TUPELO — With just two Republicans running for mayor in the All-America City, voters are primed to decide during Tuesday's municipal primary elections who will lead the city of Tupelo for the next four years.

Voters will return to their polling locations on April 1 and pick either Rob Chambers or incumbent Todd Jordan as the city's next mayor. Chambers, executive director of the Conservative Coalition of Mississippi, said he believes the city is eager for change, and he will bring just that. Meanwhile, Jordan, who previously worked in real estate as an agent for Tommy Morgan Real Estate and owns a power washing company, said he believes the city is on the right path, a path he said he hopes to continue in a second term.

Chambers plans to leverage government experience for city

Born in Ackerman, Chambers moved to Tupelo in 2015 for work. He previously worked at the American Family Association as the former vice president of policy and legislative affairs until 2022.

“I have come from a rich, strong background of negotiating toward a desired outcome,” he said. “That desired outcome for me is to make Tupelo the strongest that it can possibly be, the best it can possibly be, the safest it can possibly be, and the best place for people can live in community with one another. Where their children can feel safe ... I’ve been doing this before Todd ever picked up a pressure washer.”

According to its website, the Conservative Coalition of Mississippi, which has chapters in central Mississippi, Oxford, the Gulf Coast, Desoto County and Tupelo, is an organization meant to help organize conservatives to make Mississippi a “truly conservative state.” With this organization, Chambers said he focuses on First and Second Amendment rights: the freedom of speech and the freedom to bear arms.

With the two decades Chambers has in state and federal advocacy and relations, he said he can best serve Tupelo by leveraging contacts made in multiple levels of government to speed up processes and encourage business growth.

“You have to work with a lot of different elected officials. People that are not only elected but also serve in administrative roles,” he said of his position. “You have a responsibility when it comes to elected positions … to carry out your job to represent the people. Not just the people that elected you but the entire municipality.

“What I’ve done in the past has enabled me to garner a lot of experience in working with key decision-makers and helping move a particular initiative forward ... If there is some kind of initiative that comes before the board, I will be able to work with not only the council members but also be able to speak on behalf of the city.”

On business, Chambers said his administration would focus on blending the business and community aspects of the city.

“Those two things need to work hand in hand,” he said. “What I want to do is make that stronger.”

Public safety, Chambers said, is another piece of the puzzle. He believes a city cannot have a strong community without public safety. He pointed to rising drug crime, which he said was up 28% according to information he said was reported from the Tupelo Police Department to the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. He also pointed to cases of sexual violence in public schools since 2022, calling it unacceptable.

The National Incident-Based Reporting System reports that crime is up in Tupelo by 28%. Data provided by the Tupelo Police Department, meanwhile, reports a total call volume of 91,000 from 2024 compared to 2023’s 77,000, which is a 15% increase in overall calls. Data also shows felony drug arrests went down from 111 in 2023 to just 77 in 2024. Meanwhile, the report shows 53 sexual battery charges in 2023, which is higher than the 39 arrests in 2024. The department data does not report where the battery charges happened or the victim's age.

According to reporting from the Daily Journal, two sex crimes against minors have been reported. Brady Patrick Dean, 25, of Tupelo, who faces a total of five counts of sexual battery and six counts of child exploitation in the two indictments which involve his former position as a U.S. Marine recruiter; and Alexander Ryan Blackwelder, 28, a former youth pastor who pleaded guilty to sexual battery of church member.

With or without actual safety issues, he said for residents, “perception is reality.” He said he wants to make residents feel safe. To do this, he wants to increase the number of police officers in the city and giving the officers raises to be more competitive with surrounding areas.

“Once that happens with that public safety element there, then the people feel more free to get out and shop,” he said, which he claims will increase sales tax revenue and grow business. “We need more officers per shift, especially in some of these places where you have hotspots.”

Alongside public safety, Chambers said he hopes to make a positive change in the rising homeless population, noting it creates a “negative element” on the economy in Tupelo. He said he wants his administration to find pathways to help homeless individuals. Chambers said he believed Jordan’s administration is not taking an active enough role in alleviating the issue, which he would do if elected.

“We have citizens in this city that feel unsafe because of a homeless population, and some of that is warranted,” he said, pointing to a recent incident involving suspect Ryan Hearn, 34, who allegedly assaulted a person near First Baptist Church. “It is having an adverse impact on our economy ... How much better could it be if this administration had been proactive beyond saying this is the problem for the Salvation Army, (Mississippi United to End Homelessness) and S.A.F.E to address?

“This is a city responsibility, and I think it is a mayoral obligation to actually resolve that and not just farm it out to a nonprofit.”

Chambers claimed Hearn, not by name, was homeless, though Tupelo Police Department reported Hearn was “known for assisting homeless” individuals in the area. No further information on the incident was available at the time of reporting.

Chambers said he is ready to work on Day 1, noting he believes he is already doing the job of bringing more transparency to the city. He pointed to him becoming aware of a homeless encampment near Carnation Street. After posting about it on social media and bringing it to public attention, the city cleared it out.

“My administration will be proactive, not reactive,” he said, pointing to a meeting at the Joyner Neighborhood Association. “The other candidate … said just look around. Look how great it is. That’s what I would say. Just look around."

Jordan plans to continue ongoing projects

First elected in 2021, Jordan said he's proud of his tenure as mayor so far. He said he hopes to continue projects started in the last four years into a second term, pointing to road improvements, drainage, emergency response and ongoing railway upgrades.

“I love what I do. I think there is a sense of pride where you have a project, and you see it from the beginning to the end,” he said. “I said I wasn’t going to sit behind a desk, and I don’t. I get out ... I look at things that are important and put it on the list when it needs to be done.”

When asked what he believes is the biggest issue facing Tupelo, Jordan pointed to housing. He noted that while Tupelo’s population is about 37,000 people, its daytime population is much higher. He said there were multiple neighborhoods in need of revitalization. His administration has helped in this effort, he said, by buying derelict property, demolishing standing buildings and selling them to developers for market value.

While he said it takes time to work on housing, the administration, in partnership with the Neighborhood Development Corporation, has made strides in providing property at lower rates to developers to make the bottom line for homebuyers cheaper. He pointed to West Jackson Street as an example of this revitalization.

When the Jackson West Neighborhood was first conceptualized, it was meant to have “starter homes” in a price range of $150,000 to $170,000. Homes on that stretch of West Jackson now reportedly sell for around $240,000 to $250,000 ... or even more. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development defines affordable housing as the occupant paying no more than 30% of their income on housing.

“Affordable housing, I don’t know if there’s one term for that,” Jordan said. “Most people think of affordable housing as a young couple buying a house … at a good rate. That is what we want to target.”

Jordan said his administration is focused on homeownership, noting that in the property it sells for redevelopment, there are binding clauses that the finished home must be sold to an individual who will not rent the property out for a certain amount of time.

While there was a learning curve for his first term, Jordan said he believes his administration “hit the ground running,” asserting that he put the “right people in place” to run the city.

“We didn’t have time to sit around. We didn’t have time to learn,” he said. “If you look across the city at everything we’ve done, I’d put it up against anybody in the state of Mississippi.”

Another goal for the coming administration is updating the city’s street program. Jordan said he plans to contract with a company that will grade road quality, including soil, asphalt conditions, stripping and signage. This data will go into the city’s street saver program to build a better priority list of what roads need attention by empirical evidence.

Jordan pointed to the complete overall of the Bristow Acres neighborhood’s streets from the soil bed up, noting there are some other areas in town that will get that attention in the coming years. He said it is important to do that work from the outset to increase the longevity of the street in general.

“We have paved all of or part of 120 streets in the last four years,” he said.

The city has three projects pertaining to railroad upgrades: building an overpass on Eason Boulevard, moving the switching operations further south of the intersection of Gloster and Main streets and establishing three quiet zones in the city, which are areas with more relaxed rules regarding train speeds and when to blow warning horns.

The city received $1.4 million from the state for preliminary engineering, which Jordan said his administration is in the process of hiring a firm to assist in the engineering, and another $7.7 million from the Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements grant through the U.S. Department of Transportation. The $7.7 million in funding has not hit the city’s coffers as of Friday.

The quiet zones, which are made through safety upgrades at each crossing, will take longer to accomplish, Jordan said. The goal is to have one start north of Crosstown and cover crossings through the west and north ends of the city. A second south of Crosstown will cover crossings east and south, and a third will cover the crossings that run north and south through town near downtown.

“Hopefully, our preliminary engineering will be pretty much done when we receive our money for the last quiet zone grant,” Jordan said, noting that a lot of neighborhoods get used to the trains, so the priority is to work downtown and more out from that radius. “We are doing business around the world in the banks, and when the trains come through, they have to stop their conversation … to wait on the train.”

Of the three projects, Jordan said the overpass on Eason Boulevard is the priority because of the safety concerns attached to it. When a train blocks that crossing, it slows precious time needed for emergency responders to get to and from the nearby North Mississippi Medical Center. Over the next term, Jordan said he would focus on finding grant funding to finish that project, which he said is about $10 million short.

On emergency response, Jordan said his administration has emphasized establishing a real-time response center and installing cameras around the city. He wants to continue that effort.

With the Fire Department, Jordan pointed to the upcoming replacement of the old Fire Station No. 5 facility, which the council recently accepted a $4.2 million contract with Southland Construction Inc. to build a new fire station. His next goal is to replace Fire Station No. 1 in downtown Tupelo, specifically building it as a nexus for emergency response in the event of a catastrophe.

He said another priority of his administration is listening to his council, noting that projects they want also need focus, such as parks and recreation, beautification and neighborhood quality of life. He pointed to park upgrades at Hancock, Gum Tree, Ballard, Veterans Memorial and Dot Cooper Kelly parks.