Redistricting mess: Sen. Johnny DuPree, just elected to one seat, running for another

Even though state Sen. Johnny DuPree was elected last year to represent portions of Forrest and Lamar counties in the Legislature, he’s now trying to represent a new area of the state.

DuPree announced on Monday that he’s qualifying to run in a special election in November to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidlburg who resigned last month.

The reason DuPree is qualifying to run for a new Senate seat is that Secretary of State Michael Watson directed local election officials to revert to legislative districts adopted by the Legislature in 2022, which had been changed in 2025.

When Barnett resigned, Gov. Tate Reeves ordered a special election to fill Barnett’s vacant seat under the 2022 district lines, which contain portions of Forrest, Jasper and Jones counties.

A federal three-judge panel ruled in 2024 that the parts of the state’s 2022 district maps violated the federal Voting Rights Act and required the state to create more majority-Black districts.

The Legislature redrew the lines again in 2025 to comply, which created a majority-Black House district in northeastern Mississippi, a majority-Black Senate seat in Hattiesburg and a majority-Black Senate seat in DeSoto County.

But the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the three-judge panel’s decision on the state legislative districts in light of the high court’s landmark Louisiana v. Callais decision that rolled back racial discrimination protection during redistricting, leaving the status of Mississippi’s legislative districts in flux.

This will be the second special election in two years that DuPree has participated in because of redistricting lawsuits.

“Here we go again,” DuPree jokingly told Mississippi Today.

The state branch of the NAACP, represented by several civil rights legal advocacy groups, asked a three-judge panel to prevent Watson from reverting the districts to the 2022 maps, but U.S. District Judges Daniel Jordan and Sul Ozerden and U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Leslie Southwick declined.

Now that the federal courts have cleared the way for Watson to unilaterally change legislative districts without action from the Legislature, it’s unclear what this means for a potential special legislative session to, again, redraw legislative districts.

Gov. Tate Reeves has said he will likely call lawmakers into a special session this fall to redraw congressional, legislative and state Supreme Court districts before the end of the year, something Democrats have strongly opposed.

DuPree’s predicament raises a range of questions about which lawmakers can participate in a potential special session and if it’s legal for legislators elected in 2025 under new maps to represent older districts drawn in 2022.

“This is not fair to the people who are going to vote to replace Sen. Barnett,” DuPree said. “It’s not fair to the people of Forrest County. Nothing about this is fair.”

This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.