Michael Watson (Mississippi politician)
Michael Watson | |
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36th Secretary of State of Mississippi | |
Assumed office January 14, 2020 |
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Governor | Tate Reeves |
Preceded by | Delbert Hosemann |
Member of the Mississippi Senate from the 51st district |
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In office January 8, 2008 – January 7, 2020 |
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Preceded by | Tommy Robertson |
Succeeded by | Jeremy England |
Personal details | |
Born | December 22, 1977 |
Political party | Republican |
Education | University of Mississippi (BBA, JD) |
Michael D. Watson Jr. (born December 22, 1977)[1] is an American politician and the incumbent Secretary of State of Mississippi.[2] A Republican, he previously represented the 51st district in the Mississippi State Senate from 2008 to 2020.
Career
Watson is an attorney from Pascagoula, Mississippi. He ran in the 2007 Mississippi elections for the state senate against Tommy Robertson, and won.[3] Watson considered running for governor of Mississippi in the 2015 Mississippi gubernatorial election, but opted to run for reelection instead.[4]
While in the Mississippi Senate, Watson voted against legislation that would make it easier for college students in Mississippi to vote with absentee ballots; under the legislation, students would have been allowed to use college registrars as witnesses for their absentee ballot application.[5]
In the 2019 Mississippi elections, Watson ran for Secretary of State of Mississippi.[6] He defeated Sam Britton in the Republican primary,[7] and defeated Johnny DuPree in the general election on November 5.[8] In a television interview on March 26, 2021, Watson expressed concern that "woke" college students in Mississippi, among others, would vote, falsely claiming that an Executive Order by President Biden on March 6, 2021, would automatically register people to vote.[9][5] Watson also falsely claimed that people would be sneakily registered without their knowledge.[5]
References
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External links
Political offices | ||
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Preceded by | Secretary of State of Mississippi 2020–present |
Incumbent |
- Articles with short description
- Use mdy dates from September 2019
- Pages with broken file links
- 1977 births
- 21st-century American lawyers
- 21st-century American politicians
- Living people
- Mississippi lawyers
- Mississippi Republicans
- Mississippi state senators
- People from Pascagoula, Mississippi
- Secretaries of State of Mississippi
- University of Mississippi alumni