Daniel Sparks Announces Bid for Mississippi State Auditor

JACKSON, Miss.—Mississippi Sen. Daniel Sparks, D-Belmont, recalls his first memories of politics as an 8-year-old watching then-President Ronald Reagan speak about missiles and “good versus evil” using charts and graphs on television in the 1980s.

“It was, you know, very plain even for an 8- to 10-year-old that watched that in awe,” the senator said at a Mississippi State University Stennis Institute press forum at Hal and Mal’s in Jackson, Mississippi, on Aug. 31. “But it was also the communication capabilities that he had. Whether you agree with him on policy or not, you knew where he stood, and you enjoyed the fact that he would engage and he would communicate. And a lot of that may have come out of his background. So, he came out of acting, I came out of preaching, but yet we still stand up here and talk quite a bit.”

Sparks is running for state auditor in the 2027 election, a role he says he is suited for due to his extensive expertise in tax law, economics and accounting. He joins Republican Nick Bain in the auditor’s race. The incumbent state auditor, Shad White, is not term-limited but has yet to announce his future plans.

The son of a preacher and a third-grade teacher, Sparks earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and economics, a masters in tax and a law degree from the University of Mississippi. He works as a lawyer while also serving Senate District 5, which includes Prentiss, Tishomingo and Itawamba counties.

The senator recalled when he first joined the Senate right before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, he became the vice chairman of the Senate Corrections Committee. He also was thrust into tax discussions as a member of the Senate Finance and Appropriations committees. Sparks later became the chairman of the Senate Economic and Workforce Development Committee and the vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary B Committee.

“I am leaving the state Legislature and it is with mixed emotions because I love this job and I appreciate the people of Senate District 5 allowing me to serve,” Sparks said. “But with what I’ve learned with my education, with what I’ve learned with my education at the Legislature, I believe working alongside my former colleagues and serving as your next state auditor, we can do some of the things that I’m talking about.”

‘Ask Questions on the Front End’

If voters elect him to serve as auditor, Sen. Daniel Sparks said he is committed to make long-term investments for Mississippi that translate into benefits for the long run, giving the state’s improved reading scores as an example of a long-term project that has benefited the state. He outlined one problem he has with current politics: Elected officials are so focused on reelection that they may not care about long-term investments, instead wanting quicker results from short-term endeavors.

“I certainly want to ask people for their vote,” he said. “I want to tell them why I think I can be effective in a particular role. But, if we’re not careful, we run on ‘I’m not perfect, but the other guy’s worse,’ and that’s not a good position for government to be in.”

Sparks said he was disappointed in the Mississippi Department of Corrections’ low outcomes during the years he has been in office, noting that the prison system needs reforms that focus on developing workforce skills for incarcerated people so they can obtain jobs after their release from prison. He also wants to reduce recidivism and have the legal system focus on intervention courts.

He promises to be “inside Parchman” Penitentiary within 10 days of getting elected as state auditor as well as conduct a separate full performance audit of the entire Mississippi Department of Corrections.

He also argued Mississippi can prevent fraud—like the welfare scandal—from happening in state agencies by using technology and asking more questions on the front end before approving projects as outlined in a 2026 law, House Bill 1171. Sparks promised to thoroughly investigate new contracts and partnerships the State intends to make.

“We want to ask questions on the front end that makes somebody who knows they’re a bad actor say, ‘I don’t want to fill this out,’” he said. “Because I’m going to go ahead (and) tell you, some of the things that you have to do, you have to tell conflicts if you’re a grantor or grantee, but a big nice one is you have to sign your financials under the penalty of perjury and with a (certified public accountant). So, I don’t know if a CPA is going to put their license on the line. So, what we hope to do is prevent the ask, not catch it after the fact.”

He said he is particularly proud of Senate Bill 2338, a new law that extends the statute of limitations on felonious assistance program fraud from five years to 10 years so that elected officials can face legal consequences for committing fraud while in office since most terms are limited to eight years.

Sparks: Public Safety Measures Must Align With Constitution

Sen. Daniel Sparks spoke about public safety being a core function of government, noting that public safety measures must align with the tenets of the Constitution. He acknowledged that the Legislature does not always make the right choices, but lawmakers try their best to make improvements for Mississippians.

He remembered a time early in his career as a senator when he met with a mother whose daughter had been murdered and a woman who had been a victim of sexual assault. The women were asking the Legislature to pass a bill to require law enforcement to take DNA samples from every person convicted of a felony, even nonviolent arrests. While the senator acknowledged that it would solve more crimes, he voted no and defended his choice on the Senate floor because he said he believed there needs to be a “delicate” balance of the law.

“At what point has the government intruded into your life too far?” Sparks asked at the press forum. He also expressed a similar opinion toward law enforcement installing Flock cameras that use AI to record and analyze anything that passes by them in communities across the U.S., including roads and neighborhoods in Mississippi.

The 2027 election will be “brutal” due to candidates’ access to artificial intelligence for campaign advertisements and messaging, Sparks warned. It is the first election in which candidates for the top eight elected offices in Mississippi may use widely available AI programs for campaigning.

“I’ve seen a lot of people who are running for local supervisors, election commissioners—they’re using AI to make a pretty ad. I mean, there’s no problem with that,” Sparks said. “I think the AI we’re talking about is fictitiously showing someone in a photograph, a statement somebody didn’t make, a video that’s not even real. It’s unbelievable what can be created now, and a guy that’s going to be nefarious like that is probably not going to put the label on it that says, ‘This is creative AI’ because the whole point is they’re trying to fool us.”

While Sparks said he does not live next to a data center so he cannot account for noise or other nuisances, he said much of the data center discussions among opponents are “overblown.” He added that if Americans do not want data centers in their communities, “the Chinese would love to have” them all.

“I do think local units of government are going to make those decisions,” Sparks said. “It’s just like they (made) a decision with a manufacturing facility in the past. I know that in some places in this state, a chicken house is nearby, and it may not smell like money to the neighbors, but it’s been an economic driver in this state for a long time.”

‘We Owe It to’ Retirees and Employees

Before his time runs out in the Senate, Sen. Daniel Sparks said he hopes to revisit the apprenticeship program through the Mississippi Department of Labor that has received federal support. He said he was especially proud of the career coach program the Legislature enacted with the Mississippi State Workforce Investment Board and AccelerateMS, the state office for workforce development strategy.

“I do believe that we’re driving young people toward outcomes that are beneficial for them, not just letting them aimlessly move through the system that says, ‘After high school, now college,’” he said.

In the Senate, he has sponsored and worked on many reformational funding bills to help reduce the Public Employees Retirement System’s $26.5 billion debt. One such bill that became law in 2025 terminates the Supplemental Legislative Retirement Plan so that current representatives, senators and Senate President Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann would still receive “supplemental benefits” along with regular PERS benefits while legislators and Senate presidents elected after March 1, 2026, would not receive SLRP benefits.

“We did end that program, not because it is a financial barrier to PERS stability, but because it’s an impediment between the Legislature and their constituents,” Sparks said.

He also helped implement the return-to-work program so that PERS beneficiaries can come back to work and receive pay without being penalized in the retirement system. Unfortunately, the senator said, the Legislature has not been able to direct cash infusions into PERS, despite efforts to do so last year.

“The staff’s working very hard because we owe it to the retirees, we owe it to the current employees and we’re going to meet our obligation because that’s what it is,” Sparks said. “It’s a contract.”

The Deal With Debt

Sen. Daniel Sparks lamented the U.S. debt hitting $40 trillion, saying that the country did not keep up with its end of the deal in the “Contract with America”—a plan the Republican National Committee made in 1994 when the party had a majority in the U.S. House to cut taxes and reduce the country’s debt.

Mississippi cannot run a balanced budget either—generating $7.6 billion in revenue but spending about $29 billion—he added, saying that federal funds are the only reason why the State “pays the bills” and keeps state agencies running every year. The State needs to prepare for “financial hardship,” as federal dollars dwindle, the senator said. He did acknowledge that the State has paid off $1.2 billion in debt since 2020, thanks to an influx of COVID-19 related federal funding that has helped Mississippi grow its coffers, though much of that money has dried up.

“One of the biggest concerns I have going forward in the next decade in the state of Mississippi is that lesser funds coming from the federal government are going to pay the bill of the state of Mississippi,” Sparks said. “We need to be running leaner. We need to evaluate every program. We need to talk about return on investment. We need to embrace technology.”

However, he noted that while the State has had a surplus of over $1 billion over the past few years, the State has spent much of it on various projects, like $125 million to help north Mississippi towns recover from Winter Storm Fern, $250 million to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid and $100 million to build a comprehensive cancer center at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

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