A Republican-backed Mississippi Supreme Court justice who in 2021 voted to kill the state’s citizen-led ballot initiative system lost her seat after voters rejected her at the ballot box last Tuesday.
Public defender David Sullivan defeated Justice Dawn Beam in the Nov. 5 election for the Mississippi Supreme Court District 2 place 2 seat. Beam, who has served on the court since 2016, is the first justice to face the voters after joining the court’s majority that killed the ballot-initiative system and a voter-adopted medical-marijuana program in 2021.
In 2020, after citizens gathered enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot, Mississippi voters adopted the expansive medical-marijuana program known as Initiative 65 by a 68% to 31% vote. Madison, Miss., Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler sued to stop the program, saying that she wanted to keep “pot shops” out of her city.
Even though the right to citizen-led ballot initiatives is enshrined in Section 273 of the Mississippi Constitution, Butler and other opponents pointed to a loophole: the ballot-initiative system, adopted in 1992, requires that citizens collect a certain number of signatures from each of the state’s five congressional districts. But Mississippi lost a congressional district after the 2000 Census because of population decline and now only has four congressional districts, making it impossible to gather signatures from five.
Six of Mississippi’s nine Supreme Court justices, including Beam, took a literal approach to the issue in their ruling and nullified the entire ballot-initiative system, along with overturning Initiative 65. The Legislature would later adopt a more strict marijuana program in 2022.
Sullivan: Beam’s Partisan Endorsement Hurt Her
The Associated Press’ vote totals show that David Sullivan defeated Justice Beam by a 54.5% to 45.5% margin with 97% of the vote counted as of Nov. 13.
The incoming justice currently works as the public defender for the circuit courts in Harrison, Stone and Pearl River Counties; the D’Iberville, Miss., municipal judge; and the municipal judge pro tempore of Ocean Springs, Miss. Previously, he was the city prosecutor for Gulfport, Miss. He is the son of former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Mike Sullivan.
Sullivan told the Biloxi Sun Herald that he credits three factors for his victory: his experience with the criminal and civil law system on the Mississippi Gulf Coast; his father being a former justice; and his Hattiesburg, Miss., heritage and South Mississippi connections.
Although Mississippi Supreme Court candidates run for office as nonpartisan candidates, the Mississippi Republican Party endorsed Beam in the race against Sullivan. Beam told WJTV that she is a “strict constitutional conservative,” using language Republicans often use to describe their ideals for judges.
Sullivan told the Biloxi Sun Herald after the election that he thought one reason Beam lost was because she accepted and touted her endorsement from the Republican Party.
“I think that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way,” he said. “Judicial races are nonpartisan for a reason. A judge’s impartiality could be called into question.”
Kitchens and Branning Head to Runoff
In another Mississippi Supreme Court race, incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens and challenger Jenifer Branning are headed to a runoff election for the Central District Place 3 Mississippi Supreme Court seat on Nov. 26 after no candidate managed to win over 50% of the vote in the Nov. 5 election.
Voters had to choose between five candidates for the Central District Place 3 seat last Tuesday: Kitchens, Branning, Ceola James, Byron Carter and Abby Robinson. The incumbent and Branning garnered the most votes at 35.5% and 41.7%, respectively.
Crystal Springs, Miss., native and University of Mississippi School of Law graduate Kitchens has served the Central District, which includes the capital city of Jackson, on the Mississippi Supreme Court since 2009. He was the district attorney for Copiah, Walthall, Lincoln and Pike counties in 1971, 1975 and 1979 and worked in private practice law until voters elected him to the state’s highest court.
“My lengthy experience in the legal profession and my nearly 16 years of experience as an appellate judge cannot be matched by any of my opponents,” Kitchens told the Marshall Project.
Neshoba County native Branning serves in the Mississippi Senate as a Republican representing Leake, Neshoba and Winston counties. She would lose her Senate seat if voters elect her to the state Supreme Court. The candidate has worked as a private practice attorney since obtaining her law degree from Mississippi College School of Law in 2004.
Kitchens was one of the three justices who dissented against the majority’s 2021 ruling that nullified Mississippi’s citizen-led ballot initiative system and overturned Initiative 65. The dissent Kitchens joined, written by Justice James D. Maxwell II, accused the other six justices of stepping “completely outside of Mississippi law to employ an interpretation that not only amends but judicially kills Mississippi’s citzen initiative process.”
When the Legislature voted to replace Initiative 65 for the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act in 2022, Branning was one of just four Republican senators who voted against the legislation.
The Republican senator calls herself a “constitutional conservative,” and, as with Beam, the Mississippi Republican Party has endorsed her for the seat.
“As a constitutional conservative, I strongly believe in the rule of law because otherwise we’ll have chaos and we don’t need that,” Branning said in a campaign ad. “On the Supreme Court, I’ll make sure our conservative values are always represented.”