Former Morehouse valedictorian and Senate aide challenges longtime Rep. Bennie Thompson: ‘It’s time’

Evan Turnage, 33, is running in the Democratic primary for Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, which Thompson has represented since 1993.

Longtime U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson is being challenged for his 2nd Congressional District in Mississippi, a seat he has held for over 30 years.

The 77-year-old congressman will face off against Evan Turnage, a former legal counsel on Capitol Hill who currently heads the Southern Justice Project at the Open Markets Institute, an organization aimed at empowering communities in the South against corporate power.

“When I was born in ’92, this was the poorest district in the poorest state in America. Congressman Thompson was elected in ’93. But those conditions remain. This is still the poorest district in the poorest state in America,” Turnage told theGrio.

The Yale Law School graduate and 2014 valedictorian at Morehouse College spent years in Congress, on the opposite side of the Capitol from Thompson, who broke barriers on the Hill as the first Black chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security and headed the historic January 6 Select Committee that probed President Donald Trump‘s alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Taking on a giant on Capitol Hill

Considering Thompson’s stature in Congress, Turnage says, “I definitely didn’t make the decision lightly.”

The 33-year-old political newcomer acknowledges Thompson has “near-universal name ID,” but argued, “It doesn’t mean that he’s well-loved by everybody in the district.”

“The truth is, for the majority of [election] cycles, there hasn’t been an alternative to Mr. Thompson. I, myself, have only voted for Bennie Thompson,” said the Jackson, Mississippi native. “I understand that he has seniority…but seniority for the sake of seniority is not enough anymore. It’s not enough to just be against Donald Trump. It’s not enough to be a Democrat.”

He added, “It’s time. It’s time to fight for home.”

After working in antitrust law as an associate at a private firm, Turnage served as senior counsel to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, and later chief counsel for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

“What I’ve learned from my time with Elizabeth Warren, with Chuck Schumer, is that nothing gets better if you don’t have a plan. And I think it’s regrettable that our congressman hasn’t been a champion for eradicating poverty, for renewing jobs and economic opportunity here in the district,” said Turnage.

The attorney and advocate recalled speaking to the “mothers at my church” in Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District, who expressed concerns about their children and grandchildren leaving the area for higher education and bigger job markets.

“Our young people are going away, whether it’s for school, whether it’s for their first job, and obviously a lot of people stay and I applaud that, but it’s undeniable that people miss their families, and that we need to do more to incentivize our young to come home and to stay home, so that Mississippi is competitive with places like Texas and Georgia,” said Turnage.

“But it starts with having a plan, and [Thompson] doesn’t have one…Unfortunately, our congressman has taken over millions of dollars from those very corporations that are exploiting our community.”

In a statement provided to theGrio, Congressman Thompson said, “Elections were created to give people the ability to make a choice. I am confident that my record on behalf of the people of Mississippi’s Second Congressional District will speak for itself.” He added, “I will continue to run my campaign the way I always have. I trust the voters of the district to make their choice.”

A politics shaped by Black Lives Matter era

The national outcry of the Black Lives Matter uprisings of the past decade has shaped Turnage’s politics and career. He was a sophomore at Morehouse when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida by a white vigilante. In 2014, his first year at Yale, 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

“All of my Black friends at Yale Law School were going through this when we started, and it weighed heavily on us,” Turnage recalled. “Civil Rights were eroding, clearly in the United States.”

However, Turnage said he became fixated on the intersection of civil rights and economic rights that were impacting Black Americans.

“If you think about what happened in New York with Eric Garner, who was [killed by chokehold] by police for selling loose cigarettes, that’s enraging. I was equally enraged that a Black man in America felt that he had to sell loose cigarettes to get by,” he told theGrio. “We never in this country have secured the economic rights of Black people, of all people in America, and it’s something that bothers me, so I committed my career to not just civil rights, but thinking about economic rights, which is why I became an antitrust lawyer.”

The congressional candidate said that, in the United States, lawmakers have to think about how to “identify concentrations of power at the top” and how to “redistribute that power in a fair way.”

He continued, “I think that that is a huge problem that has plagued America at least since the Ronald Reagan era. During the Biden years, we started reversing that, but we need to think carefully about how to secure economic rights for Black people.”

The future of the Democratic Party

Congressman Thompson is one of several Democrats being challenged in next year’s primary elections, particularly Democrats who are above the age of 70.

“I agree with the statement from Vice President Kamala Harris. We need a new generation of leadership,” said Turnage.

However, the young Democrat says he doesn’t believe that leadership of the party should necessarily be based on age, but on who is willing to “fight” against the forces that are harming communities like his.

“I don’t see people like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders getting primaried because people understand that they are fighting for America. They are fighting for their constituents,” argued Turnage. “If we have that same sort of representation here in Mississippi, I might feel differently about this primary challenge, but Bennie Thompson is not fighting for the people in this district.”

Turnage said constituents want to “feel” that their elected representation is fighting for them, explaining, “When I talk to older Black people here, they love Jasmine Crockett because they see her visibly fighting and taking the fight to Trump, taking the fight to these administrators who are lying and coming with real facts and evidence.”

He added, “People want that sort of vitality.”

If Democrats win back the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s general election, Turnage said the party must quickly develop its agenda, well ahead of the anticipated 2028 presidential election.

Turnage said he would like to see Congress address the issue of “shoring up our democracy,” but most importantly, overhauling the nation’s campaign finance laws to “get money out of politics.”

“We need to ban corporate money in politics,” said Turnage, who vowed to never “take a dime of corporate money.”

“We need to ban stock trading. We need to overhaul corporate lobbying so that people actually trust their elected officials are working for them,” he said. “Then we need to transition directly to shoring up prosperity in America. We need anti-poverty measures. We need tax cuts for working families instead of for billionaires. We need to take on the cheating corporations on Wall Street that get little slaps on the wrist and never face actual punishment or jail time for their crimes.”

Turnage added, “I mean, we’re talking about trillions of dollars worth of crimes, financial crimes, and that has a huge impact on the rest of America, and we don’t talk about that enough.”