Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell announced Thursday he has been endorsed by all five other Republican challengers ahead of his June 28 runoff against incumbent U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo.
Ezell, who was one of six Republicans to challenge Palazzo in Tuesday’s primary election, was flanked in a Thursday press conference by four fellow candidates, including third-runner in Tuesday’s primary businessman Clay Wagner and distant fourth-runner state Sen. Brice Wiggins.
“My campaign slogan was we deserve better than what we have, and we’ve got the man right here who will be better,” Wagner said at the Ezell press conference. “He’s got my full endorsement.”
Wiggins noted he and Ezell have been longtime friends and worked together when Wiggins was an assistant district attorney.
“He is an honorable, stand-up law enforcement guy,” Wiggins said. “He knows how to get the job done. He knows how to take on the things we’ve seen in D.C. … 63% of the voters in South Mississippi (in the Tuesday primary) chose somebody other than the incumbent. That’s a mandate for change.”
Palazzo, who has held the 4th District U.S. House seat in South Mississippi since 2011, received about 32% of Tuesday’s primary vote in unofficial results — a poor showing for a longtime GOP incumbent in a district considered safely Republican. Ezell received 25% and Wagner 22%.
The Republican primary race for the 4th District has not centered on major policy differences to date, but more on Palazzo. He has been under a congressional ethics investigation for a year and a half over allegations of misspending campaign and congressional money and misuse of his office. Over years, Palazzo has also faced criticism for not holding town halls or attending many public events in his district, garnering a nickname of “No-show Palazzo” among detractors.
While endorsing Ezell on Thursday, challenger Carl Boyanton said: “I ran with one thing in mind: to get Palazzo out of office.”
READ MORE: Ethics complaints against Rep. Steven Palazzo likely to ‘evaporate’ in Congress
Palazzo, who left the district headed back to Washington on Tuesday before primary votes were counted, did not immediately respond to a request for comments to his campaign spokesman on Thursday.
In a press release after Tuesday’s vote pushing him into a runoff, Palazzo said: “It’s an honor to serve south Mississippi, and it’s something I do not take for granted. I’m grateful for our supporters and volunteers who worked hard in this election and who will work hard to help us over the next three weeks. We now turn our attention to the run-off, and we will not be out-worked. We will continue talking to voters about what we’ve been able to accomplish and our plans for promoting policies to restore economic growth, secure our borders, and keep Americans safe.”
READ MORE: Trump coming to Mississippi. Will he endorse in GOP midterm runoffs?
Ezell, in a new runoff ad, continued to hit Palazzo on the ethics allegations and complaints of being inaccessible in his home district.
“You have a clear choice,” Ezell said. “Steven Palazzo has been under the cloud of an ethics investigation … Mike Ezell has served with honesty and integrity as a law enforcement officer for 40 years fighting crime, cleaning up corruption and saving taxpayers millions. On June 28, the choice is clear. Mike Ezell is the conservative Republican who will show up to represent our values every day.”
The winner of the June 28 Republican primary for the 4th Congressional District will face Democratic former longtime Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, who handily won Tuesday’s Democratic primary, in the Nov. 8 general election.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.