Mississippi senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call,Inc.
On November 27, Democrat Mike Espy will go head-to-head in a Mississippi [1]Senate runoff election with incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Trump-endorsed Republican whose recent racist remarks were so abhorrent that Walmart, an objectively bad[2] company[3], recently asked the senator to refund the $2,000 the corporation donated to her campaign. But will her comments about “public hangings” and photos with Confederate[4] memorabilia actually impinge her likelihood of holding onto a Senate seat?
Below, here’s what to know about the scandal-plagued race.
In April 2018, Mississippi governor Phil Bryant appointed Cindy Hyde-Smith, 59, to assume the Senate seat vacated by ailing senator Thad Cochran, christening her as the first woman to represent the state in the U.S. Senate. Before Hyde-Smith won this seat, she served in Mississippi’s State Senate and worked as the state’s Agriculture Commissioner. (She was the first woman to hold this position as well.)
Unbelievably, Hyde-Smith started off in politics as a Democrat, and later switched parties in 2010. Per her campaign website[5], Hyde-Smith is someone with a “strong social conservative voting record with a 100 percent pro-life rating [who is] a lifetime member of the NRA.” According to FiveThirtyEight[6], Hyde-Smith has voted with Trump more than any other Republican, and she supports both the construction of a wall[7] along the U.S.–Mexico border and the Trump administration’s travel ban[8]
