Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a down-the-line backer of President Trump, handily defeated Democrat Mike Espy in a run-off election on Tuesday that tarnished her reputation as a political trail-blazer with memories of the state’s grim racial history. Appointed to the Senate in March, Hyde-Smith, a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, is the first woman elected senator from Mississippi; in 1986, Espy was the first black person elected to the U.S. House from Mississippi since Reconstruction and later was agriculture secretary in the Clinton era.
With her victory in the final Senate race of the mid-terms, Hyde-Smith assures Republicans of a 53-47 majority in the two-year session that opens in January, a two-seat gain from this session. President Trump held election-eve rallies in Tupelo and Biloxi to rouse voters in a solidly Republican state that voted 58-40 for him in 2016. Hyde-Smith had a 54-46 margin with 94 percent of precincts counted.
A cattle farmer, Hyde-Smith was in her second term as the elected state agriculture commissioner when Gov. Phil Bryant appointed her as the successor to long-time Sen. Thad Cochran, who resigned for health reasons. She was the first woman to win a statewide office in Mississippi history. While a state senator from 2000-12, she switched party affiliation from Democrat to Republican. She has been a reliable conservative vote in the Senate.
Hyde-Smith, who ran as “a rock-solid conservative for Mississippi,” will serve the final two years of Cochran’s term and face re-election in 2020. She coasted into the run-off with Espy and put her campaign on the defensive a few days with a seemingly offhand remark about a supporter—”If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” The remark raised questions about Hyde-Smith’s judgement in a state that once led the nation in lynchings. In the final week or so before the election, published reports said Hyde-Smith attended a segregational academy during the 1960s and engaged in Civil War revisionism while in the Legislature. Espy ran as an independent-minded Democrat with the slogan, “Rise above.”
When Hyde-Smith made a limited apology a week ago for the “public hanging” remark, Espy responded, “I don’t know what’s in your heart, but we all know what came out of your mouth. It’s given our state another black eye that we don’t need. It’s just rejuvenated old stereotypes that we don’t need anymore.”