Nine candidates for Oktibbeha County government offices made their cases to a crowd of about 30 at The Mill at MSU Conference Center over breakfast Wednesday morning.
Five candidates for supervisor and four for other offices each spent a few minutes discussing their platforms and asking for votes on Nov. 5, when seven offices will be contested. The remaining 10 county officials up for re-election are all running unopposed.
Frequent talking points included broadband access in rural areas, the county’s economic growth over the past several years and the incoming North Star Industrial Park in north Starkville.
State Farm Insurance agent Brian McCaskill sponsored the event, and the Greater Starkville Development Partnership hosted the forum as one of the two “power breakfasts” in its yearly Blue Ribbon Business Series. Both events are usually “politically or legislatively charged,” and the Partnership wanted to provide an opportunity for county residents to meet their candidates in a casual setting, said Paige Watson, the Partnership special events and projects coordinator.
Supervisor races
Republican District 3 candidate Dennis Daniels wanted to make it clear he has no quarrel with incumbent Democrat Marvell Howard.
“I’m not running against him,” Daniels said. “I’m just applying for the same job he’s applying for. He’s been a good supervisor and I’ve enjoyed having him in my district.”
His track record of service to the community qualifies him to be supervisor, Daniels said. He is an Army veteran and president of the county’s volunteer fire department board, and he worked in law enforcement and the National Guard before his overseas military service.
He is also on the county’s internet task force and wants to bring in more service providers to “bring Oktibbeha County out of the Dark Ages,” he said.
Howard is finishing his third term and remembers the days early in his tenure when the city of Starkville, the county and Mississippi State University were “on our own islands,” he said.
“Now that I’ve been your supervisor for 12 years, I’ve learned now what will work and what won’t work here in Oktibbeha County, so I don’t have to take the time to wade through all the noise,” Howard said. “We know what we need to be aiming at. We know where we need to be going.”
District 4 Supervisor Bricklee Miller, a Republican, became Oktibbeha County’s first female supervisor in 2015 when she unseated Democrat Daniel Jackson, who is running to take back his old seat. Jackson did not attend Wednesday’s event.
Miller said she has focused on “fiscal responsibility, accountability and transparency in county government” in addition to economic growth.
“I believe that those commitments on my end have been met, but we still have more progress to go,” she said.
District 1 Democratic candidate Clint McCain is a regional warehouse manager for MaxxSouth Broadband and said he too wants to expand rural internet access in the county. The most important issue on his platform is infrastructure, he said.
Republican incumbent and board of supervisors vice president John Montgomery praised the county’s increase in property tax revenue, and he said he wants to continue fostering business and economic growth to “bring Starkville into the 21st century.”
District 5 Supervisor Joe Williams, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent Jared Pruitt did not attend the forum. Orlando Trainer, District 2 supervisor and board president, defeated his only challenger, fellow Democrat T. Orlando Sherman, in the August primary and will hold his seat for another four years.
Other county offices
John S. Brown retired in January and serves as president of the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District Board of Trustees. He is running as an independent for county tax collector/assessor against Allen Morgan, the two-term Republican incumbent.
Brown said his taxes have gone up every year Morgan has been in office and he will work with city and county leaders to lower them and make paying them more convenient.
“My staff and I would treat all residents of Oktibbeha County with respect and treat them as if they are the boss, because after all, they are the boss,” Brown said.
Morgan worked for the Mississippi Tax Commission in the state Department of Revenue for 29 years, a job that required him to travel to every county in the state and collect millions in unpaid tax money, he said.
He has brought $755,000 in tax overbids, the excess money left over after the county auctions off a property it has seized because of unpaid property taxes, in his eight years in office, and he is not aware of any previous collector/assessor who has allowed overbids, he said.
“That’s free money that we put in Oktibbeha County’s treasury, and they can do whatever they want to do with that money,” Morgan said.
Chancery Clerk Sharon Livingston and District 3 Justice Court Judge C. Marty Haug are both seeking second terms.
Livingston was appointed chancery clerk after her predecessor, Monica Banks, died in 2016, and she was elected in 2017 to finish Banks’ term. She had initially registered to run as a Democrat this year but changed her party affiliation to Republican after Democrat Martesa Bishop Flowers joined the contest.
The office has gone paperless and moved all chancery court records to online storage in the past two years, Livingston said.
Haug, a Democrat, advocated for fairness and competence at Oktibbeha County Justice Court.
“Even if you disagree with it, you’ll understand that we have a system that is there to support everybody,” Haug said.
Flowers and Haug’s Republican opponent, Cindy Mills, were not present at the forum.
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