Mississippi Rep. Lee Yancey Declares State Senate Run

Mississippi medical cannabis patients and workers could gain an ally in the state Senate if state House Rep. Lee Yancey, a Republican from Brandon, wins the bid to take over Senate President Pro Tempore Sen. Dean Kirby’s seat, who is retiring after serving more than three decades in the Legislature.

“With Senator Kirby’s recent announcement that he will not seek re-election, I am announcing my candidacy today in Senate District 30 because I believe it is the best way for me to do more for Rankin County,” Yancey said on his Facebook page on April 30. 

“During my time in the Legislature, I have worked to support economic growth, improve education, strengthen our workforce, support law enforcement and address critical issues affecting Mississippi families,” he continued in his statement.

“We are in desperate need of representation within the Senate. I think too many members of the Senate have been more focused on the concerns of big pharma and big medical,” medical-cannabis patient and advocate Melody Worsham told the Mississippi Free Press on Thursday. “They were even using pharmaceutical terminology when they were deliberating about these bills that Tate Reeves vetoed. I heard them (say) ‘prescribing cannabis.’ Well, we don’t prescribe in Mississippi.”

Yancey, 57, championed two medical-cannabis bills that the Legislature passed during the 2026 session. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed both bills, saying they went beyond the scope of the program that was intended in the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act of 2022. Yancey initiated the process to overturn the veto for the medical-cannabis bills, but his efforts died in committee.

“We are trying to decide what our next steps are,” Yancey told medical cannabis patients, caregivers and workers at a March 30 protest. “We’ve got less than a week left of this legislative session and so whatever happens is going to happen pretty soon if something happens. If it doesn’t happen, it’s not for lack of some us trying. But we thought these were practical things that could make the program better.” 

While Kirby, 79, voted in approval of both medical-cannabis bills, Worsham believes Yancey will be the vocal advocate medical-cannabis supporters need.

“I think (Yancey) would do good in the Senate because he’s savvy, he’s been there from the beginning and actually communicates with the cannabis industry,” Worsham said. “And so, he understands what the business needs are, but he’s also very conscientious about what the patients’ needs are, and he’s good about balancing that.”

Biloxi resident Worsham moderates the medical cannabis Facebook group MAACP, where she provided daily updates on medical-cannabis legislation during the 2026 legislative session.

While the House could lose a medical-cannabis advocate if Yancey is successful in his Senate run, Worsham said she hopes the education and work he’s instilled in the House will continue while he’s on the other side of the hall.

The Mississippi Medical Marijuana Association congratulated Yancey on his bid for Senate in a Facebook post on April 30.

“Since the founding of this program in 2022, Representative Yancey has played a crucial role in shaping and improving Mississippi’s Medical Cannabis Program,” 3MA wrote. “He has consistently worked alongside patients, providers and industry stakeholders to strengthen and improve our law.”

Kirby’s term representing Mississippi Senate District 30, which encompasses parts of Pearl, Brandon and Flowood, ends in January 2028. If Yancey wins the Republican primary in spring 2027, he’ll be on the ballot for the Nov. 2, 2027 election.

Yancey’s Legislative Track Record

Rep. Lee Yancey currently serves as chairman of the House Business and Commerce Committee and previously chaired the House Drug Policy Committee. The Republican has served in the House since 2020. Before his current service, he represented Senate District 20 from 2008 to 2012, which is now represented by Flowood Republican Sen. Josh Harkins. Yancey’s time away from the Legislature included running for Mississippi state treasurer. He lost that race to Lynn Fitch, Mississippi’s incumbent attorney general.

As a House representative, Yancey sponsored a 2026 law that forces every Mississippi state agency, department, municipality, county, institution of higher learning and law enforcement agency to comply with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement if agents come to Mississippi.

Yancey sponsored a 2025 law that prevents people under 21 from buying kratom. He also filed a ban on sale of kratom through a bill in 2022 that passed the House but died in Senate committees.

“The House has already banned kratom a couple years ago, and the Senate chose not to even take up the bill. So, the problem here at the Capitol with kratom is the Senate,” Yancey said at the Jan. 28, 2025, House Drug Policy Committee meeting.

When Yancey was a state senator in 2011, he worked with then-Sen. Michael Watson (who is now Mississippi secretary of state and running to be lieutenant governor) and Sen. Chris McDaniel to make it a felony for undocumented workers to accept a job or work in Mississippi.

He also wanted to make texting and driving a crime in 2011. That effort failed, but the House successfully passed two bills that became law a few years later that ban drivers from using phones while operating a vehicle.

Yancey sponsored a successful 2009 bill that allowed state agencies to electronically transmit annual reports. That same year, his bill to authorize the University of Mississippi Medical Center to donate surplus food to charities also became law.

Before his time in the Legislature, Yancey lobbied for the Southern Baptist Convention, president of the Mississippi Choose Life Car Tag Committee and served as a member of the Christian Action Commission, where he supported covenant marriages and fought against abortion. In 2006, the Pro-Life Mississippi organization named him as a Pro-Lifer of the Year. He was a member of the Rankin County Republican Executive Committee from 2002 to 2006 and volunteered on the campaign to re-elect Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck.

Kirby Led Legislative Redistricting Efforts

Sen. Dean Kirby’s long tenure began by unseating incumbent Republican Sen. Barbara Blanton in the 1991 Mississippi Senate election which happened after the State redrew its legislative district maps following the 1990 Census.

Senators elected Kirby in 2020 and 2024 to serve as Senate president pro tempore. He headed the Senate’s efforts to redraw the Mississippi Senate District map in 2022 and 2025. After redistricting in 2022, a court ordered the Legislature to redraw its House and Senate maps in 2025 to strengthen voting power for Black Mississippians in DeSoto County and the Hattiesburg area. 

In February 2025, the Senate president pro tempore told senators he had two goals for redistricting: “Whatever the court said, that’s what we have to do,” and to “be as fair to everyone as I can possibly be and be as open as I can possibly be to everyone.”

He supported a Republican-backed 2024 law that says people must use single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, changing facilities or college dormitories that align with their gender assigned at birth regardless of their gender identities. All public buildings in Mississippi must have sex-segregated bathrooms or a unisex restroom under the bill.

“This probably, to a lot of our constituents and to a lot of people in this chamber, is probably the most important bill that we brought up,” Kirby said on the Senate floor in May 2024.

When efforts to restore the ballot initiative reached the Senate in 2023, Kriby extended his support for the legislation, acknowledging that many Mississippians wanted to be able to put issues that matter to them on the ballot.

“If they’ll pass the suspension resolution and then we can get a bill, then there is a chance still, and we’re just fighting it till the last minute trying to get something,” Kirby told the Mississippi Free Press in March 2023. “I think the majority of the people do want some type of ballot initiative, and I think that we’re going to make every effort in the Senate to try to get it for them.”

He was part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers that served in a 2022 Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Family after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling upheld Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, and the State began enforcing a 2007 law banning nearly all abortions at any stage.