Republican wins race for Senate
Sen. Cindy HydeSmith beats Democrat Mike Espy in Mississippi’s fiercely fought contest.
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith defeated Democrat Mike Espy on Tuesday in Mississippi’s fiercely fought U.S. Senate contest, one of the state’s most competitive races in decades.
Hyde-Smith led by 6.6 percentage points with 99% of precincts reporting late Tuesday. But it was an underwhelming victory for a Republican in this staunchly conservative state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982.
The special election runoff became unexpectedly competitive after HydeSmith, a 59-year-old cattle rancher who was appointed to the Senate this year after Sen. Thad Cochran resigned for health reasons, drew scrutiny for remarks that were criticized as racist or insensitive.
Shortly after the Nov. 6 election, a video emerged in which Hyde-Smith said that if a supporter invited her “to a public hanging,” she would be in “the front row,” words that dredged up the state’s painful legacy of violence against African Americans.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 600 African Americans were lynched in Mississippi from 1877 to 1950, the most documented lynchings of any state in the nation.
In another recording from the campaign trail, Hyde-Smith told supporters that maybe it was a “great idea” to make it “just a little bit more difficult” for “liberal folks in those other schools” to vote. Some suspected she was referring to students of historically black colleges.
Hyde-Smith, who previously served as the Mississippi commissioner of agriculture and commerce and a Mississippi state senator, also drew criticism for her handling of the controversy, retreating from the campaign trail and refusing to talk to the media.
To win, Espy, 64, a former congressman who served as U.S. agriculture secretary under President Clinton, needed to mobilize a large section of African Americans to the polls, as well as capture about 25% of the white vote.
Though Hyde-Smith did not do herself any favors, Espy fundamentally lacked the numbers, said Joseph Weinberg, associate professor of political science at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Typically, he said, Republicans have an approximate 20-percentage-point lead over Democrats.
“This is an incredibly ‘red’ state, so it was always Cindy Hyde-Smith’s race to lose,” Weinberg said. “We haven’t had an even nominally competitive federal race between a Democrat and Republican in some 10 or 15 years.”
In a statement conceding the race, Espy said: “Make no mistake — tonight is the beginning, not the end. When this many people show up, stand up and speak up, it is not a loss. It is a moment. It is a movement.”
Hyde-Smith’s win gives Republicans 53 seats in the Senate to Democrats’ 47.
jenny.jarvie@latimes.com