Mississippi votes Tuesday in a Senate runoff election, capping the 2018 midterms

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and President Trump arrive in Mississippi
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Mississippi voters go to the polls Tuesday for the last election of 2018, the Senate runoff between Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) and Democrat Mike Espy, a former congressman and Clinton administration agriculture secretary. Hyde-Smith was appointed to temporarily replace former Sen. Thad Cochran, and the winner of Tuesday's election will serve out the remaining two years of Cochran's term.

Hyde-Smith, 59, is favored to win, but her campaign has been roiled by recent comments about sitting "on the front row" of "a public hanging" and a purported joke about making it difficult for students and "liberal folks" to vote, plus newly unearthed photographs and video appearing to show her laud the Confederacy and recent reports that both she and her daughter attended private "segregation academy" schools set up to help white students avoid school desegregation. Adding to the racially charged tenor of the campaign, seven nooses were found hanging from trees outside the Mississippi Capitol on Monday, accompanied by handwritten signs referencing Tuesday's election and Mississippi's dark history of lynching.

While Espy's campaign has been painting Hyde-Smith as an embarrassing reminder of Mississippi's segregationist past, Hyde-Smith and other Republicans have been highlighting Espy's $750,000 lobbying contract with Ivory Coast's Cocoa and Coffee Board in 2011, and his trial on charges of illicitly accepting gifts in the 1990s — he resigned from President Bill Clinton's Cabinet, was tried on 30 corruption charges, and acquitted on all 30.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Working to ensure a Republican victory, President Trump held two rallies for Hyde-Smith on Monday, and GOP groups poured $4 million into the runoff, versus $1.2 million from Democratic groups. If Hyde-Smith wins, she will be the first woman ever elected to Congress from Mississippi and Republicans will control 53 seats in the 100-seat Senate. Espy, 64, would be Mississippi's first black senator since Reconstruction and the first Mississippi Democrat elected to the Senate since 1982.

To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Peter Weber, The Week US

Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.