USA TODAY International Edition
League wants donation back after comments
About that donation, senator. Major League Baseball would like it back.
MLB has requested that a Mississippi Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate return the $5,000 donation it made to her campaign in the wake of controversial comments by the candidate.
This month, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who is running in Tuesday’s runoff in Mississippi, joked about sitting on the front row of a public hanging in a viral video published on Twitter in which she was surrounded by supporters.
“If he invited me to a public hanging,” Hyde-Smith said on Nov. 2 while in an embrace with a cattle rancher, “I’d be on the front row.”
MLB’s donation was made on Friday, three weeks after Hyde-Smith’s comment.
“The contribution was made in connection with an event that MLB lobbyists were asked to attend,” an MLB spokesperson said in a statement given to USA TODAY. “MLB has requested that the contribution be returned.”
Several businesses, including Walmart, have asked for the return of donations over her comment.
San Francisco Giants owner Charles B. Johnson and his wife, Ann, also each donated $2,700 to the campaign, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
After considerable backlash, HydeSmith apologized during a televised debate with Democrat Mike Espy, saying, “There was no ill will, no intent whatsoever in my statements.”
Espy is vying to become the Mississippi’s first African-American in the Senate since the Reconstruction.
Hyde-Smith also was captured on video making a joke about voter suppression, and photos posted to Facebook in 2014 show her with Confederate items and a caption reading, “Mississippi history at its best!”