Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, will call the Mississippi House into order at noon Tuesday to begin the new four year term. He will also officiate at the swearing in of the 122 House members who were elected in November. Hosemann will assume his new duties as lieutenant governor of the Senate on Thursday. Lt. Governor is also present in the Senate. Tate Reeves, the Senate’s Lt. Governor, will convene at noon Tuesday to swear in 52 of the senators elected in November. Reeves will still preside over the Senate through Thursday, when Hosemann and the six other statewide elected officials in November will be sworn into office in a ceremony held in the House chamber. Reeves will not be employed when Hosemann is sworn into office as lieutenant governor. He will then be sworn to as the 65th governor of the state during pomp and circumstance on the south steps at the Capitol. Construction has been underway since mid-December on the stage where Reeves will administer the oath. If it rains, everyone will try to squeeze into the House chamber like Phil Bryant did in 2012. A second interesting nugget is that if Bill Waller Jr. hadn’t retired as chief justice on the state Supreme Court and ran against Reeves for the Republican gubernatorial primaries, it is most likely that he would have administered the oath to the new governor. If things had gone differently in the August Republican primary, Waller might have been preparing to take Randolph’s oath of office as governor-elect. Although the four-year process of starting a new term may seem long, it is possible to take comfort in the fact that swearing in new statewide officeholders was much more difficult before the state Constitution was changed in the 1980s. The Legislature meets on the Tuesday following the first Monday in the new year. All other statewide officeholders are sworn into on Thursday. The governor then takes the oath. The entire process took another week before the Constitution was amended. Other than the governor, the statewide officeholders were sworn into office during the second week. The governor was inaugurated in the third week. The first order of business after the Legislature convenes Tuesday is to elect a speaker and pro tem speaker in the House and pro tem senator. Already, the Republican majority in Congress has elected Philip Gunn of Clinton as speaker and Jason White from West pro-tem. Dean Kirby (R-Pearl) is expected to be elected unanimously by his fellow senators. Interestingly, based upon precedent and current House rules, Democrat Hester Jack-McCray was declared the winner of House District 40, DeSoto County, by 14 votes over Republican incumbent Ashley Henley. Henley wants the House to reverse the election results. She claims voter irregularities were committed in the Nov. 5, 2005 election. The Constitution grants the two chambers the power to seat or disqualify its members. Gunn will, probably soon after he is elected to a third term, appoint an independent committee to listen to Henley’s complaints. The first day of 2000 saw the House elect a governor. This was because neither Democrat Ronnie Musgrove or Republican Mike Parker received the majority of popular vote. Also, the House did not have the votes to elect a governor. The House elected Musgrove, who was the highest vote-getter and won a mere 1% of the majority. Parker, a former U.S. House Member, listened as the House voted. Musgrove was still serving as lieutenant Governor until Amy Tuck was sworn in on Thursday. The House vote was over when Travis Little, a state senator from Corinth, who had just been elected pro-tem by his fellow senators, went to the podium and informed Musgrove of the House vote. He also offered congratulations. These are the details of Mississippi state government.