Trump to campaign for Hyde-Smith in Mississippi as Dems aim to energize black voters

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Mississippi Senator joked about ‘public hanging’

Mississippi Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s Democratic opponent Mike Espy slams her ‘public hanging’ remark as ‘reprehensible.’

With the recounts over and the races in Florida and Georgia finally decided,  the nation's attention is shifting to another southern state.

In what is the last battle of the 2018 midterm season, a special runoff election is taking place in just over a week to decide who will fill Mississippi’s second seat in the Senate. The runoff pits Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith against her Democratic challenger, former Secretary of Agriculture and ex-Democratic Rep. Mike Espy.

Hyde-Smith, who was appointed in April to fill retired Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's seat, and Espy beat out two other candidates earlier this month, but neither was able to accumulate more than 50 percent of the vote to win the race outright. Now the runoff is drawing national attention – and money – in a competitive contest that could see Espy become the state’s first Democratic senator since 1962.

Before the November 6 elections, polling showed Hyde-Smith enjoying a sizeable lead over her three contenders in the deeply red state, but on Election Day she garnered only 41.4 percent of the vote with Espy close behind at 40.7 percent.

Since then her campaign has run into some public relations issues after two videos surfaced in the last week of her making questionable comments.

In one video, the senator says that if she were invited by one of her supporters to a "public hanging," she would be in "the front row,” while in the other she is heard telling a group of supporters that “there's a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who that maybe we don't want to vote. Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. So, I think that's a great idea.”

While her campaign has said her comments were "an exaggerated expression of regard” and “all a joke,” both have upset many in a state known for its history of lynchings and other racially-motivated attacks on African-Americans.

Her opponent, Espy, is African-American.

Mississippi also has the highest percentage of black residents – at 37 percent – and community leaders have heavily criticized the senator for her comments.

“Hyde-Smith’s decision to joke about ‘hanging,’ in a state known for its violent and terroristic history toward African Americans is sick," NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. "To envision this brutal and degenerate type of frame during a time when Black people, Jewish People and immigrants are still being targeted for violence by White nationalists and racists is hateful and hurtful. Any politician seeking to serve as the national voice of the people of Mississippi should know better."

Hyde-Smith’s comments have become prime fodder for the political action committees that have funneled millions of dollars into helping Espy win the Senate seat.

FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2018, file photo, Mike Espy, a former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary, speaks at the Neshoba County Fair, one of the state's largest political events, in Philadelphia, Miss.  (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

One PAC in particular, PowerPACPlus, has latched on to Hyde-Smith’s “hanging” comments by putting out an ad that features a 1930 photo of a white crowd in Indiana posing around a tree as the lifeless bodies of two black men hang above them, lynched in nooses. The ad then superimposes an unrelated photo of Hyde-Smith alongside the “This is where U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith would like to be.”

PowerPACPlus has also given ESPY’s campaign around $1.8 million.

To combat the bad press, Hyde-Smith’s campaign and national Republican leaders are pulling out all the stops to make sure she retains her seat come January.

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President Trump is making two stops in Mississippi the day before the special election – in Tupelo and Biloxi – to rally voter support for Hyde-Smith as he did for a number of other candidates across the country in a mad dash of appearances before Nov. 6. In the 2016 presidential election, Trump won Mississippi by almost 18 points and remains popular within the Magnolia state.

“President Trump is so committed to getting out the vote for Cindy Hyde-Smith that he scheduled two rallies in the great State of Mississippi on the day before the run-off election,” Trump campaign chief operating officer Michael Glassner said in a news release. “The President needs all hands on deck on Election Day on November 27 so he can continue to count on Senator Hyde-Smith’s outstanding support for his America First agenda.”

Along with the presidential support on the stump, the Hyde-Smith campaign is also receiving a sizeable financial bump from the GOP, with the National Republican Senatorial Committee expected to spend more than $1 million on a TV ad blitz.

Despite the cash infusion and Hyde-Smith’s missteps, Espy is not even close to a guaranteed win in next week’s runoff. Mississippi is still a deeply conservative state overall and even more so when it comes to the people in the state who vote. To that end, Espy is trying to rally African-American voters to head to the polls once again in November to cast their ballots for him.

Espy – who has played off Hyde-Smith’s “hanging” comment while on the campaign trail – hopes to use those voters, along with any crossover Republicans put off by the comment, to win the race.

"Here's what you're not going to get from me: You're not going to hear any talk about voter suppression. You're not going to hear any talk about public hanging," Espy said on Sunday.

Before the Nov. 6 elections there were a number of parallels drawn between the Senate race in Mississippi and last year’s special election that saw Democrat Doug Jones defeat the scandal-plagued Republican Roy Moore to fill the seat vacated by Jeff Sessions when he was appointed attorney general.

Some critics at the time balked at the comparison as Hyde-Smith’s record was squeaky clean, but with two high-profile missteps emerging in the last week, the question remains, does that change anything?

“Cindy Hyde-Smith is giving Espy some freebies with those comments,” Marvin King, a political science professor at the University of Mississippi, told Fox News. King noted that Hyde-Smith’s comments have heightened the attention on the race and energized some voters appalled by her words – both helpful to Espy.

But will it be enough to turn Mississippi blue?

“I don’t think so,” King said. “It will change nothing in the aggregate, but maybe some things on the margins.”