JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi physician who leads a gaggle of physicians against COVID-19 vaccine mandates has filed paperwork to problem Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves within the state’s Republican main.
Dr. John Witcher is the one Republican apart from Reeves who has entered the gubernatorial main up to now. He’s greatest identified for founding Mississippi Towards Mandates, a gaggle of docs against requiring COVID-19 vaccines. Witcher has mentioned he was fired from a Mississippi hospital in 2021 after switching sufferers’ COVID-19 remedy to ivermectin, an anti-parasite drug that isn’t licensed by the FDA to be used in opposition to the novel coronavirus and which analysis reveals doesn’t work.
A consultant for Baptist Memorial Hospital in Yazoo Metropolis instructed the Biloxi Solar Herald that Witcher practiced on the facility as an unbiased doctor and was by no means an worker. In keeping with a Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure doc, the physician was suspended in 2010 from practising drugs at one other Mississippi hospital after a regulatory fee discovered he was “a right away risk to the general public by motive of alcohol or different substance abuse.”
The Related Press left a voicemail with Mississippi Towards Mandates searching for remark from Witcher.
Reeves, who was elected governor in 2019, filed for reelection on Jan. 3. Former Mississippi Supreme Court docket Chief Justice Invoice Waller Jr., who misplaced to Reeves within the 2019 Republican main, has mentioned he’s contemplating one other run.
Brandon Presley, a Democrat in his fourth time period as a Mississippi utilities regulator, introduced on Jan. 12 that he’s searching for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Presley will face not less than one candidate within the Democratic main. Gregory Wash, who ran a low-budget race for governor in 2019, has filed to run once more.
Feb. 1 is the qualifying deadline for an election that can embody statewide workplaces, state district workplaces, legislative seats and county workplaces. Occasion primaries are scheduled for Aug. 8, with runoffs on Aug. 29. The overall election is on Nov. 7, with runoffs on Nov. 28.
Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky are the one states electing governors this 12 months.
