Lynching remark puts spotlight on Mississippi Senate race.

JACKSON, Miss. – A video of a white U.S. senator from Mississippi making a flip reference to a “public hanging” is incensing voters in a special election runoff, drawing attention to the state’s history of lynching and boosting Democrats’ hope of pulling off a stunner in the Deep South.

Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith is facing former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy, a black Democrat, in a runoff Nov. 27. She was captured on video praising a supporter by declaring, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”

After the video was made public Sunday, Hyde-Smith said her remark Nov. 2 at a campaign event in Tupelo was “an exaggerated expression of regard” for a friend who invited her to speak. “Any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous,” she said.

Espy on Monday called the remark “disappointing and harmful.”

“It reinforces stereotypes that we’ve been trying to get away from for decades, stereotypes that continue to harm our economy and cost us jobs,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

Hyde-Smith was appointed to fill the seat vacated by longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran when he retired in April. Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41 percent of the vote in a four-person race to advance to the runoff. Another Republican won 16 percent.