Ty Pinkins was stationed in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2003 when the Iraq War kicked off that March. His contract with the U.S. Army had ended in the middle of the war, but he had to remain in Iraq for seven months while the Army finished the tour.
The Army’s recruiter repeatedly approached Pinkins to encourage him to reenlist and sign a new contract in 2004. While boarding a military plane headed to Germany following the conclusion of his first tour, he had not yet decided whether to reenlist or leave the Army and return to college to complete his bachelor’s degree.
“I tapped the recruiter on the shoulder and I said, ‘Let’s do it,’” Pinkins told the Mississippi Free Press on March 13 during an interview in Jackson, Mississippi. “He called the commander and two soldiers stood up with an American flag on a military aircraft at 30,000 feet in the air, and he said. ‘Raise your right hand. Do you swear to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic?’ And I said, ‘I do.’ And in that moment, based on my background growing up in Mississippi and serving in that combat tour, not only had I decided that I was going to reenlist and I ended up spending the next 10 years in the military, 21 years total, (but) I knew at some point I was going to run for office.”
At the time, Pinkins did not know for which office he would run, but he felt a sense of duty and service that he knew could only be fulfilled by seeking elected office.
Now, Pinkins is running as Mississippi’s independent candidate for U.S. Senate because he said both the Republican and Democratic parties in Washington, D.C., “failed us.” The two major political parties collect millions of dollars from super-PACs like AIPAC, the largest pro-Isreal political action committee, and spend it campaigning and crafting “flashy commercials” while hiding from voters, he added.
The son of Mississippi Delta farmers, Pinkins unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate against Mississippi’s other incumbent Republican U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, in 2024. He also ran unsuccessfully for Mississippi secretary of state in 2023 as a Democrat. He left the Democratic Party in 2025 when he launched his campaign for U.S. Senate with a goal of defeating incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
“Just because you lose doesn’t mean you give up,” Pinkins said. “You know? One of the things that my grandmother told me, and it stuck with me ever since she passed away, is that, ‘A person who has lost is not a loser until they quit.’ Literally as long as you keep trying, you are not a loser. And I’ve carried that with me and I think there’s too much on the line right now to give up.”
In Mississippi, independent candidates have not won congressional elections, but there have only been two independent candidates to run for U.S. Senate in Mississippi, and the last one was in 1990. Despite this, he said Americans have moved more towards independence since then, pointing to a Gallup Poll that said 45% of Americans in 2025 identified themselves as independent, 27% as Republican and 27% as Democrat.
Pinkins said the state must try something different because Democrats have lost the past 15 elections for U.S. Senate. The last Democratic U.S. senator from Mississippi was John C. Stennis, who served from 1947 to 1989. Only Republicans have represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since then.
“I don’t think we move forward as a country unless we have independence in Washington to hold both parties accountable,” Pinkins said. “And so, if you want to talk about the primary, base reason why I’m running as an independent, it’s because I think we don’t move forward, we don’t deal with these issues that we’re facing as a country with the two parties who got us in a situation that we’re in now.”
He sat down with the Mississippi Free Press in its Jackson office on March 13 to discuss his policy positions and why he thinks he is the best choice on the ballot to be Mississippi’s next U.S. senator.
‘Farmers Are Suffering and Struggling’
As the son of a cotton picker in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, Ty Pinkins knows firsthand how President Donald Trump’s tariffs hurt farmers, especially beef, soybean and cotton farmers. China once was the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, but due to Trump’s policies, China now purchases soybeans from countries like Brazil. The same thing is happening to beef and cotton, he noted.
“Now, our beef farmers, our soybean farmers, our cotton farmers are suffering and struggling because we have a United States Congress that did not hold this executive branch accountable when they implemented those tariffs,” Pinkins said. “Which the people of Mississippi are suffering from right now (because of) both parties, particularly the Republican Party right now. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker, they voted for this stuff, and Republicans need to hold them accountable.”
Pinkins’ top priorities if voters elect him to serve are universal healthcare, making the economy more affordable and improving education. He said he wants families to be able to afford groceries, gas, mortgages and rent. College students should be able to graduate, find a good job and have a stable place to live, he added.
One way to make life more affordable is for the U.S. government to stop getting involved in “stupid wars” like the 2026 War with Iran that Trump instigated, Pinkins said. Israel decided it wanted to attack Iran with the support of its strongest ally, the U.S.
Israel was one of only four countries that did not sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968, an agreement between nuclear and non-nuclear states to prevent the production and spread of nuclear weapons. Israel maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying the existence of a nuclear arsenal, but it is widely suspected to possess between 80 and 200 nuclear weapons, while Iran, which signed onto the agreement in 1968, has none.
Pinkins said the U.S. also should not be sending an average of $3 billion a year to Israel, a country that already has universal healthcare, federally funded college tuition and an affordable housing system. The U.S. has sent more money cumulatively to Israel than any other nation in the world, at a total of $300 billion from 1946 to 2024, Council on Foreign Relations data show.
“Here’s a problem that I have, and it’s an unpopular opinion among some people,” Pinkins said. “I don’t understand why the country of Israel and people like Benjamin Netanyahu have so much control over our elected leaders. That is a question that the American people should be asking themselves. Why is it that every American president, whether that be Republican or Democrat, comes into office and in some way, they have to bow to the country of Israel?”
Regarding universal healthcare, Pinkins said people should be able to access healthcare without spending large amounts of money or battling insurance companies. Every person should have access to Medicare, he said, adding that taxpayers already pay into the Medicare system every month through their federal taxes, but Americans can only access Medicare benefits when they turn 65. He noted that the U.S. is the only country in the developed world that does not have universal healthcare.
Another reason Pinkins endorses universal healthcare is to help prevent the 78 rural hospitals in Mississippi from closing due to the State not expanding Medicaid to cover people who fall in the healthcare gaps.
Mississippi nurses cannot practice by themselves; they must work under the supervision of doctors, who sometimes charge them fees to practice medicine. Pinkins said this creates another reason for Mississippi’s growing brain drain problem.
“Mississippi is one of the few states that does that,” he said. “And I think that forces nurses, current nurses, to flee the state, to work somewhere else where they can take care of their family. And it forces our students who want to become nurses to graduate college and also take off, (which is called) brain drain. So, passing universal healthcare, it will fix so many issues for us.”
‘We’re No Longer a Democracy’
Along with all of those systemic issues, Ty Pinkins said the U.S. has a president facing child rape allegations from an unnamed person in the Epstein Files—but the party in power, Republicans, have not spoken out against Donald Trump and demanded his impeachment.
“We are right there on the tipping point of going somewhere where our country is not what we want it to be,” the candidate said. “We’re no longer a democracy, and we’re transitioning over to an authoritarian president where the country now is no longer a country of the people by the people, for the people.”
If elected, Pinkins said he would lead an effort to expose every name in the Epstein Files, other than the survivors of abuse. The people who perpetrated the abuse and committed rape and other crimes—which includes Democrats and Republicans alike—should face a jury trial and be sent to prison, he noted.
The only way to prevent the U.S. from getting to that point is by electing people to serve in Congress “who are willing to stand up and make difficult decisions,” he added. Pinkins said he wants to be that person.
If elected to the U.S. Senate, he will have the opportunity to attend confirmation hearings for people whom the president has nominated to serve in his cabinet. Pinkins said he wants to ask tough questions of the nominees and extensively review their backgrounds to ensure their experience matches the qualifications of the position in which the president appointed them to serve.
Another policy Pinkins supports is banning elected officials from buying and trading stock. Billionaires are also buying and trading stocks to avoid paying the same tax rate as hard-working Americans, like teachers, janitors and veterans, he said.
“Wealthy Americans, especially the billionaire class, need to pay their fair share of taxes,” Pinkins said. “And we need to fix the loopholes that they’re using not to pay them. What they do is, they invest their money, and as long as that investment that they make off of that money is not cashed out on, they don’t have to pay taxes on it.”
Forcing billionaires to “pay a fair tax rate” that every other working American pays could add up billions of dollars that the U.S. could use to fund universal pre-K, college tuition and healthcare, the candidate said. As a proud product of the Ripley Blackwell Head Start pre-K center in Mayersville, Mississippi, he believes every child in the U.S. should have free access to a pre-K education.
Term Limits and Redistricting
Ty Pinkins wants to impose 20-year term limits for U.S. Supreme Court justices and expand the court from nine justices to 13.
“Right now, we are in a situation where we have people that sit on the Supreme Court for life,” he said, “and their views, their understanding of the law, does not adapt to the changing generations and the changing laws.”
Members of Congress should also have term limits, just like the president can only serve for two terms, Pinkins said. Mississippi’s own U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson in the 2nd Congressional District has served for over 30 years, and Pinkins pointed out how much has changed since the congressman first took office in 1993. Cell phones and computers did not yet exist in the way they do today, social media was nonexistent and students attending a four-year university paid less than $10,000 for their education.
“I’m saying there’s a time to pass the baton and not even pass the baton,” Pinkins said. “Let another crop of leaders run for office and start to lead our country in a better way, as opposed to the same old thing every time that’s gotten us to the point where we are right now.”
After his military service, he obtained his Juris Doctor and his master’s in law from Georgetown University. He moved back to Mississippi, passed the state’s bar exam in 2021 and has been working as a pro bono lawyer in Mississippi’s underserved communities ever since.
Pinkins has testified before Congress about a law that was “cheating” Mississippi workers from getting paid the amount they deserve. He sued those businesses and won millions of dollars for Mississippi workers. The attorney has challenged county district lines in Warren County by teaching himself redistricting software and taking his map to the board of supervisors. The County then “redrew the lines to make it more fair,” he said.
Pinkins also filed a lawsuit with other voting rights activists against the current Mississippi Supreme Court districts, which he said were “gerrymandered,” and Mississippi almost had to redraw the maps this year.
In 2025, U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi Sharion Aycock ordered Mississippi to redraw its 1987 state Supreme Court map to give more voting power to Black Mississippians, in compliance with the Voting Rights Act. More than a third of Mississippians are Black, but all three districts—which each elect two Mississippi Supreme Court justices—are majority-white.
Also that year, the Mississippi Legislature redrew its state House and Senate district maps to add more Black-majority districts after another court similarly ruled in 2024 that the state’s previous map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by having too few districts where Black voters could elect candidates of their choice. The new districts led to the election of Sen. Johnny DuPree, D-Hattiesberg, the first time that city has ever had a Black senator represent them in Jackson, despite the city’s population being 51% Black.
But following the Louisiana v. Callais decision, rollbacks began. First, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals pulled the order requiring Mississippi to redraw its state supreme court maps. The U.S. Supreme Court followed by reversing the 2025 order for the State to redraw its legislative maps to include more Black-majority districts. Gov. Tate Reeves canceled a special legislative session in May to redistrict the state’s Supreme Court map.
Now, Mississippi is considering a new round of redistricting, putting Black representation and voting gains at risk.
Lawmakers are preparing for the possibility of a special session to redraw the state’s maps, a session Reeves signaled this past June at the Neshoba County Fair. This may require legislators to gather in Jackson before this January to work on legislative redistricting because the qualifying deadline for candidates is on Feb. 1, 2027. Reeves has not confirmed the special session or when it would occur. In August and September, legislators traveled the state and heard from citizens about their opinions on redistricting.
However, Pinkins said he is not giving up the fight to redraw state Supreme Court districts to give minority voters more power. Mississippi has only ever had four Black state Supreme Court justices and all of them served in the exact same position—District 1, Place 2—so none of them served concurrently.
“That case is not closed. We are still moving forward and hoping that in the coming months or years, however long it’s going to take, then we can resolve that issue that best helps voters in Mississippi, specifically in the Mississippi Supreme Court districts get adequate representation in elections,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 30.
Pinkins also suggested that independent redistricting commissions, not lawmakers, should be the ones to work on redrawing congressional, legislative and state supreme court maps because lawmakers have “gerrymandered districts to choose their voters.”
“What we see right now is that politicians, especially with regard to members of the (Mississippi) House of Representatives, they are choosing their voters as opposed to voters choosing them,” he told the Mississippi Free Press. “And I think an independent redistricting commission is the way to go to make sure that voters are actually the ones in charge and we have competitive elections. Right now, a small percentage of House of Representative elections across the country are actually competitive, specifically because politicians have been choosing voters as opposed to voters choosing their politicians.”
Ty Pinkins, along with incumbent U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic candidate Scott Colom, will be on Mississippians’ ballots for U.S. Senate in the Nov. 3 election.
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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