Kamesha Mumford, a candidate for Mississippi Senate District 26, spoke with the Mississippi Free Press on Nov. 12 about her views on the issues affecting voters in the district, which includes parts of Hinds and Madison counties.
She is in a Dec. 2 runoff for a special election to replace former Sen. John Horhn, whom voters elected as mayor of Jackson in June 2025. You can read MFP’s Q&A with her opponent, Letitia Johnson, here.
Mumford, a resident of rural Hinds County near Pocahontas, is a Municipal Court Judge for the City of Canton, Mississippi, and an attorney at Mumford & Mumford Law Firm. She is president of the Mississippi Municipal Judges Association.
Reporter Shaunicy Muhammad’s Q&A with Mumford is presented below with light edits for clarity.
Shaunicy Muhammad: Why are you running for office?
Kamesha Mumford: I’m running for this office because this is such a crucial time for our community. We need strong, stable leadership and the stakes are high. We are at a point where our health care is at risk. We have some truly critical infrastructure needs. We need to make sure that our students are properly educated, and then we need to make sure that we provide economic opportunities for some of our young people who are leaving this state.
I have such a commitment to service for my community, and I love this community so much. And so that’s why, when John Horhn became mayor of Jackson, I knew I couldn’t just sit on the sidelines. I needed to get in the fight just to make sure that we have some good representation that reflects the pride and the values of Senate District 26.
You ran on a campaign of prioritizing economic development, protecting the PERS system, expanding public safety and ensuring quality education. Could you give me a brief synopsis of why you chose those four as your most important priorities?
I’ll start with public safety. I’ve been a city court judge for the last 12 years. I have seen and have a true understanding that real public safety is not just responding to crimes. It’s about having a collaborative approach to public safety where we have better lighting in our neighborhoods, where we give rebates to our community members for Ring doorbell cameras (and) where we establish a mental health court. I was on the bench this morning and I had a defendant before me who is bipolar schizophrenic, but he’s been charged with a crime and has not had treatment in the last three or four years.
So public safety isn’t just responding to crimes when they happen. It’s making sure that we have parameters in place for crime prevention. Because the young man was there this morning in my court, he had seriously injured another community member who he didn’t even know. They had no relationship, but it was because of his mental illness that we had two families that were grieving this morning. So establishing a mental health court is really important to me.
It’s also important to me—when I think about public safety—that we have other things like after-school programs for our children and workforce development for young people who are looking for direction. It takes a collaborative approach to have a safe community.
While it is very important to me that our police departments are properly staffed and that our law enforcement officers receive fair pay, it’s also important to me that we truly focus on crime prevention and making sure that our neighborhoods are truly safe.
The other part of my platform with the retirement system kind of goes into that. When we think about the retirement system, it has been watered down with this fifth tier that’s going to take effect here shortly. But strengthening that retirement system is a great recruitment tool for police officers and our school teachers and nurses and all of our public employees. We need to figure out ways to get more people into that system. And we do that by paying our teachers a fair, competitive rate so that they don’t run off to other states to work. I truly believe that we have to take care of the folks that have taken care of us for all these years, which is why PERS is a part of my platform.
Now, of course, infrastructure is a part of my platform. We have some serious road and bridge problems in our Senate district. But that’s also a great opportunity for economic development if we think about workforce development and training the folks of Senate District 26 and folks in our community as a whole to do the work that needs to be done to get our infrastructure in a working order and then moving to modernizing it for today.
We have solved two problems.
One of your public safety plans is to increase capacity at rural fire departments. Can you tell me a little bit more about that plan?
Well, listen, you know, when you live in a rural area like I do, if you have an emergency—a fire or even a medical emergency—a volunteer fire department is going to respond to you. But they don’t have the equipment or the funding or resources that they really need to respond to the rural areas. And so that’s a big part of my public safety platform as well, because so much of Senate District 26 is rural. I’ve got Edwards, Bolton, Pocahontas—you know, all those rural areas that are serviced by volunteer fire departments.
I had a neighbor whose garage caught on fire a year or so ago. And it was a volunteer fire department that responded to that. But it’s really important that they have proper funding because they are the first responders for the rural Hinds County area.
So, part of the district includes North Jackson and Hinds County. What do you think should happen to Jackson’s water and sewer system when the third-party administrator leaves?
Well, what I’ve said about Jackson water, you know, even before I became a candidate, is that I want a system that works for the people. Having good, clean, working water—it’s just a basic right. So what I want to see is a system that works.
I want to see billing that works for the people.
I don’t want to see these apartment complexes get away without paying and then their residents suffer for it. And there’s legislation that can be enacted—which I intend to propose, so that we create a criminal penalty when that happens, so that we don’t have innocent residents suffer because, you know, corporations, apartment complexes, just decide they don’t want to do the right thing.
Do you support the idea of Jackson’s water and sewer systems being under the responsibility of a regional board?
I want something that works for the citizens. And I will work with the current administration and how they see or think it should work best for those citizens. The citizens of Jackson have elected their mayor and city council. So as a senator, I’m there to help support that administration and what they think is best for the people.
OK. Another Jackson-related question. How can Jackson stop the flow of businesses leaving and attract new businesses?
Well, you know, public safety, infrastructure, good schools—those are the things that create thriving communities. We do see businesses leaving and going to the suburbs but Jackson is a great city.
It has its challenges but I think we focus on those quality of life issues that I’ve been talking about for most of my campaign: good schools, which require us to truly fully fund our education system; improving our public safety and not just thinking about responding to crime, like I said before; and taking care of our infrastructure needs. Then we create economic development once we have those things in place.
Earlier, you mentioned roads and bridges and the infrastructure needs. Where are you most seeing those issues?
It’s everywhere. If you’re in the Jackson area, you’re dealing with potholes and drainage issues. If you’re out in the county, you’re dealing with bridges being out or a lack of access to broadband. Although we have different areas of District 26 with different needs, infrastructure is a need I see all over the district. Those infrastructure needs—they are expensive. They require money.
We had a debate out in Pocahontas a week or so ago, and a question came up about the infrastructure needs of the county versus those of the city. Whether we’re in the county or in the city, those are all basic quality of life issues. Those are the issues that are important to the people, and those issues will always be at the forefront of for me as a state senator.
The next question is about brain drain. What can you do in your role as a state senator to stop brain drain?
You know, I think there are several things that we can do. I think for our high school students, we really have a focus on workforce development, some of those non-traditional careers. When I was a student, vocational training was a big part of our high school experience, even for students who were planning to go to traditional universities. So I think we need to have more of a focus on workforce development.
Once our students move from high school to college, though, there are so many things we can do. I think we offer special scholarships for those who are interested in entering public service. Our school teachers, our police officers, doctors (and) nurses who will agree to live in a certain area here in our state and receive housing allowances through grants to purchase homes, tuition and assistance grants—just to keep some of our young people here.
We have to find ways to keep them here in our state because I see us losing them. I had a cohort of interns this past summer that worked in my office, some on the legal side, some with the campaign, and out of about 10 college students, only two said that they had any intention to stay in this state. And we need to find ways to change that.
It (would) really help us in the medical area when we have so many of our rural hospitals closing. We have to get creative about finding ways to keep our young people here.
How have your current position or previous roles prepared you to be a state senator?
Well, I’ve been an attorney for 18 years now. And when I say I’m an attorney, I’m an actively practicing attorney. I have appeared in just about every court in the state, from DeSoto County to Harrison County. I’m also licensed to practice in Louisiana.
I wrote the first code of ordinances for the Madison County Board of Supervisors when I was a law student. I interpret the law every Wednesday as a city court judge. I’ve been on the bench now for 12 years. I live and breathe the law.
And so I understand how certain changes, tweaks to some statutes, make things work easier.
I don’t think I said this before, but in my legal practice, I’m a real estate lawyer. I do a lot of heir’s property work for African-American families whose title is all tied up because historically Black families didn’t have wills, and so you ended up with land that was in the name of a deceased person and in some cases the person had been deceased 30, 40 years, and then their children—some of them had passed away.
So I’ve been able to work through the law. And so the practice of the law and then the interpretation of the law as a judge have uniquely qualified me for the position.
But more than that, it’s really my genuine love and connection to this community. I’m just fully invested in this community. And I’ve said this many times before, I’m not running for Senate because I need a job or title. I already have those things. This is truly an act of service for me to the community that I hold so dear.
You mentioned working as a real estate lawyer. There’s been a lot of conversation about the lack of affordable housing stock in Jackson. What can you do as a state senator to increase the housing stock and home ownership in the district?
One of the ways that we can find ways to have more affordable housing is by helping to fight some of the blight in our community. There are several properties, and many of them are properties that are, you know, held up or tangled up in heir’s property or through estates that need to be cleared up. Some were purchased by out-of-state investors who have just walked away.
I have some great ideas about making some statute changes to that same tax code that I told you I wrote the treaties about, that helps us fight the blight and then we can put those properties in the hands of folks that want to establish their homes here.
Even if they go to some nonprofit, you know, like Habitat for Humanity, first for them to be able to put the right people in those homes, but we can use our tax code to fight blight, which will help with some of our housing problems
What last-minute efforts do you have planned to get in front of voters and talk about your priorities ahead of the runoff?
Of course, I have continued my canvassing efforts. I got right back to it the day after the election. I’ll continue to attend church services and HOA meetings throughout the district. We have been sponsoring Thanksgiving dinners and sweet potato drives and turkey giveaways for many, many years.
And we’re going to continue that. That’s just a tradition for our law firm, but we are going to continue that through the runoff period.
Mississippians will vote in the runoffs for Senate districts 24 and 26 on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. Any eligible registered voter in those districts who registered to vote in person and had their voter registration application postmarked at least 30 days ahead of the election can cast a ballot in the special runoff election.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Contact your local circuit clerk or election commissioners for polling place information. Voters must bring an accepted form of photo ID to the polls; if they do not have an accepted form of photo ID, voters can get a free voter ID from their local circuit clerk before Election Day. For more information, visit sos.ms.gov/yall-vote.
Correction: An earlier version of this story mistakenly included a paragraph with details about Johnson that were attributed to Mumford. We have removed it. We apologize for the error.