As the youngest of seven kids to a single father, Carl Boyanton worked a string of blue collar jobs from a young age to help support his family. He was born into poverty in Memphis, Tennessee, and says he grew up “dirt poor” in Picayune, Mississippi. As a child, he attended Pearl River County public schools, and his first job was at 8 years old. At 12, he worked as a foreman to help provide for his family.
When injuries prevented him from serving in the U.S. Army, he pivoted and worked his way up in the business industry, eventually moving to Seattle and taking a job as a laborer at Charlie’s Produce.
Boyanton lived in Seattle for over two decades, where he said he helped grow Charlie’s Produce from a small company with a million dollars in sales into a billion-dollar business enterprise.
Eventually, he decided he wanted to return to his home state of Mississippi to raise a family.
“My family’s number one,” Boyanton said. “That’s why we came back to Mississippi.”
After returning to Mississippi, Boyanton started the business Farmed Fresh for Mississippi, a nonprofit that aims to deliver fresh, nutritious food to families in need.
Boyanton said pursuing a political career hadn’t been a goal for him until his brother, Richard Boyanton, ran against U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker in 2018 in the Republican primary and got 17% of the vote. After seeing his brother’s success, Boyanton was inspired to pursue a political career of his own.
In the past three federal election cycles, he ran for Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District as a Republican. Now, Boyanton is running as the independent candidate to represent the district.
Boyanton spoke with the Mississippi Free Press via video call on Sept. 22 and Oct. 22 to discuss his policy positions and why he thinks Mississippians should vote for him to serve as representative for the state’s 4th Congressional District when they cast their ballots on Nov. 3.
Economic Growth and Affordability
As a businessman who has lived and worked across the country, Boyanton said he recognizes the importance of investing in small cities and towns throughout South Mississippi.
“We have, throughout America, small cities and towns, rural cities and towns that are going bankrupt,” Boyanton said. “You can see how investments in these small towns like Bay St. Louis—I grew up down here, we went to Bay St. Louis a lot and there was nothing there, but you can see how you can actually build a great city. We can do that here in Mississippi, we can actually do it all over the country.”
If elected, Boyanton hopes to leverage his connections in the business world and the produce industry to help bring economic growth to Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District and the state by bringing more businesses to South Mississippi.
Boyanton highlighted his work with farms and processing plants as positioning him to drive economic growth and help bring more jobs to Mississippi.
“For one, our electricity, our water, our infrastructure, everything is so much cheaper than most everywhere else,” Boyanton said. “Bringing jobs that pay good money is kind of what my goal is—and that’s affordability.”
He said he sees rising gas prices as one of the biggest issues when it comes to affordability, which he said he plans to lower by promoting more oil refinery construction.
“We need to get out there and start building refineries because if we can actually find more fuel, the price will go down,” Boyanton said.
Connecting Healthcare Policy With Mississippi’s Agricultural Economy
If elected, another goal Carl Boyanton highlighted is expanding access to healthcare and healthy food for Mississippians, especially rural Mississippians.
Boyanton said he wants to make Mississippi a leader in food as medicine through using prescribed produce to help manage chronic conditions like diabetes, while potentially reducing healthcare costs.
One way he proposed to do this is by expanding Mississippians’ access to fresh, healthy foods through a partnership between his nonprofit Farmed Fresh for Mississippi and Project Food Box, a national “food is medicine” program that delivers free, medically tailored fresh produce, groceries or prepared meals to eligible people and families. He said the program would work with dieticians to help connect people with chronic conditions with a structured, healthy meal plan and access to food that can help them improve their health.
“Medicaid and Medicare, veterans benefits and SNAP all try to treat what you have, but they don’t try to do it holistically and healthy,” Boyanton said. “So if you took a sliver out of Medicare and Medicaid, any of these (programs), and you were actually supplying these boxes to people, you could actually get ahead of the game and try to get people help.”
Boyanton said his goal through this initiative would be to “bring healthy fruits and vegetables to people.”
“Our goal is to actually teach people how to be healthy,” Boyanton said.
This initiative, Boyanton said, is part of a larger goal to connect Mississippi’s healthcare policy with its agricultural economy and grow the farm industry.
Recently, Boyanton said one way he’s taken steps to grow Mississippi’s agricultural economy is by working alongside Mississippi farmers to increase sales on watermelon by introducing a proprietary watermelon popular on the West Coast.
“I’m trying to get these guys to grow it here, before distribution for the companies on the West Coast, to sell them on the East Coast and the difference would be is that you’ll make more money than just selling the regular watermelon we’ve been selling,” Boyanton said.
Boyanton also hopes to expand access to medical care through telehealth, he told the Mississippi Free Press.
He said he’s been working with a group and meeting with people at the White House as part of a project that seeks to expand telehealth access through an app called Advanta, which allows people to see a doctor virtually.
“This is geared towards where that doctor is actually who you talk to, not just whatever the AI gets you,” he said.
People who use the app, Boyanton said, can receive a diagnosis and if in-person care is deemed necessary, they will be referred to a doctor or hospital for follow-up treatment.
Lowering the National Debt and Limiting Government Waste
For Carl Boyanton, stopping fraud, waste and abuse in the government is one of his highest priorities. He’s against what he calls “two-party” corruption and believes voters should have more than two choices.
“I don’t have to answer to any party boss. Both parties vote 97% with their leadership. I don’t have to,” Boyanton said. “I can answer to the voters of Mississippi.”
If elected, he promised to address what he calls “fraud, waste and abuse” in the government across a variety of sectors he believes need limits to spending.
“It’s not just the fraud, waste and abuse of the system. It’s the processes in the system, and that’s Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans—it’s the processes that are costing us even more money because of the lack of common sense,” Boyanton said. “We could probably balance that budget if you could just straighten up our system. My goal is, if I get to Congress, we need to introduce AI and technology in our payment systems to actually weed out all that fraud.”
Boyanton said he supports systems like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, but believes they need to be reevaluated.
“If you keep paying for everybody that doesn’t need it, you’re taking away from those that do need it. I would rather see somebody that’s in need—instead of being in poverty, on Medicaid and welfare—that actually needs it, than having five other people that don’t really need it, but are gaming the system,” Boyanton said. “Because the people in need are the ones that we need to take care of.”
Another area he has identified as prime for spending reductions is foreign aid. Boyanton said he supports Ukraine and Israel but believes the United State government should limit spending on foreign aid. The U.S. has spent around $196 billion on Ukrainian assistance since the start of the Russian invasion more than four years ago. It provides around $3.8 billion a year to Israel.
“We don’t have the money,” Boyanton said, citing the national debt. “Europe does, let them support it.”
Boyanton said he feels both the Democratic and Republican parties “don’t care about the debt” and worries in the future they will “devalue our dollar to take care of the debt.”
“It doesn’t matter if you make more money if everything builds up in price,” Boyanton said. “So we’ve got to get away from this debt.”
‘I Don’t Answer to Any Party’
Boyanton said Mississippi voters should elect him to serve as the next representative for Mississippi’s 4th Congressional District because as an independent candidate, he brings a “common sense, down the center” mindset to politics.
“If we don’t start getting independent people in there with a different mindset than just party ideology, then we’re destined for doom I think, because the parties have become too strong,” Boyanton said, calling attention to the fact that America’s founding fathers warned against a two-party system. “They (party leaders) say ‘Vote Red,’ ‘Vote Blue,’ — they don’t vote for people.”
Carl Boyanton along with incumbent U.S. Rep. Mike Ezell and Democratic candidate Jeffrey Hulum III will be on Mississippians’ ballots for the 4th Congressional District in the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Mississippians will vote for candidates running for federal, regional and local offices in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Mississippians must have registered to vote by Oct. 5 to cast their ballot in the upcoming election. Check your voter registration by visiting sos.ms.gov or by calling your county circuit clerk’s office.
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