Community gets to know candidates at 38th annual Candidates Forum
Over the weekend in Harrison County, local candidates made their final pitches to voters during annual candidates forum.
With primary elections inching closer and closer, South Mississippi residents were able to get a little more familiar with some of the candidates before hitting the polls this Tuesday.
The 38th annual Candidates Forum hosted by the Gulfport chapter of the NAACP and the North Gulfport Civic Club featured a debate style forum.
Terri Tyler, the public assistant of current District 4 Supervisor Kent Jones, told News 25 what topics of are going to be up for debate. “Community, what candidates are going to do for the community, their platform, and questions are asked from the audience and the candidates answer the questions to the best of their ability.”
Some candidates and current seat holders said the forum is a unique experience. Candidate Chris Fisher said, “It’s an opportunity to, kind of do in one spot, what you go do to door, we’ve been going door to door, knocking even battling the heat and the weather, but we’ve been doing that for the past few months now. Here it brings everybody together, and you can kind of collaboratively hear at the same time, everybody’s different spill and their speech, and kind of know what they each bring to the table.”
District 1 Supervisor Beverly Martin said, “I was lucky enough to be invited and I wanted to come because you never miss an opportunity to get feedback from community members. You always wanna learn every day, what they need, how they need it and what you can do to help.”
The goal behind the 38th annual Candidates Forum is to make sure that voters are informed before heading into the election booth. Harrison County School Board member Dr. Barbara J. Thomas said, “Hopefully, everybody left more informed as to who they want to vote for and what platform and things that they would like to be in place in our community to improve our community for it to be the best that it can be.”
