Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Hyde-Smith keeps Senate seat in Mississippi runoff
JACKSON, Miss. — Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to the office by Mississippi’s governor this year, has won the runoff to remain in office.
In Tuesday’s race, HydeSmith, 59, defeated Democrat Mike Espy, 64, a former U.S. agriculture secretary who hoped to become Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction.
The win allows HydeSmith to complete the final two years of Sen. Thad Cochran’s six-year term. Cochran retired in April, and Hyde-Smith was appointed to temporarily succeed him.
The win makes her the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi. Republicans will now hold 53 of 100 Senate seats.
A spokesman for the secretary of state’s office, Leah Rupp Smith, said observers from the office saw “steady but slow” turnout the first few hours, but the pace picked up late in the day, with estimates that 30 to 40 percent of registered voters cast ballots. Polls closed at 7 p.m., although people already in line at that time were allowed to stay and vote.
Espy cast his ballot at a Baptist church in the Jackson suburb of Ridgeland, while Hyde-Smith voted at a volunteer fire department in Brookhaven, about 55 miles south of Jackson.
Espy had kept to a theme he’s emphasized repeatedly: He’d be a senator for all of Mississippi. He said that to win, he can’t just rely on black voters. He needs white voters, as well.
“I don’t talk to them as white voters. I talk to them as Mississippians — Mississippi young people who want to reduce their debt coming out of college, Mississippi young people who want to stay in this state, and not go to Atlanta and Dallas to get a good job,” Espy said after voting.
Mississippi’s past of racist violence became a theme after a video showed HydeSmith praising a supporter in early November by saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” She said it was “an exaggerated expression of regard.” More than a week after the video’s release, she said she apologized to “anyone that was offended by my comments,” but also said the remark was used as a “weapon” against her.
Hyde-Smith was seen in another video talking about making voting difficult for “liberal folks,” and a photo circulated of her wearing a replica Confederate military hat during a 2014 visit to Beauvoir, a beachside museum in Biloxi that was the last home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
Critics said Hyde-Smith’s comments and Confederate regalia showed callous indifference in a state with a 38 percent black population, and some corporate donors, including Walmart, requested refunds of campaign contributions to her.
But Elizabeth Gallinghouse, 84, from the coastal town of Diamondhead, voted for Hyde-Smith and said neither the “hanging” comments nor Hyde-Smith’s appearance in the Confederate hat bothered her.
“So many things are taken out of context,” Gallinghouse said. “The fact that she toured Jefferson Davis’s house — you or I could have done the same thing. They said, ‘Put this cap on. Hold this gun.’ It was a fun time. She wasn’t trying to send any messages.”
Hyde-Smith was in her second term as Mississippi’s elected agriculture commissioner when Republican Gov. Phil Bryant chose her to temporarily succeed longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired in April amid health concerns.
Hyde-Smith has campaigned as a supporter of Trump, who campaigned with her in Tupelo and Gulfport after her comments became public.
Federal and state authorities are investigating seven nooses found hanging from trees outside the Mississippi Capitol on Monday, along with handwritten signs that referred to the Senate runoff and the state’s history of lynching.
Hyde-Smith’s campaign hammered Espy for his $750,000 lobbying contract in 2011 with the Cocoa and Coffee Board of the Ivory Coast. She noted that the country’s ex-president, Laurent Gbagbo, is being tried in the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Espy, an attorney, said: “I found out later that this guy, the president, was a really bad guy. I resigned the contract.”
Espy resigned as U.S. agriculture secretary in 1994, during Bill Clinton’s presidency, during a special counsel investigation that accused him of improperly accepting gifts. He was tried and acquitted on 30 corruption charges, but the Mississippi Republican Party ran an ad this year that called Espy “too corrupt for the Clintons” and “too liberal for Mississippi.”
Espy said he refused to accept plea deals because, “I was so not guilty, I was innocent.”