Voters in the City of Petal’s Ward 2 will have four candidates to choose from in the upcoming February 15 special election to fill that vacant position on the Petal Board of Aldermen.
According to records from Petal City Hall, the following individuals placed their name in the hat in time for the January 26 qualifying deadline: Bethanie Carlisle, Patricia Merritt, Kimberly Molina and Kim Stringer, in alphabetical order. If none of those four candidates receives 50 percent of the vote plus one vote during the special election, a runoff election will be held approximately two weeks later against the two candidates who garner the most votes in the February 15 election.
Polls will be open to all registered voters of Ward 2 from 7 a.m.-7 p.m. on February 15 at Calvary Baptist Church, 1123 Mississippi 42 in Petal. Any registered voter of Ward 2 who is in line by 7 p.m. that night will be entitled to cast a ballot.
The Pine Belt News expects to run an upcoming story that will feature answers to questionnaires which will be sent to each of the candidates, including their motivation for running and brief biographical information.
The special election was necessitated after last August’s primary election, when former Ward 2 Alderman Steve Stringer was elected to represent District 3 on the Forrest County Board of Supervisors. Because it is a special election, all candidates must run as Independents; as such, each candidate was required to obtain 50 signatures from registered voters of Ward 2 prior to the qualifying deadline.
The winner of the election will fill the remainder of Stringer’s term, which will expire in the summer of 2025. At that point, the candidate would need to run in that year’s election to serve an additional term.
“It was really fun to see the energy that the board of supervisors took (on January 2, at Stringer’s first board meeting),” Mayor Tony Ducker said in a previous story. “There’s a lot of opportunity when you have change like this, but we’re about to have some change as well, so I’m looking forward to it.
“Whoever does get on board (to replace Stringer as alderman), the train has already left the station, so there’s some big decisions they’re going to have to make this year. So it’s very important that we get somebody who will come in there, put in the time and help us move forward.”
The special election was originally scheduled for February 6, but the Petal Board of Aldermen recently pushed that date back to February 15 because of timing issues with running the necessary legal advertisement in newsprint.
During a January 5 special-called meeting, board members agreed to postpone the date for the election because officials did not have sufficient time to inform the public of that matter in the legal section of The Pine Belt News, which by state law must run in the paper for three weeks prior to the election. Because the original election date was set at the January 2 board meeting – which was a Tuesday night – and legal notices in The Pine Belt News must be received no later than the Friday before the paper runs each Thursday, the election date was pushed back to comply with those specifications.
Stringer, who is the owner of Locke Extermination, was elected to the Petal Board of Aldermen in 2001. He ran against Ross in the 2019 county election, but was defeated by a slim margin.
Ross, who is the owner of Southern Bowling Lanes in Petal, represented District 3 on the board of Supervisors since 2012. He also served 33 years on the Forrest General Hospital Board of Trustees, as well as 22 years as a member of the AAA Ambulance board of directors.
To view a map of the city’s wards, visit https://shorturl.at/ptEHL.
