Three veteran local officeholders who did not seek reelection this year are serving out the final days of their last term.
• Raymond Earl Radcliff, 70, who lives on Manning Drive northeast of Charleston, has served five, five-year terms — 25 years — on the East Tallahatchie School District Board of Trustees representing Education District 8. He presently serves as vice president of the board.
Radcliff first took office in 1999 after unseating incumbent Thelbert Rice, then the board president.
Taranetta Q. Harris, 36, who was unopposed as a candidate for school board in ED 8 in this year’s general election, in January will assume the seat now held by Radcliff.
• Thomas U. “Tommy” Reynolds, 69, of Water Valley, is finishing out his 44th year in the Mississippi Legislature, where he has represented District 33 in the House of Representatives.
His district includes portions of Grenada, Tallahatchie and Yalobusha counties. Generally speaking, in Tallahatchie County, he has represented the area east of the Tallahatchie River.
A Charleston native, the Democrat was first elected in 1979. Then still a Charleston resident, Reynolds succeeded fellow Charlestonian George Payne Cossar Sr., who served 32 years in the state House before retiring at the end of ’79. Reynolds has been reelected 10 times.
Reynolds and state Rep. Percy Watson, 71, of District 103 in Hattiesburg, are the longest continuously serving current members of the House, both having taken their seats in 1980. Watson was reelected this year.
At nearly 50 years, the late Walter Sillers Jr. of Rosedale holds the state House record for longevity in service. He died while in office.
Under a 2022 legislative redistricting plan, District 33 was moved to the Gulf Coast to create a new district in Harrison County.
District 30, held by Democratic Rep. Tracey Rosebud of Tutwiler, was expanded to include the entirety of Tallahatchie County as well as some Grenada precincts, while other areas of Reynolds’ district are being absorbed by District 34, the charge of Republican Rep. Kevin Horan of Grenada.
• Steve Ross, 73, of the Murphreesboro community, is hanging up his judicial robe for the second time during a career that has spanned nearly five decades, likely making him the longest-serving locally elected official in the history of Tallahatchie County.
Ross began his judicial career in 1972 when he defeated four other candidates seeking election to the vacant justice of the peace position in what then was Beat 3 of Tallahatchie County. At the time, there was one JP per supervisor district. In 1980, the title of the office was changed to justice court judge.
Judicial reforms brought by legislative action dramatically altered the state’s justice court system prior to the 1983 elections. Instead of five justice court judgeships, Tallahatchie County now would have only two as of January 1984.
Ross became one of five candidates for the newly-created single justice court post for Tallahatchie County’s First Judicial District, which comprised all or parts of supervisor districts 1, 2 and 3.
He led the field in that 1983 Democratic primary and edged his opponent in a tightly contested runoff to be sworn in as District 1 justice court judge in January 1984. He won reelection during each voting cycle for three decades afterward.
In January 2015, Ross announced that he would retire when his then latest four-year term expired at the close of that year.
Jimmy Fly was elected to and assumed the office of justice court judge in District 1 in January 2016, but when the Tallahatchie County Board of Supervisors appointed Fly as county sheriff in August 2018, Ross agreed to come out of retirement to serve out the remainder of the term of his familiar justice judgeship.
Ross sought and was elected to a full four-year term in 2019. Earlier this year, he said he would not be seeking reelection.
Charleston attorney Lance Tennyson, grandson of longtime county prosecuting attorney Joe Lee Tennyson, won the position in this year’s elections and will assume the judgeship in January.
