A column about Mississippi’s congressional elections managed to discuss whether the races are competitive without naming the people actually trying to make them competitive.

Mississippi Today published an analysis Sunday asking whether 2026 could finally break a streak of largely uncompetitive congressional elections in Mississippi.

It spent considerable time discussing elections from 16 years ago.

It discussed Gene Taylor. Travis Childers. Alan Nunnelee. Steven Palazzo. Larkin Smith. Greg Davis. Roger Wicker. Trent Lott.

It discussed partisan indexes, redistricting and the historical difficulty Democrats have faced in three of Mississippi’s four congressional districts.

What it didn’t do was tell readers who is actually running to change that history in 2026.

Their names are Cliff Johnson, Michael A. Chiaradio and Jeffrey Hulum III.

Johnson is challenging Republican Rep. Trent Kelly in Mississippi’s First Congressional District. Chiaradio is challenging Republican Rep. Michael Guest in the Third. Hulum is challenging Republican Rep. Mike Ezell in the Fourth.

If the question is whether Mississippi’s congressional races can become competitive, those candidates aren’t a footnote.

They are the story.

Johnson, in particular, has built the kind of campaign that ought to complicate the conventional narrative.

A civil-rights attorney and director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi, Johnson has campaigned on affordability, healthcare, bringing federal investment to North Mississippi, voting rights and political reform.

His legal work has included efforts against Mississippi’s use of debtor’s prisons.

And he isn’t running a token campaign.

Johnson reported more than $550,000 in receipts through June 30, according to federal campaign-finance data compiled for the race. Making him the first Democratic candidate in a decade to raise six figures in consecutive quarters in the First District!

Those facts don’t guarantee Johnson a victory but they do make him worth naming.

There is an especially damaging circular logic to political coverage in states like Mississippi.

A race is considered uncompetitive, so it receives little coverage. Because it receives little coverage, challengers struggle for recognition. Because challengers struggle for recognition, they struggle to raise money and persuade voters that the election is competitive. Their difficulty doing those things is then presented as additional evidence that the race was never worth covering.

The Mississippi Gazette isn’t interested in doing that.

We aren’t going to pretend a candidate doesn’t exist because Washington handicappers put a race in the wrong column. We aren’t going to wait until somebody becomes the favorite before deciding they’re worthy of coverage.

We’ll cover what they’re proposing. We’ll examine what they’re accomplishing. We’ll tell you when they’re succeeding, and we’ll tell you when they’re failing.

Then Mississippi voters can decide whether they can win.

That’s the way political journalism is supposed to work.

By Jack Sparrow