A special election will be held Nov. 4 to fill the Mississippi Senate seat left vacant when Terry Brown died this month.
Gov. Phil Bryant announced the special election Monday.
Brown died Sept. 4 after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was 64. The Republican had held the District 17 seat, which is comprised entirely of Lowndes County, since 2004. He also served in the Mississippi House from 1988 to 2000.
“In issuing this order I am ever mindful of the service to the people of Mississippi provided by my friend Terry Brown,” Bryant said in a statement. “He will be missed long past the next election.”
The new senator will fill the remainder of a four-year term that ends in January 2016.
The qualifying deadline for candidates is Oct. 6. There will be no party affiliation, according to Lowndes County Circuit Clerk Haley Salazar.
On Monday, Salazar told The Dispatch no one had qualified.
Anyone planning to run has to go to the Circuit Clerk office and get a petition, and then get 50 signatures from District 17 voters on the petition.
If no candidate receives a majority of the votes cast in the special election, a runoff election will be held Nov. 25.
Dispatch reporter Nathan Gregory contributed to this report.
William Browning was managing editor for The Dispatch until June 2016.
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