Staff report

Mississippi’s Second Congressional District appears to be headed east, taking in Panola, Yalobusha and Grenada counties, according to a redistricting plan released Monday by a panel of three federal judges after the State Legislature failed to meet a December 4 deadline for a new map.

Partisan differences were cited as complicating the job to balance the population in the state’s four Congressional Districts as required by law after the 2010 Census.

All three counties are currently in the First Judicial District represented by Republican Representative Alan Nunnelee who stated, “I am disappointed that Panola, Yalobusha, and Grenada will no longer be a part of the 1st District. I have made many friends in those counties, and will continue to work with job creators for growth there,” Nunnelee said in a press release Tuesday.

Panola Partnership Executive Director Sonny Simmons said Wednesday that although the local officials responsible for acquiring industrial  development have a strong relationship with District One Representative Alan Nunnelee, “We are always willing to work with whoever is our representative and get them on board to help us when we need a project.”

District 33 State Representative Tommy Reynolds (D), who lives in Yalobusha County and served as the House Redistricting Chairman had pledged early on to work to keep Yalobusha in the First Congressional District.

“Certainly as chairman of the House Committee I worked closely with Senate Redistricting Chairman Terry Burton,” Reynolds said Tuesday. “We had three different plans, but they (the Legislature) could not reach an agreement on any of them,” Reynolds added, referring to the work by the state’s House and Senate members.

Reynolds told the North Mississippi Herald newspaper last February he had strong feelings about keeping Yalobusha in the First Congressional District.

“We are a hill county and our power is public TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority),” Reynolds had told the Herald.

Tim Climer of Batesville who serves as Senior Project Administrator for Business, Industrial and Workforce Development at the University of Mississippi, emphasized Tuesday that your congressman and power supplier are major factors in economic development.

Climer stated that no other TVA powered communities were currently in the Second District which emphasizes Reynold’s statement to the Herald.

The 2010 Census figures, released in February, showed the First Congressional District, which includes Panola and 22 other counties, had 15 percent more people than the Second Congressional District, which spans the western Delta portion of the state and had lost population.

Other changes proposed in the judge’s plan included moving all of Leake County into District 2. It is currently split between District 2 and District 3.

Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson has represented the Second Congressional District since 1993.

The Second District included a portion of Panola County prior to the 2000 census and redistricting when the county was split between Congressional districts 1 and 2 and the western and northern most precincts were in Thompson’s district and the remainder were in Congressional District 1.
(David Howell contributed to this report)