Sen. Hyde-Smith captures a racially charged runoff
JACKSON, MISS. >> Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive Mississippi runoff Tuesday, surviving a videorecorded remark decried as racist and defeating a former federal official who hoped to become the state’s first AfricanAmerican senator since Reconstruction.
The runoff was rocked by the video, in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” A separate video showed her talking about “liberal folks” and making it “just a little more difficult” for them to vote. The comments by HydeSmith, who is white, made Mississippi’s history of racist lynchings a theme of the runoff and spurred many black voters to return to the polls Tuesday.
In the aftermath of the video, Republicans worried they could face a repeat of last year’s special election in Alabama, in which a flawed Republican candidate handed Democrats a reliable GOP Senate seat in the Deep South. The GOP pumped resources into Mississippi, and President Donald Trump made a strong effort on behalf of Hyde-Smith, holding last-minute rallies in Mississippi on Monday.
Her supporters said the furor over her comments was overblown. They also stuck by her as a photo was circulated of her wearing a replica Confederate military hat during a 2014 visit to Beauvoir, the last home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
The contest caps a campaign season that exposed persistent racial divisions in America — and the willingness of some political candidates to exploit them to win elections. With Hyde-Smith’s victory, Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats. The GOP lost control of the House, where Democrats will assume the majority in January.
Addressing his supporters Tuesday night, Democratic opponent Mike Espy, 64, a former U.S. agriculture secretary, said: “While this is not the result we were hoping for, I am proud of the historic campaign we ran and grateful for the support we received across Mississippi. We built the largest grassroots organization our state has seen in a generation.”
Abrams’ organization files lawsuit
A political organization backed by Democrat Stacey Abrams filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday challenging the way Georgia’s elections are run, making good on a promise Abrams made as she ended her bid to become the state’s governor.
State elections officials “grossly mismanaged” the 2018 election in a way that deprived some citizens, particularly lowincome people and people of color, of their right to vote in violation of their constitutional rights, the lawsuit says. It was filed by Fair Fight Action against interim Secretary of State Robyn Crittenden and state election board members in their official capacities.
In a fiery speech ending her campaign Nov. 16, Abrams announced that a lawsuit would be filed against Georgia “for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions.”
As secretary of state, Abrams’ opponent, Republican Gov.-elect Brian Kemp, was the top elections official until he declared himself the winner and resigned two days after the election. On the campaign trail, Abrams repeatedly called Kemp “an architect of suppression,” an allegation that Kemp vehemently denied.