Deborah McDonald, candidate for the Mississippi Court of Appeals, and Howard Sherman, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Roger Wicker, courted voters with promises of toughness and innovation during a lively Greenwood Voters League gathering on Wednesday.
Although the meeting was billed as an evening with McDonald, Sherman — who has recently received scrutiny for donating $5,000 last year to the Republican incumbent — turned out to be the surprise guest who aroused lots of curiosity and plenty of questions.
Sherman is one of six Democrats competing in the June 5 primary. The winner is expected to face Wicker, who has only token opposition on the Republican side, in the November general election.
Sherman, who is married to Emmy-winning actress and Mississippian Sela Ward, said he made a donation to Wicker long before he ever decided to enter the political race.
“A year ago, the idea of a Democratic senator in Mississippi was an idea nobody’d heard of,” he said. “Somebody, at that time, called us and said Chris McDaniel was going after Wicker.
“This state has a lot it needs to accomplish, and McDaniel is dangerous to progress. So in that moment, that’s what I thought was the right thing to do.”
McDaniel, a Republican state senator, has since changed contests, opting instead to run in the special election in November to complete the final two years in the term of Thad Cochran, who retired from the U.S. Senate last month.
Also questioned about where he actually lives, Sherman said that because Ward works in television, the couple lived in Los Angeles for much of the last 20 years while maintaining a family home in Meridian.
“In June 2016, we dropped our daughter off for college, and we’ve lived in Mississippi ever since,” he said.
Citing his background as a business entrepreneur, Sherman said he will bring innovative ideas to the table that will move Mississippi forward, including converting crops in the heavily agricultural Delta region to products manufactured here rather than commodities to be shipped to other countries.
Specifically, he said he’s working on bringing a corn chip company to the Delta that could employ as many as 1,000 people. He did not name the company.
Sherman said he has the ability to take on Wicker successfully for two reasons. First, he has connections to raise money outside the state, a necessity given Wicker’s large campaign war chest. Second, he said he could sway moderate Republican voters, especially women, to vote for him rather than the incumbent.
“Don’t vote for that comfortable old shoe,” he said.
McDonald, a Natchez attorney, is running to replace retiring Judge Tyree Irving. Irving, a Leflore County native who has served on the Appeals Court since 1998, sat with McDonald at the front of the room.
There is no primary in the nonpartisan judicial election, so McDonald’s name will not appear on a ballot until the November general election.
Focusing less on the role of an Appeals Court judge and more on her toughness as an attorney, McDonald said she has worked in areas of the law particularly aimed at equal representation and fair treatment for all citizens.
McDonald said she had worked on drawing voting districts to give people a fair chance at equal representation, and counted her work on behalf of wrongfully disenfranchised voters as among the most important she has done.
She cited several problems that need to be addressed by the state, including voter suppression and inaccurate census counts.
“This affects federal entitlement distribution,” she said. “It also affects how many representatives Mississippi has at the federal level.
“We used to have five representatives. Now we have four, and it could be three if everyone is not counted.”
McDonald, who graduated from law school in 1979, said things were different back then for a black woman, and she kept her head down while studying the law.
“Once I graduated,” she said, “I wasn’t afraid to sue anybody.”
Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill, at Wednesday’s meeting, said his office at the courthouse will be open Saturday from 8 a.m. until noon to accept voter registrations.
The last day to register and be eligible to vote in the June 5 primary is Monday.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
