Sean Tindell (from Facebook page)
- The Commissioner of Public Safety has announced a run for Attorney General. He plans to step down from the state agency in the near future and focus solely on running for the office in the 2027 cycle.
Sean Tindell is hitting the campaign trail after six years of serving as the Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, an appointed position Governor Tate Reeves (R) asked the Coast attorney to take on in 2020.
Tindell, a Republican, is running to be Mississippi’s next Attorney General, a seat that came open recently when incumbent two-term Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) announced that she would be running for Governor in 2027.
“I’ve been honored to be [DPS Commissioner], to serve in that capacity, promoting public safety across the state and working with law enforcement from one end of the state to the other and trying to get them better equipment, better assets, better exposure and highlight the good things that law enforcement and public safety officials do every day,” Tindell told Magnolia Tribune early Monday morning.
Now, he believes he is uniquely qualified to be the Magnolia State’s 41st Attorney General.
Background and Experience
Prior to joining the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, Tindell served as a Judge for the Mississippi Court of Appeals, representing District 5, Position 2, for three years. He was appointed to the post by former Governor Phil Bryant (R) in 2017 to fill the vacancy created by Judge David Ishee’s appointment to the Mississippi Supreme Court. He ran unopposed in the non-partisan judicial election in 2018.
Tindell has also served in the Mississippi Senate, representing Senate District 49 from 2012 until his appointment to the bench. He won his first race in 2011 over an independent candidate, pulling in nearly 67% of the vote. Four years later, he won re-election by winning the Republican Primary over Katherine DeCoito by just under 40%. Tindell was unopposed in the General Election.
As a state senator, he chaired the Senate Judiciary A Committee and was the vice chairman of the Senate Tourism Committee.
Tindell previously served as an Assistant District Attorney for the 2nd Circuit District of Harrison, Hancock, and Stone counties from 2002 to 2007 and City Prosecutor for the City of Biloxi from 2008 to 2011.
Before that, he worked in private practice, representing a number of business clients and governmental bodies, including the City of Diamondhead, the Stone County Utility Authority, Harrison County, and the Orleans Parish District Attorney. He also held a real estate broker’s license and actively managed his own commercial and residential rental properties.
Tindell holds a Juris Doctorate degree from the Mississippi College School of Law, where he served as student body president. He earned a Master of Business Administration degree and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Why Attorney General
Tindell believes his background and experience makes him “uniquely qualified” to be Mississippi’s next Attorney General.
“As a former prosecutor, I’ve enforced the laws in our courtrooms. As a senator, of course, we helped draft the laws. And as a judge, I really took every case and evaluated the laws and the facts and circumstances to try to achieve justice,” Tindell said. “And now, as DPS Commissioner, I’ve served on the front lines where we go in and work with local law enforcement and federal law enforcement and our state law enforcement teams to try and make sure that we address the criminal elements that plague our state, that take lives, that ruin families, working towards a safer Mississippi.”
When you take all those together, Tindell said “it’s a very unique set of qualifications that makes me the best candidate to be Mississippi’s next Attorney General.”
The Tindell Edge
As DPS Commissioner, Tindell has been able to travel across the state, visiting with local law enforcement agencies, District Attorneys and Sheriffs. That network has allowed him to build relationships that will be vital if elected the state’s next Attorney General.
Tindell also says his edge, what separates him beyond his varied legal background, is the track record he has of leading a statewide agency leading over 1,400 employees throughout Mississippi.
“If you highlight the successes we’ve had at the Department of Public Safety, it shows you the leadership skills not only to talk about leadership but to have a track record that shows that the leadership comes in and actually gets things done,” Tindell said, pointing to a variety of statistics to make his case.
“One of the things that everybody was aware of six years ago was the average wait time at our driver’s service bureaus was 3 hours. Now, we’re looking at about 15 minutes across the state,” he said.
When he came into DPS as Commissioner, the medical examiner’s office had a backlog of over 2,000 cases dating back to 2010 that had not been completed.
“That entire backlog has now been eliminated. Now we’re running a 90-day to 180-day turnaround on all autopsy reports,” Tindell noted.
Then there is the state crime lab.
“Coming in, we had times where it took up to two years to get a drug analysis on a criminal case done at the crime lab,” Tindell explained. “Our latest numbers show that it’s about 35 days to get those results back now. What does that mean for the general public? That means that victims are getting justice sooner, criminals are being held accountable and victims are getting the answers that they deserve.”
Tindell believes when voters look at his track record leading DPS they will see “we just don’t talk it, we actually get it done.”
“I’m very proud of the movements that we’ve had within our department. Look at our overall rankings in public safety in the nation under U.S. News and World Report. I think Mississippi ranked #11 in public safety. That’s a significant improvement over where we were in 2020 and 2021 when we came in, when we had over 600 homicides,” Tindell continued. “We had record numbers of overdose deaths. Those numbers have been reduced drastically over the last six years, and I think it has a lot to do with the programs that we instituted and initiated at the Department of Public Safety.”
Stepping Down as Commissioner
The Hatch Act was revised in 2012, making it clear that state employees whose salaries are not fully funded by the federal government could run for public office.
However, Tindell does foresee himself stepping down as DPS Commissioner in the near future.
“There was a revision that allowed for that and we don’t have any real state prohibitions that prevent that as well,” Tindell said of his run for Attorney General while serving as Commissioner. “But with that in mind, I anticipate that I will step down at some point and focus my efforts on the campaign because, again, it’s an important job and I think that over the course of a campaign I would not want that to detract from my duties as Commissioner and keeping Mississippi safe.”
Tindell said he would make that move “at the appropriate time.”
“I think that it’s important that the governor have an opportunity to pick a new commissioner that he’s confident will fill the role, a role that’s very important to our state,” he added.
Priorities as Attorney General
Top of mind for Tindell if he is elected Mississippi’s next Attorney General is public corruption.
“I really want to emphasize and work on public corruption, work with the Legislature to come up with laws to better address how we investigate and prosecute public corruption,” he said Monday.
After speaking District Attorneys across the state, he said public corruption “absolutely exists on the local level.”
“I want to make sure that the Attorney General’s office is involved in prosecuting those cases so that we’re not just allowing federal law enforcement and the federal courts to handle our bad actors in Mississippi,” Tindell said. “You routinely see that. When there’s a public corruption case a lot of times it is being prosecuted by the Justice Department and I think we need to really tackle those issues, do it on the state level as well.”
He also wants to continue working on many of the initiatives began under Attorney General Fitch, such as those focused on human trafficking and drug trafficking.
“I think she and I have had a great working relationship as the Commissioner of Public Safety and the Attorney General. Our departments have worked well on a variety of task forces,” Tindell said. “We want to maintain those relationships.”
Providing timely Attorney General opinions is another priority for Tindell.
“In my experience in private practice representing governmental entities I know how important it is to be able to get a timely AG’s opinion to give guidance to local officials on how to address certain issues that may come up on a daily or weekly basis in front of those local officials,” he said, noting that he wants to enhance that department going forward.
As for the litigation side of the Attorney General’s office, defending the state when it is in civil lawsuits, Tindell said he intends to tackle frivolous lawsuits against the state that cost time and taxpayer money.
“At DPS, it’s not uncommon for the agency to get sued and we’re relying on the attorneys at the Attorney General’s office to do that defense. They’ve done a great job,” he said. “But I also think if we can continue to work on that and get more lawyers there that can better defend the state when it does get sued and try to rid itself of some of the frivolous lawsuits that do get filed against the state.”
At the end of the day, the Attorney General’s role is not to make laws but enforce what is on the books.
Tindell said he will ensure his office upholds the U.S. Constitution, the Mississippi Constitution, and the state and federal laws that govern society.
“That is certainly something that we’re going to continue to do and then working with our local District Attorneys, Sheriffs and Police Chiefs across the state to ensure that Mississippi remains safe, that we’re doing our part to get rid of illegal immigrants that are committing crimes in our state, that we’re addressing gang activity, that we’re doing everything we can to keep Mississippians safe from the criminal elements that are trying to plague us,” he said.
On the Campaign Trail
Tindell plans to take his message to four cities across the state this week to announce his run for Attorney General. His stops will include Gulfport, Jackson, Tupelo and Southaven.
At present, Tindell is the only announced candidate for Mississippi Attorney General in 2027. That is likely to change soon as others jump in the race now that Fitch has publicly announced her gubernatorial bid.
One likely opponent is State Senator Biggs Hopson, the longtime Republican Senate Appropriations Committee chairman. No Democrats have been rumored to be running or announced for the office as of yet.
Tindell starts his campaign with roughly $507,000 cash on hand, according to finance reports filed in January. Hopson, if he does enter the race, would bring nearly $968,000 to the race.
Tindell said he knows campaign fundraising is “obviously very important” having run elections in the past.
“Every candidate’s got to raise money and be successful in that endeavor if they’re going to be able to deliver their message across the state,” he said. “I anticipate that we’re going to have a lot of success in the fall here raising money.”
He said fundraiser was something he has held back doing as Commissioner “because I never wanted anybody to look at it as if we were trying to parlay my position as Commissioner of Public Safety into a fundraising effort.”
“I feel confident that we’re going to have a sufficient amount of campaign finance to run a very successful campaign,” Tindell said.
Tindell’s Pitch to Voters
No matter what role he has taken on, Tindell said his heart has always been in making Mississippi safer.
“My heart’s in public safety and I want to make Mississippi safer. I’ve had a passion for that since I became a prosecutor on the Mississippi Gulf Coast,” he said. “I’ve had opportunities to take jobs with better salaries to do different things that would have benefited me financially from the beginning of my career. But my heart’s always been with public safety. I love being a prosecutor. I love taking and putting bad guys in jail and I think that as your next attorney general, again, I’m uniquely qualified to that part of the job as well as defending the state in many capacities, defending the laws of the state, in defending the Constitution of the United States when appropriate as the Attorney General and the lawyer for the State of Mississippi.”
Tindell does not expect to have any “spats” with other state agencies or state elected officials if elected Attorney General. That has not been the case in recent years between the Attorney General’s office and the State Auditor, in particular.
“As Commissioner, you’ve rarely seen us get any sort of public spats with other agency heads or elected officials, and I certainly didn’t do that when I was in the Legislature,” Tindell said. “I think my career has been one of focusing on the job at hand, working with others to get the vision and good things accomplished, and we’re going to continue that as your next Attorney General.”
He said he will work with anyone.
“If we can’t figure out a way to work together, we’re going to certainly sit down in a room and talk about it and make sure that we’re doing everything we can to reach those resolutions,” Tindell committed.
Support of Family and Friends
Tindell knows how this campaign could be challenging on his family, especially when it comes to social media. He and his family have seen that in recent weeks from high profile cases where Tindell has had to speak on investigations and the work being done by law enforcement.
“It’s something that my family’s been dealing with for a long time, ever since I became a public official nearly 14 years ago as a state senator. They know that’s part of the job,” Tindell said of the public scrutiny. “Even recently with some of the stuff that you’ve seen on social media. Unfortunately, it’s used and weaponized in a way that paints narratives and so that’s happened to us before and my family is fully aware that that’s part of the job.”
But Tindell said his family and supporters know him and are fully engaged in his decision to seek the Attorney General’s office.
“They know me as a father, they know me as a husband. They know me as person,” he said. “Just like I think the people that are closest to me, my friends and supporters and people that have worked directly with me know me to be a good leader. They know me to be a good person.”
Tindell concluded by saying he is a person with strong values who is willing to stand up for what is right, “even when criticism comes from that and that’s 100% why [my family] support this endeavor because they feel like I’m the best candidate for the job, but they know I have the heart for it and I’ll stand up and do the right things.”
Qualifying for statewide and legislative offices is scheduled to open January 2, 2027.
