With mail-in absentee ballots still uncounted, incumbent Ashby Foote is claiming the victory in the hotly contested Ward 1 council race, even as he leads independent Grace Greene by just 10 votes.

“I’m gonna say we won, but I mean obviously it’ll probably be contested, I mean it could be contested by the other candidates, and that’s their right to do when you have a really tight vote,” he said. “But for the time being it appears that I won.”

As of Tuesday night, Foote stands at 1,738 votes with Greene at 1,728, according to an unofficial count that includes in-person absentee votes. Democrat Jasmine Barnes, an auditor at the Mississippi Department of Transportation, is in third with 1,713 votes, a drop off from the 2,465 votes she claimed in the April 1 Democratic primary.

There will be

See Full Page