Mississippi voters in the 1st Congressional District will choose one of three candidates to represent them in Congress in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. Use this guide to learn about candidates’ backgrounds and policy views.
U.S. Rep. Trent Kelly, Republican
Background: Incumbent Republican U.S. House Rep. Trent Kelly is a Saltillo, Mississippi, resident and University of Mississippi law school graduate. He is an Iraq War veteran and the assistant adjutant general for the Mississippi National Guard.
The representative serves on the U.S. House Armed Services Committee and is the chairman of the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee under the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, which he also serves on. He is on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and serves as chairman of the Defense Intelligence and Overhead Architecture Subcommittee.
In 2023, Kelly voted to direct House committees to continue investigating whether or to impeach President Joe Biden related to his son Hunter Biden’s business deals.
He is a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, and the congressman voted in favor of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, House Resolution 1.
The law cuts $5 trillion in taxes, cuts the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program, adds work requirements for Medicaid enrollment that could cut millions off the program, and increases funding for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and Trump’s deportation efforts.
“I proudly voted for the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a win for the American people that delivers on President Trump’s promises to secure the border, cut taxes and strengthen our national defense,” Kelly posted on social media on July 3, 2025.
He cosponsored the Ship-building and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security (SHIPS) for America Act, in 2025 revitalize the United States shipbuilding and commercial maritime industries,” an April 30, 2025, press release from his office says.
The Mississippi representative also voted to raise the federal debt limit until January 2025; limit non-defense funding for the 2024 fiscal year; rescind unspent COVID-19 relief funding; cancel some Internal Revenue Service funding; increase the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program; simplify energy projects’ environmental reviews; and to stop the student loan debt repayment pause in August 2023.
Kelly voted against the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023, which was legislation intended to protect abortion access in every state. He cosponsored H.R. 705, the Heartbeat Protection Act in 2022, which would enforce a nationwide abortion ban once a baby’s heartbeat became detectable at around six weeks of pregnancy. The bill died in committee during the 2022 legislative session.
Kelly also voted against a $1.7 trillion government-funding bill that included $600 million to help address the Jackson water crisis. Despite Kelly’s nay vote, Congress passed the bill and President Joe Biden signed it into law in December 2022.
Policy Views:
- Opposes new gun restrictions
- Supports a federal six-week abortion ban
- Wants to protect Social Security and Medicaid
- Opposes student debt relief
- Supports more work requirements for SNAP and TANF
Website: trentkelly.house.gov
Social Media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook
Cliff Johnson, Democrat
Background: Cliff Johnson lives in the rural Springdale community of Lafayette County with his wife and pets. He graduated from Mississippi College and Columbia University’s law school.
He is a civil rights attorney and the director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law.
At the MacArthur Justice Center, Johnson supervises litigation and instructs students who participate in the MacArthur Justice Clinic. His work includes efforts to reform the criminal legal system, where he aims to improve addiction and mental health services and lift people out of chronic poverty, an Oct. 2 press release says.
During the Clinton administration, Cliff Johnson served as an assistant U.S. attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he prosecuted healthcarehealth-care fraud cases in Mississippi’s federal courts. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services honored him with the Inspector General’s Integrity Award for his work as an assistant U.S. attorney.
He also practiced law at private Mississippi law firms, including Butler Snow and at Pigott & Johnson.
“As Mississippians, we were taught that we are measured by how we treat those around us who are struggling and need help,” Johnson said in an Oct. 2, 2025, press release. “But in Washington, too many career politicians have forgotten those values and callously bury Mississippi families under a heaping pile of oppressive policies that make life harder rather than easier.”
In 2023, Johnson and other lawyers challenged a state law that would have allowed the Mississippi Supreme Court’s chief justice to appoint unelected judges to majority-Black Hinds County’s circuit courts and that created a state-run municipal court system. The lawyers represented three Jackson residents who were plaintiffs in the case.
He called the law, passed under House Bill 1020, “radical legislation that unconstitutionally packs the Hinds County court.”
The Mississippi Supreme Court agreed that the special circuit court appointments were unconstitutional, but allowed the creation of the state-run municipal court.
As a civil-rights attorney, the campaign press release says that Johnson has worked to shutter debtors’ prisons that illegally jailed poor people who could not pay misdemeanor fines, including in Corinth, Jackson and Moss Point. It notes that he also helped end Mississippi’s unconstitutional practice of jailing Mississippians for months and years without an attorney.
If voters elected him to serve in the U.S. House, Johnson promises to help fight inflation and reduce costs of groceries and gas. He aims to make healthcare more affordable and accessible.
Policy Views:
- Wants to enact policies to reduce inflation and cut costs
- Aims to expand access to affordable healthcare
- Hopes to secure federal money for economic development, infrastructure and struggling schools in Mississippi’s first congressional district
- Promises to protect constitutional rights and make sure every vote counts
Website: cliffjohnsonforcongress.com
Social Media: Facebook | X | Instagram | TikTok
Johnny Baucom, Libertarian
Background: Johnny Michael Baucom is a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who works as an environmental specialist.
He proposes ending EU Deforestation Regulation that is “raising our timber prices and making our homes cost more to build” and advocates for lowering the price of timber so Americans can build homes more affordably. The Libertarian candidate promises to fight to “end the war on marijuana” and advocate for cannabis research.
“I truly believe that we need more people that were born and raised in the struggle of Mississippi to be the people that represent us,” Baucom said in a Feb. 6 Facebook post. “We’ve all been paying attention to the news, we see what’s been happening to our nation. We know the legislation being passed does not benefit the working class American, and it does not align with what we, as American citizens, expected from our government as tax paying citizens. I will represent reform, less government, less taxes, and changes to our industries that just make sense.”
He also advocates for reforming “our immigration policies and (updating) the technology involved in its processes, so we can better offer a hand to the needy, without it being bitten by nonconformity.”
Priorities:
- Wants to Lower timber prices
- Plans to “End the war on Marijuana” and advocate for more research
- Aims to reform our immigration policies
- Proposes cutting taxes
No website publicly available.
Social Media: Facebook
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