Local News professionals have complained for decades about the shoddy state of campaign reporting in Mississippi.
We have a law that requires candidates to file campaign contributions reports to the Secretary of State’s office. But nobody enforces it and it is widely ignored.
In addition, the reports are not searchable PDFs or some other standard format, so it’s impossible to do a statewide search by contributor.
Secretary of State Michael Watson backed a bill to improve the situation, but don’t get your hopes up. There seems to be little appetite in the state legislature for such reforms. Usually, the bills die in committee.
Mississippi Code 23-15-811 has a penalty for failing to disclose campaign contributions.
“a) Any candidate or any other person who willfully violates the provisions and prohibitions of this article shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be punished by a fine in a sum not to exceed Three Thousand Dollars ($3,000.00) or imprisoned for not longer than six (6) months or by both fine and imprisonment.
(b) In addition to the penalties provided in subsection (a) of this section and Chapter 13, Title 97, Mississippi Code of 1972, any candidate or political committee which is required to file a statement or report and fails to file the statement or report on the date it is due may be compelled to file the statement or report by an action in the nature of a mandamus brought by the Mississippi Ethics Commission.
(c) No candidate shall be certified as nominated for election or as elected to office until he or she files all reports required by this article that are due as of the date of certification.
(d) No person shall be qualified to appear on the ballot if, by the time the candidate is approved to appear on the ballot for the office sought, he or she has failed to file all reports required to be filed within the last five (5) years.
(e) No candidate who is elected to office shall receive any salary or other remuneration for the office until he or she files all reports required by this article that are due as of the date the salary or remuneration is payable.
(f) In the event that a candidate fails to timely file any report required pursuant to this article but subsequently files a report or reports containing all of the information required to be reported, the candidate shall not be subject to the sanctions of subsections (c) and (d) of this section.”
I went to the Mississippi Secretary of State’s website and clicked on Campaign Finance. I did a search for Chokwe Antar Lumumba. Nothing came up.
The Clarion-Ledger reports the last Lumumba campaign finance report was filed in 2021. Lumumba’s response to this was “no comment.”
So this begs the question: How can Lumumba run as mayor having failed to file his campaign finance reports for the last four years?
Who should enforce the campaign finance laws is not clear. District Attorney Jody Owens? Not likely. State Auditor Shad White? Attorney General Lynn Fitch? Secretary of State Michael Watson?
As of now, nobody is doing anything.
This is all the more interesting given the federal indictment of Lumumba for taking bribes in the form of campaign contributions.
Page 8 of the indictment states:
“Developer 2 expressed concern that they still did not have enough votes secured. In response, OWENS stated that the following day, he would get the Developers three more votes. OWENS explained that the Developers already had ‘the leadership’ through LUMUMBA and BANKS, and that he would next get the Developers ‘the pawns.’ OWENS also explained that, because public officials finance their personal lives through their campaign accounts, campaign contributions were the most effective way to influence them, so long as the money came from within the state of Mississippi. To that end, OWENS said that to ‘clean’ the money. he planned to deposit all cash provided to him by the Developers into a bank account owned by a Mississippi company. OWENS then stated: ‘I don't give a (expletive) where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a (double expletive.) I'm a whole DA. (Expletive) that (expletive.) My job, as I understand it, with a little paperwork, is to get this deal done, and get it done most effectively .... We can take dope boy money, I don’t give a (expletive.) But I need to clean it and spread it. I can do it in here. That's why we have businesses. To clean the ‘money. Right? I don’t give a (expletive.) You give us cash, we deposit it and give it back that way. That's easy.’”
Owens arranged for Lumumba to receive five separate $10,000 checks disguised as campaign contributions. On the FBI-bugged yacht, in front of microphones and cameras, the following conversations occurred between Owens and Lumumba:
“OWENS: We want to be very mindful of out-of-state money.
LUMUMBA: Yeah.
OWENS: So what this team did was give us the money, being me, and we just filtered it through several accounts in a way we comfortable doing.
LUMUMBA: Yeah
OWENS: So we did five $10,000 checks to make it very simple, and then when we get past the process, to our second phase, maybe in Jackson, maybe somewhere else we'll do something similar.
LUMUMBA: Yeah.
OWENS: - to make sure there's no worries about you financially in this thing cause you're as big part of this thing as anybody.
“Developer I then asked LUMUMBA to have the RFQ submission deadline moved up from April 30, 2024, to April 10 or 15, 2024. LUMUMBA then placed a telephone call to a city employee in which he directed the city employee to move the RFQ submission deadline to April 15, 2024.”
That’s what ends up happening when you don’t enforce our state’s campaign contribution laws. There are many to blame. The question now is whether this lack of enforcement will continue, allowing Lumumba to be on the next mayoral ballot.
