Ty Pinkins, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Mississippi this year, faces an uphill battle as he challenges incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker for his seat in the Nov. 5 election.
Pinkins interrupted his own campaign for the post in order to step in as the Democratic nominee for Mississippi Secretary of State in 2023, replacing Shuwaski Young after a health crisis forced him out of the race. After incumbent Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson defeated him last November, Pinkins resumed his campaign for U.S. Senate.
If elected, Pinkins, a U.S. Army veteran and the son of Delta farmers, would be the first Democratic Senator to represent Mississippi in Washington since Sen. John C. Stennis retired in 1989.
Pinkins sat down with the Mississippi Free Press on the campaign trail to detail his vision for his first term, along with some of his domestic and foreign policy priorities. The Mississippi Free Press also reached out to Wicker for an interview but his campaign has not agreed to one so far.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Nick Judin: You’ve been supportive of the right to abortion. How will you pursue returning that right to Mississippi residents?
Ty Pinkins: I think the most important thing for Mississippi residents–particularly women–when it comes to reproductive freedom is to have a United States Senate that is on the (affirmative) side of that argument. The last three Supreme Court justices that were confirmed by my opponent were the main ones that overturned Roe v. Wade.
We know it’s not going to happen at the state level, with Republicans having a trifecta in our state government.
The best opportunity we have for (restoring reproductive freedom) is electing someone like me, who is on the side of Roe v. Wade: pro-choice and not straddling the fence about it. I think that’s one of the big issues over the past several decades. We’ve had candidates that either are pro-life or were afraid to say that they’re pro-choice.
I’m neither one of those. I’m pro-choice, and here’s my stance on it: I don’t think that, as a man, my stance on reproductive freedoms matters. What matters is that women make those decisions for themselves. It’s between women, her doctor, and God, that’s it. Men shouldn’t have a say in how that gets decided for women.
Do you agree with those who say that Democrats need to expand the Supreme Court?
Our Supreme Court today is not working to the benefit of everyday Americans. Expanding the Supreme Court—that is an option. But I think one of the most important things that could happen on the Supreme Court is that they implement some judicial ethics. We have people like Clarence Thomas ruling on cases in which his wife, Ginny Thomas, has an active role, particularly the January 6 riots.
That’s the near-term. If the Supreme Court can’t get itself together, expansion is an option that I think should be on the table.
You’ve stressed the importance of agricultural labor for Mississippi. I’d like to get into some specifics on that. What does a Ty Pinkins farm bill look like, for example? How does it differ from a Roger Wicker farm bill?
Well, here’s the issue with Roger Wicker.
He has voted against farm bills that are in favor of Mississippians. One of the only members of the federal delegation (from Mississippi) that has consistently voted for farm bills is Bennie Thompson. Whenever there’s a Democratic president in office, (Republicans) vote against farm bills. They vote against farmers here in Mississippi.
As for me, regardless of who the president is, which party is in power, I will vote in order to support farmers for farm bills that are fair, meaning that whether that is a small family farm or a medium-sized farm or a large farm, they should have access to the same resources. We don’t need to be leaving farmers behind Black farmers, white farmers or whomever.
Everybody should get equal access to the same resources. Any bill that I support would have that as a foundation. We’re not carving out stuff for huge farms that are taking over all this land while we’re leaving out small family farms. And I think that’s the difference between myself and Roger Wicker.
A key component of Roger Wicker’s platform is curtailing immigration. You have a different tack: you want to decriminalize migration. What does that look like?
That means making sure that we have a process in which we allow people to come in that want to work–and also creating a process where people who have been here for a long time have a pathway to citizenship.
We have babies who were born here. We have high school graduates that have spent their entire lives here in Mississippi. So thinking that we’re going to round up millions and millions and millions of people like the Republicans think, that’s impossible.
Creating a pathway to citizenship allows those people to come out in the open, contribute to our society—particularly through their taxes, which actually I think helps our society.
What (Republicans) are proposing is cutting off immigration totally, which I think would destroy our economy. Our agricultural economy depends so much on immigrant workers coming in seasonally and doing this work.
Maybe there is some type of work permit program that we implement in order to make that process more fluid and easier to manage.
The people who come in can work during the season. They can pay their taxes just like every other American. And then after that season is over with, they can go back home and come back and do it again if necessary.
You’ve spoken about equitable economic development in Mississippi. In that realm, the momentum seems to be with specific areas of the state. The Golden Triangle, DeSoto County, the Gulf Coast. How will you help spread that investment and development across Mississippi?
For decades, Mississippi has been at the end of the line and at the back of the pack with regard to job creation and economic development.
We all know that it’s been that way for a long time. We have the resources here. We have some of the most fertile farmland in this country. And what we also have is a portion of our state that is the poorest area in this country—the Mississippi Delta.
I’m all for development in DeSoto and Lauderdale County. But if we ever want to move from the back of the line to the middle of the pack to the front of the race, we will have to, at some point, invest equitably on the western side of our state, particularly in the Mississippi Delta.
And I think it’s a shame that we haven’t because we have one of the most valuable resources that traverses the entire western border of our state. It’s 3,300 miles long, starts in Minnesota. travels through many states and hits Mississippi. It’s the Mississippi River.
And there’s a place on the Mississippi River called Fiddler’s Bend. It’s in Issaquena County, which just so happens to be the smallest and poorest county in the state. And according to the Corps of Engineers, right there in Vicksburg, right at Fiddler’s Bend is the deepest and fastest-flowing point in that 3,300 mile-long Mississippi River.
Why is that important? Because the next thing I think is coming is hydro power. I think that’s the next industry and the prime place to implement that is on the Mississippi River at Fiddler’s Bend.
What if we created an industry in Mississippi, implementing that industry in the poorest county in the poorest area in our state?
On the subject of both economic development and foreign policy, Senator Wicker has tied a strong Mississippi shipbuilding industry to a policy of, essentially, containment of China. Do you view China as an enemy of the United States? What would Senator Ty Pinkins make of our relationship with China—both the United States and Mississippi?
China is a very interesting situation with regard to our national security. When you think about it, what are some of the most important things in our lives today? Cars, planes, cellphones.
Well, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company creates over 60 percent of the semiconductors used in the world. Over 60%.
Take an iPhone. They create 100% of the semiconductors that go into iPhones today. China depends on them for over 70% of their semiconductors. One of the reasons that China is such a threat–and why we are such strong allies of Taiwan–is because of that (industry).
If China invaded Taiwan and actually had control over that (industry), think about how much power or how much control they would have over our economy—not just Mississippi, but the United States.
And I think we have to protect against it.
That’s one of the reasons why I think we have to do what we’re doing in Ukraine. We have to support the war in Ukraine against Russia. One, because we have two options: we can invest in helping Ukrainians defend against Russia with money today, or we’ll be helping Europe defend against Russia in the future in blood by sending our soldiers there.
To turn our back on Ukraine today is going to make us pay tomorrow if we don’t (stand with Ukraine). Second, China is watching what we’re doing with Ukraine, specifically because of Taiwan. They’re saying, “If they’ll turn their back on Ukraine, then maybe we can push with Taiwan.”
So you’re for strengthening NATO and pursuing a containment policy towards China.
I think NATO is arguably the most important organization since World War II. You have so many countries that are saying we care so much about international security and stability that we’re going to work together to hold countries like Russia, North Korea and China at bay.
When Senator Wicker embraces someone like Donald Trump–knowing that Donald Trump is against NATO and is willing to allow NATO to crumble–that is a national security threat in my opinion.
I’m sure you’ve heard of Project 2025. What are your thoughts about that? What would you do to strengthen democratic institutions in light of those plans?
When I took my oath in the military to become an officer, it was to protect and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
I think our biggest threat today is domestic, and that (threat) is MAGA and Donald Trump. I think that’s the biggest threat to our country right now. And I think the way that we deal with that threat is we make sure that the guardrails we have in place now—we strengthen them.
Senator Wicker had two opportunities to hold President Trump accountable. He was impeached in the House twice. The Senate had the opportunity to convict, and Senator Wicker voted against it after (Trump) instigated a riot in our nation’s capital.
I served 21 years in the military, in uniform, in three combat tours. I have seen American soldiers lose their lives on the battlefield. I’ve seen it. I’ve led soldiers in foreign countries fighting to strengthen democracies. So for me, when I see Senator Wicker embracing someone like Donald Trump—that’s personal to me as a veteran.
The Israel-Gaza war has now caused the deaths of over 40,000 Palestinians, including over 10,000 children. Thus far, the administration has done little to impose a limit on civilian casualties. What would Senator Ty Pinkins advocate both for Congress and the (presidential) administration to do? And how could you see us moving forward towards that goal?
The first thing is a ceasefire. We need a ceasefire in Gaza because too many civilians have already died and too many kids are starving to death.
Second, American power should never be unconditional. American taxpayer dollars should never be unconditional—ever. And that includes our allies. On the ground level, that condition should be treating people humanely and acting in accordance with international law.
That’s where we’re tripping up right now. We can support Israel, but (we) also understand that Israeli leadership right now is part of the problem—Benjamin Netanyahu, his approach to Gaza and his approach to the Democrats in our government.
We can support Israel while also understanding that leadership in Israel may be a headache.
We hear a lot about the difficulty of Benjamin Netanyahu. How much of it do you see as the intransigence or the belligerence of Benjamin Netanyahu, and how much of it is the much broader Israeli state policy towards Palestinians?
I think they’re overlapping. And I don’t think you can say one is more impactful than the other. I think it comes down to the fundamental understanding that we’re all human beings and everybody should be treated with dignity and respect.
And we all have to understand that whether you are an Israeli or a Palestinian, if you’re an Israeli parent or a Palestinian parent—at the end of the day, on a fundamental basis, you want the same thing.
You want to feed your family. You want to take care of your children. You want to make sure that they grow up with a quality education and that they have the same access to resources and possibilities that anybody else has.
I think the Israeli government needs to figure out a way to view Palestinians like that and not view Palestinians as automatically part of Hamas.
Those are two different things. There are Palestinian people who are dying and had nothing to do with what Hamas did. Now, Hamas should be held accountable. Israel has the right to defend itself. However, it also has a responsibility to abide by international law and to take into consideration the morality of (harming) innocent women and children in Gaza.
Mississippians will vote for presidential, congressional, judicial and regional offices on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. Any eligible registered voter who registered to vote in person by Oct. 7 or had their voter registration application postmarked by Oct. 7 can cast a ballot in the general 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 a voter does not have an accepted form of photo ID, they can get a free voter ID from their local circuit clerk before Election Day. For more information, visit sos.ms.gov/yall-vote.
For more on elections and voting, visit the Mississippi Free Press Voting 2024 page.