Given the low turnout in this month’s McComb primaries, there may not be many people interested, but here are the four contested races on the city’s June 21 general election ballot:
MAYOR: Incumbent Quordiniah Lockley, winner of the Democratic runoff, faces independent Michael Cameron, currently the Republican selectman for Ward 2.
SELECTMAN AT-LARGE: Tabitha Felder Isaac, who also won her Democratic runoff Tuesday, faces Republican Jay DeSoto. Residents of all five wards vote for this seat.
WARD 1, west McComb: The four people on the ballot are Democrat Ed Silence, Republican Tommy McKenzie, a former selectman, and independents Jay Wilson and David Stewart.
WARD 2, central: Democrat Lynn Martin faces Republican Matt Codding.
And here are the three people already assured of joining the new city board in July:
WARD 3, east: Terri Waterman-Baylor is the winner.
WARD 4, south: John Bates is the winner.
WARD 5, northeast: Bruce Mullins is the winner.
The most interesting thing about the election is that whomever wins the mayor’s race will be working with six brand-new selectmen. That has got to be a rare occurrence for any city or county board.
Of the four contested races, mayor and Ward 1 will get the most attention.
In the mayor’s race, I look forward to hearing the visions for the city from both Lockley and Cameron, to see where they are different and similar.
In Ward 1, the drama may come from the fact that there are four candidates. This could mean that the winner gets less than a majority of the votes.
Underlying all of this is the indifference of voters so far.
At least one Democratic candidate said before the runoff that only party members should pick its nominees. But Mississippi does not require voters to choose a party affiliation when they register.
And more to the point, the low turnout means that a lot of potential voters, Democratic or otherwise, simply ignored the primaries.
It’s been like this for a long time. I checked the numbers for the past four elections. This year, turnout for the primaries was about 1,350. In 2018, turnout for the Democratic primaries was even lower at 1,160.
But that was because there were some Republican primaries that year. This year there were none, meaning anybody who wanted to vote in the first round had to do it in the Democratic primary.
In 2014 there were less than 1,000 voters in the Democratic primary because there were only three contested races. In 2010, there were no city-wide primaries at all.
You have to go back to 2006 to get a big turnout for a primary, when Zach Patterson got elected. About 2,700 people voted in that primary.
General election turnouts were a lot higher than the primaries — above 2,000 voters in 2010, 2014 and 2018. We’ll soon see how next month’s numbers compare.
– / – / –
On another topic, I feel obliged to salute the final episode of the NBC TV show “This Is Us,” which ends its six-year run Tuesday night.
It is a story about the ups and downs of a closely knit family over many years, and it is the one of the best television shows I’ve ever seen.
Mary Ann and I were late to the party. She suggested we watch it after its fourth season had ended. We used the Hulu streaming service to catch up, often watching two episodes a night. It was that good.
I hesitate to say too much about the show in case anyone decides to watch it from the beginning. But one of the main storylines this season has been the descent into Alzheimer’s disease of the family matriarch, Rebecca.
You may remember Mandy Moore, who plays Rebecca, from her pop music days in 1999 and 2000. One of the biggest surprises in “This Is Us” is how she carried the show, playing the character from her 20s to her 80s. Who would have thought?
Last week, Rebecca was near death, moving through a passenger train in her mind toward the caboose — the end.
In one car, she met a favorite character who summed up her life, and her ability to overcome tragedy, like this: “And still, what a thing you made of it all. What a big, messy, gigantic, spectacular thing.”
Everybody who heard that understood it. I sure did.
