Nearly two dozen candidates will be on the ballot for mayor in Jackson when voters in Mississippi’s capital city head to the polls for the primary election on April 1, an unofficial list of candidates the Municipal Clerk’s office released shows.
The 22 candidates include incumbent Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba, who turned in his paperwork at the office with barely a minute to spare before the 5 p.m. deadline on Jan. 31.
If re-elected, this would be the third term for the mayor. His opponents include 13 Democrats, three Republicans and five independent candidates.
Mayor Faces Trial on Bribery Charges
If re-elected for a third term, Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba could face prison or other criminal penalties as he faces a trial for federal bribery charges. He pleaded not guilty to the charges during his arraignment on Nov. 7, 2024, alongside co-defendants Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens and Jackson’s Ward 6 City Councilman Aaron Banks.
Banks is not seeking re-election this year.
A federal judge has delayed setting a trial date as attorneys for the three men review “hundreds of hours of recordings and thousands of pages of other evidence.”
Since then, the mayor has rejected calls to resign in light of the federal charges—including a proposal from Jackson City Councilman Kenneth Stokes calling on him to take a leave of absence.
The City Council rejected that proposal, with Council President Virgi Lindsay saying that it was inappropriate for the council to vote on such a proposal and adding that “a person is innocent until proven guilty.”
‘An Agenda of Social Justice, Economic Democracy’
Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba’s tenure in office began after he won the election in 2017. In the Democratic primary that year, he unseated the incumbent, Tony Yarber. The former incumbent won the office following the death of Lumumba’s father, activist and attorney Chokwe Lumumba, who died in office in 2014.
The younger Lumumba then defeated Republican Jason Wells in the general election after garnering more than 92% of the vote. At 34 years old, Lumumba was the youngest mayor to lead Mississippi’s capital city.
He declared that he would make Jackson the “most radical city on the planet,” hearkening back to the philosophy of his father, who was an activist with the Republic of New Afrika.
“We want to make Jackson an example of what government for the people can be,” Safiya Omari, Lumumba’s chief of staff who also served in his father’s administration, told The Nation in 2017.
“We were running on an agenda of social justice, economic democracy and making sure that people had a voice. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it,” the mayor said during a speech at the People’s Summit in Chicago, Ill., in June 2017.
“We have two choices,” he told the crowd.“We have a choice of economics by the people and for the people or economics by a few people for themselves. We’re demanding right now that we begin to rescue ourselves.”
‘We’re Going To Rebuild This Infrastructure’
In 2021, after a devastating winter storm that left residents without water for weeks, Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba won nearly 70% of the vote to secure a second term, beating out four other candidates.
“Not only will we rebuild our water-treatment facilities so that you have sustainable, dependable and equitable water, but we’re going to rebuild this infrastructure from top to bottom,” the mayor said during a June 8, 2021, speech after winning re-election.
Amid the crisis, the mayor made it his personal mission to “turn the eyes of the world towards the humiliation our residents have shouldered for decades,” he said during his Oct. 10 State of the City address.
Then, in 2022, the Pearl River flooded, leading to failures at the O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant that collapsed the system again—a system already marred with staffing shortages and overdue maintenance.
The weekslong water crisis and ongoing water issues thrust Jackson into the national spotlight and caught the attention of the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency issued a consent decree ordering the city to bring the water system back into compliance with the Safe Drinking Water Act. On Nov. 29, 2022, the Department of Justice issued a stipulated order and appointed a third-party manager to oversee the maintenance and rehabilitation of the city’s water and sewer infrastructure and Congress then approved federal funding to repair the water system.
On July 22, 2024, after then-President Joe Biden announced that he would not seek re-election, the mayor publicly thanked the Biden-Harris administration for its support in fixing Jackson’s crumbling water system.
The company has made “amazing strides” in that effort, JXN Water Interim Third Party Manager Ted Henifin said on Nov. 29, 2023, although some residents—including the mayor—have continued to raise concerns about the quality of the water and its future management.
Lumumba’s second term also included a nearly month-long period where residents were left without regular garbage pickup services as city officials deadlocked over which company to award the garbage contract to. That back-and-forth resulted in three emergency garbage-collection contracts and a series of lawsuits.
They avoided a repeat of that saga in 2024 after the Jackson City Council voted on March 19, 2024, in favor of awarding garbage vendor Richard’s Disposal a six-year contract to collect the city’s trash.
Lumumba has also been a vocal critic of the state’s majority-white, Republican leadership and its approach to the majority-Black, Democratic city. He has heavily criticized state efforts to take over the water system, local courts and other city-owned assets like Smith-Wills Stadium.
“The City of Jackson is the owner of that property and we will be the owner in the foreseeable future,” the mayor said during a press conference on May 20, 2024. “There is a barrage of attacks on the City of Jackson. … We have to call that what it is. It is paternalistic and it is racist.”
The Candidates Challenging Lumumba
The candidates who hope to unseat the mayor this year include Mississippi Sen. John Horhn, a Jackson Democrat. He first ran for mayor of Jackson in 2009, followed by a second bid in 2017. He lost the Democratic primary in 2017, coming in second to Lumumba.
Horhn said during his third campaign launch on Oct. 3, 2025, that Jackson residents were ready for new leadership. “Jackson is headed in the wrong direction,” Horhn, a Jackson Democrat who has served in the state’s upper chamber since 1993, told the crowd.
He listed several existing challenges in the capital city and asked the crowd to consider: “Who can best serve the interests and needs of the people? Who can bring in the resources and fix these problems?”
At a forum of mayoral candidate hopefuls in September 2024, Democratic candidate Tim Henderson cited “public trust” as one of the most pressing issues for Jackson. “I think some of our most pressing issues right now deal with public trust,” he said. “The electorate has been let down so many times until they just don’t know what direction to go in or how to do it.”
At the same forum, radio host Kim Wade, who is running as an independent, said Jackson needs a mayor who will work well with other officials to get things done. “You’ve got to have a vision that supersedes all the pettiness,” he said.
The 2025 Candidates for Mayor of Jackson:
Delano Funches (Democrat)
James E. Hopkins (Democrat)
LaKeisha L. Crye (Democrat)
Albert Wilson (Democrat)
John Horhn (Democrat)
Marcus Wallace (Democrat)
Ali M. Shamsiddeen (Democrat)
Zach Servis (Independent)
Rodney DePriest (Independent)
Kourtney Christopher Page (Democrat)
Tim Henderson (Democrat)
Wilfred Beal (Republican)
Lille Stewart-Robinson (Independent)
Socrates Garrett (Democrat)
David Archie (Democrat)
Kim Wade (Independent)
Kenny G (Republican)
James “Blue” Butler (Democrat)
Ponto Ronnie Downing (Republican)
Keyshia E. Sanders (Democrat)
Chokwe A. Lumumba (Democrat)
John Olver Emmerich III (Independent)