Mississippi House Rep. Price Wallace Dies at 64

Mississippi House Rep. Price Wallace, a Republican from Mendenhall who supported reinstating the ballot initiative as chairman of the House Constitution Committee, died on Wednesday at age 64.

“As Chairman of the House Constitution Committee, he led on landmark legislation such as restoring the Ballot Initiative that the House passed numerous times. He believed in restoring the constitutional right for Mississippians to have a fair and accessible means of influencing state policy,” Mississippi House Speaker Jason White said on social media Wednesday night.

Wallace served the 77th district in the House since 2018, representing Rankin and Simpson counties. He was elected to succeed the departing Andy Gipson who was selected as the state’s agriculture commissioner. Gipson said Wallace was “a good man and he will be missed” in a Wednesday social media post.

Wallace had a ballot initiative bill in 2025 that passed in the House Constitution Committee, but he ultimately decided not to bring up for a full House floor vote because he said the legislation had “some issues” on the House side and would not gain the necessary votes to reach a three-fifths majority. He said he also thought the Senate would bring up a bill addressing the ballot initiative but the body ultimately did not.

“I’m not going to change nothing on the ballot initiative bill next year. I’m going to bring out the same exact bill and just work in the off-season with my colleagues and with the speaker to try to drum up some support and see what the heartburn was with it,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on March 18, 2025.

Mississippi voters previously had the right to collect signatures to put issues that mattered to them on the ballot for Mississippians to decide whether to amend the state Constitution through the citizen-led ballot initiative by gaining signatures in all of the state’s congressional districts.

But Mississippi’s population declined in the 2000 census, and the state lost a congressional district. For about two decades afterward, secretaries of state, including current Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson, interpreted the law to be valid as long as petitioners garnered signatures from each of the former five congressional districts as the lines existed before the 2000 redistricting.

However, the Mississippi Supreme Court stripped the ballot initiative from Mississippi law in 2021 after the City of Madison filed a lawsuit against Initiative 65, a ballot initiative that a majority of voters adopted in 2020 to legalize medical cannabis. In a 6-3 vote, the Court ruled that Initiative 65 was invalid because the state no longer has five congressional districts and thus nullified the ballot-initiative system entirely.

The Legislature has failed to pass a ballot initiative restoration bill in the five Legislative sessions since the state Supreme Court’s decision.

Wallace also supported restoring the right to vote for people convicted of felonies that are on the disenfranchising crime list. In Mississippi, people are banned from voting for the rest of their lives, even after release from prison, if they commit any of the 23 disenfranchising crimes. The law dates back to 1890 when white lawmakers adopted Jim Crow laws designed to disenfranchise Black voters.

Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus, sponsored a bill in 2025 to restore voting rights to those formerly incarcerated people. While Wallace said he supported the idea, he told the Mississippi Free Press he did not bring up the felony disenfranchisement voting rights restoration bill for a House floor vote because it did not have enough support to meet a three-fifths majority vote.

PHOTO: https://www.mississippifreepress.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IMG_5010.jpg
CAPTION: Price Wallace was elected to the Mississippi House in 2018 to represent the 77th district, succeeding Andy Gipson, who left to serve as agriculture commissioner. File Photo courtesy Rep. Price Wallace

ALT TEXT: A closeup of Price Wallace, wearing a tan suit and matching cowboy hat

“There wasn’t no need trying to get out on the floor and argue it. I had some House members that just had issues with it. We’ll try again next year,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on March 18, 2025.

Along with being the chairman of the House Constitution Committee, he also served on the House’s committees for Agriculture; Apportionment and Elections; Conservation and Water Resources; Public Property; Transportation; Ways and Means; Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks

Wallace was also an election commissioner and poultry farmer in Simpson County and an advocate for Mississippi’s agriculture. As a member of the Church of Mendenhall, he was “helping lead our board, greeting you at the door with a smile and a bulletin every Sunday to grilling burgers for our youth,” the church said in a Wednesday night Facebook post.

Wallace apologized in November 2020 for calling for secession on social media after Joe Biden won the presidential election.

“We need to succeed from the union and form our own country,” he wrote on Nov. 7, 2020, misspelling “secede.”

Wallace tweeted out the apology days later, after the Mississippi Free Press reported on his comments, along with several national news outlets. He also sent the apology to Mississippi Free Press News Editor Ashton Pittman, whom he unblocked, in a direct message on Twitter.

“I truly love the USA and Mississippi and would never support any idea of seceding from the union. I am extremely sorry for my comment. It was inappropriate and in no way represents the will of my constituents or myself,” the representative wrote. “I humbly ask for forgiveness for my poor lack of judgment.”

Mississippi House Rep. Fred Shanks, a Republican from Brandon, who shared a desk with Wallace on the House floor, said his deskmate was a “stand up man who you could always count on to come through in a pinch!”

“One of the first people I met coming into the legislature along, with (Rep.) Kevin Ford, since we all sat together they were my first line of defense!! He will be greatly missed! If anyone has ever asked (sic) reached out to me on an agricultural question, since I’m a concrete cowboy, I can promise you that Price was the one who ultimately answered it! He was the real deal!” Shanks posted on social media on Wednesday night.

Gov. Tate Reeves mourned Wallace’s death in a Thursday morning social media post.

“Price was a good man and the one thing about him that always stood out to me – he was some one who loved people and he just had a big heart,” Reeves posted. “He loved his family, he loved Simpson county, and he loved serving the people of Mississippi!”

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