Horhn or Lumumba can legitimately claim to be “the people’s choice.” 

The fact that a candidate can win office with such small percentages of the electorate is not an indictment of the candidates. But it does speak volumes about us as a society. Based upon these numbers, who knows what is the true will of the people. Citizens need to become more demonstrative when it comes to such societal matters, if they want to, in fact, be a true democracy. 

Beyond that, another set of statistics of note is the nature of the primary voting in east and northeast Jackson. According to several other news media outlets, Jackson Republicans hatched a plan whereby Councilman Ashby Foote would run as an independent, freeing his supporters to vote in the Democratic Primary, and key Republican officials would counsel Republicans to vote in the Democratic Mayoral Primary. Apparently, many followed up and voted for mayor in the Democratic Primary. 

The idea behind this strategy reportedly was that since in all likelihood the next mayor will be Black and a Democrat putting Republican support behind the candidate appearing most supportive of Republicans’ interests would be most beneficial to Republicans.

Obvious is that the precincts that are basically white and Republican are those in east and northeast Jackson. These precincts voted overwhelmingly for Horhn. The figures for 12 of those precincts show Horhn surpassing the rest of the field 4,186 to 1,865, with one precinct’s tabulation being as lop-sided as 441 for Horhn and only 75 for all other mayoral candidates. Nearly half of Horhn’s votes (5,514) came from those two basically white and Republican wards. 

While many take the position that all is fair in love and war, one can now only wonder what the election results might have been if news media reports about the Republican plan preceded the election. A similar Republican plan was thwarted several years ago when Jonathan Lee ran as a Democrat against Chokwe Lumumba because it was detected early in the game. This time the plan was not publicized prior to the election. Knowledge now of this type of plan should serve as a lesson in the future.

A second area to question is the matter of assessing the candidates on their familiarity with and ideas about addressing the critical issues facing Jackson. There were too many candidates for each to have an opportunity to make an adequate or comprehensive presentation on each issue, even if he or she had the capacity to do so. In the face of such a challenge, many candidates simply repeated phrases they thought would be acceptable or would persuade voters. Consequently, it appears each mayoral candidate garnered votes based upon what the voters felt they knew about that candidate prior to the political forums, not on the issues. 

Is it surprising then that most of the mayoral candidates received only a small number of votes? The voters did not have time to fully learn where they stood on the issues.

The council candidates faced the same problem. There were so many until there was little opportunity for voters to get to know them. 

Is it surprising that each incumbent councilperson – Montyne “Tina” Clay, Kenneth Stokes, Brian Grizzell, and Vernon Hartley – was handily re-elected? Many people were already familiar with them. In that regard, Jasmine Barnes clearly stood out as a candidate in the absence of an incumbent in her race in Ward 1. 

There will be run-offs in the other wards. There were no incumbents running in Wards 6 and 7. In Ward 6, Emon Thompson will face Lashia Brown-Thomas. In Ward 7, Kevin Parkinson will face Quint Withers.

As the campaigning for municipal offices continues, hopefully the community will become more familiar with where Horhn and Lumumba have been in terms of their past records, and currently are on their plans to lead the city on such critical issues as the infrastructure, crime and safety, economic development, protecting and improving municipal properties and services, and significantly increasing city revenue. 

On one hand, we as members of the community have not been very demanding of specifics from the candidates. On the other hand, the candidates have not had ample opportunities to present their records and their positions on all these issues. Hopefully, both inadequacies will be dealt with between now and April 22nd.