[03/20/03]Warren County Board of Supervisors candidate Kenneth Downs cited an assistant attorney general’s letter Wednesday, saying he should be allowed to qualify from District 1.

When on Feb. 28 he filed to qualify as a candidate for county supervisor, Kenneth Downs, 38, lived in District 2 as redrawn by the board of supervisors in 2002 and approved Feb. 6 by the U.S. Department of Justice. He had lived in District 1, from which he still wants to run.

“They don’t want me to run from District 1,” he said. “I have a lot of support in District 1.”

Downs’ eligibility to qualify from District 1 has been called into question by county officials, who have said the district map as approved, now at the county and federal levels, was on public display and candidates living in redistricted areas were advised to petition for qualification in both districts to ensure that they would be able to run in one or the other depending on whether and when Justice approved the plan. The Warren County Election Commission, through a letter from board of supervisors attorney Randy Sherard, was to request an official opinion on the case from the Mississippi Attorney General’s office, District 2 election commissioner Gordon Carr said earlier this week. Sherard was not available for comment Wednesday afternoon.

The letter Downs cited Wednesday, from an assistant attorney general to District 1 election commissioner Johnny Brewer, says “a candidate who, by virtue of a necessary redistricting, now resides in a district other than the one for which they qualified, should be qualified as a candidate in the new district.”

Downs said Wednesday that election commissioners have offered him the option of qualifying to run from District 2, but he has declined. “I shouldn’t be able to qualify for District 2 using signatures from District 1,” he said.

Instead, he plans to move onto land that he plans to purchase in the new District 1, if doing so will allow him to meet the residency requirement for a candidate for supervisor from that district.

The letter he cited continues, “A candidate may have the option of moving back into the old’ district, depending upon whether any residency requirements exist for the office.” Downs said, if the 30-day residency requirement applies to the districts as redrawn and ends with the qualifying deadline, which this year was March 1, the time between Justice’s approval of the plan and his filing to qualify, 22 days, would have been insufficient for any candidate. If the residency-requirement period ends with the election, which is set for Nov. 4, then he said he should be given the option to move to the land he is buying in the new District 1 and still qualify from there.

“I haven’t found anyone who’s been able to tell me,” Downs said. “I’ve gotten opinions, but I want it in writing, the right way.”

The letter to Brewer that Downs cited, which concludes with an offer of an official opinion from the attorney general’s office, says, “It appears that the same rules would be applicable in the situation you described, in which the candidate was misinformed as to where his residence would be located under the new lines.”

Downs said that during the two months candidates were allowed to file qualifying papers, he checked district boundaries on the new and old district maps in the circuit clerk’s office to determine his residency and the area from which he could collect residents’ signatures for his qualifying petition. He said the maps were not in plain view in the office, but were instead behind the counter and had to be requested to be seen, and that the map he was told to view in the courthouse lobby showed only the old district lines without indicating that a new plan was pending approval.

He based his decision on the existing district map instead of the one labeled “proposed,” he said.

“I had no idea,” Downs said when asked whether he knew that a new map was pending approval.

“I want to run from District 1. I will do whatever it takes,” he said.