Democrats’ Secret Weapon in Mississippi? The Republican
Mississippi hasn’t had a Democratic senator since John C. Stennis, first elected during the Truman administration. But that might be about to change.
With a new poll showing the incumbent Republican leading by only three points, a major Democratic PAC just poured $1.2 million into the state. And the always-cautious Cook Political Report just nudged Mississippi in the Democrats’ direction.
A competitive Senate race in Mississippi? Who could have predicted this?
Well, actually, I did.
This might sound like bragging, but please, cut me some slack. I’ve been wrong about so many things—like predicting that Katie Zacharia would make it to Day 6—that I have to take credit when I’m right.
Last June, I broke down the race in Mississippi and showed how maybe—just maybe—Democrats could pull off an upset in the Magnolia State. And to be clear: it would be way more than an upset. A Democratic win would be a miracle, like Donald Trump reading Middlemarch.
Having said that, Mississippi Democrats do have a secret weapon: the Republican incumbent, epic assclown Cindy Hyde-Smith. Because when Cindy opens her mouth, anything can happen.
The following deep dive into the Mississippi race was originally published as an installment of TBR Midterms HQ, a premium feature for paid subscribers. But since the experts now agree with me that this race is kinda winnable, I’m now making the post free for all, in the hopes that you’ll share it with everyone you know—especially if they happen to vote in Mississippi. And thanks, as always, for your support!
In 2018, Mississippi’s Republican governor, Phil Bryant, tapped Hyde-Smith, the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce, to replace Senator Thad Cochran, who had resigned for health reasons. Seven months later, she faced former US Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy in a special election to serve the remainder of Cochran’s term. And that’s when Cindy, the Mouth of Mississippi, started making headlines around the world—for all the wrong reasons.
Hyde-Smith became the author of her own catastrophe at a campaign event in Tupelo three weeks before the election. After a rancher named Colin Hutchinson praised her to the crowd, she cheerfully reciprocated, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
People ignored her eccentric choice of preposition—generally, one sits in the front row, not on it—and focused on how deeply offensive her zest for public hanging was, given Mississippi’s notorious history of lynching. According to the NAACP, of the 4,743 lynchings that occurred in the US between 1882 and 1968, 581 happened in Mississippi, more than any other state. Seventy-two percent of those lynched were African American—as was Hyde-Smith’s Democratic opponent, Espy, who called her comment “reprehensible.”
The backlash was swift and brutal, as corporate donors fled Hyde-Smith’s campaign. Walmart tweeted from its official account, “Sen. Hyde-Smith’s recent comments clearly do not reflect the values of our company and associates. As a result, we are withdrawing our support and requesting a refund of all campaign donations.”
Coming to Cindy’s financial rescue was a white knight—emphasis decidedly on white. A businessman named Peter Sieve with a history of Nazi-adjacent utterances gave her campaign the maximum individual contribution, $2700. Hyde-Smith grappled with the thorny moral issues raised by such a donation by quietly cashing his check.
But Cindy’s piehole was just getting started. Speaking in Starkville, the home of Mississippi State University, she floated this modest proposal: “[T]here’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.” If voters were going to be disenfranchised, Cindy seemed to be suggesting, she wanted to be on the front row.
After declaring her enthusiasm for public hangings and voter suppression, what abhorrent box did Hyde-Smith have left to check? If you guessed “posing for a photo wearing a Confederate hat,” you’ve been paying attention.
A week before the election, Politico unearthed a (now-deleted) Facebook entry from 2014 in which Cindy posted just such a pic as she gushed about her visit to the home of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America. “I enjoyed my tour of Beauvoir,” she wrote. “The Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library located in Biloxi. This is a must see. Currently on display are artifacts connected to the daily life of the Confederate Soldier including weapons. Mississippi history at its best!”
If anyone wondered where Hyde-Smith got the brilliant idea of dressing up as a Rebel soldier, that mystery was solved a few days later. The Jackson Free Press revealed that she had attended the Lawrence County Academy, a “segregation school” established in 1970 to enable white parents to avoid sending their children to an integrated one. A member of the cheerleading squad, Cindy is shown third from right in the yearbook photo below, posing with the school mascot in Confederate army attire.
As surreal as this photo is, it’s far from the most bizarre content to appear in a Lawrence County Academy yearbook: that would be the description of Hyde-Smith as the “wittiest” member of her class. (I had to read it several times to be sure it didn’t say “whitest.”)
On Election Day, Cindy’s enthusiasm for Confederate headgear repelled enough voters to turn what should have been a Republican romp into a nail-biter. Cindy saw off the challenge from Espy, but just barely.
Since then, Hyde-Smith has had years as an incumbent to endear herself to Mississippi voters. That’s gone about as well as Jefferson Davis’s presidency. A recent poll by Impact Research indicates that 55% of Mississippi voters have an unfavorable view of her and 53% would rather vote for someone else. And those numbers could get even uglier, thanks to two issues that might prove to be her kryptonite: inflation and Iran.
Hyde-Smith has been a full-throated supporter of Donald Trump’s disastrous Middle East misadventure, which, at 60 percent disapproval, is his second-most despised demolition project after the White House ballroom. Voting against a resolution that would have limited Trump’s use of military force against Tehran, she declared, “President Trump is taking decisive steps to eliminate the Islamic Republic of Iran’s decades-long campaign of deadly attacks against Americans and our national interests.”
Unfortunately for Hyde-Smith, those decisive steps have helped jack up food prices, a subject she’s addressed with a nonchalance so jaw-dropping, it rivals her Senate colleague Joni Ernst’s legendary take about Medicaid cuts: “Well, we all are going to die.” Asked in a local TV interview about rising beef prices, Cindy offered this helpful tip: “You know, you have so many proteins to choose from.”
I’m struggling to picture hordes of Mississippians at July 4 barbecues flinging tofu and tempeh on the grill. But instead of shopping for an alternative protein, Magnolia State voters might be considering an alternative senator. This year, Democrats have nominated a formidable opponent, Scott Colom, who—in a particularly delicious plot twist—owes his candidacy to none other than Cindy Hyde-Smith.
In 2023, Colom, a district attorney from Northeast Mississippi, was Joe Biden’s pick to be U.S. District Court Judge for the state’s Northern District. Cindy blocked his nomination, citing his support for trans rights and his backing by the Great Liberal Satan, George Soros. (While announcing her opposition to Colom, who is African American, Hyde-Smith was careful not to wear a Confederate hat.) Three years later, Colom is highly motivated to send her packing. According to the poll by Impact Research, he trails Hyde-Smith by only 3 points. And when voters are informed about the candidates’ positions, he actually pulls 3 points ahead.
Though conventional wisdom still favors Hyde-Smith, some Democrats are taking Colom’s chances seriously: earlier this year, a super PAC called American Bridge 21st Century poured $2 million into his campaign. Could Colom pull off a shocker? Recent Democratic upsets in ruby-red locales suggests that Cindy shouldn’t count her chickens—or any other proteins. The election is still a week away, more than enough time for the Mouth of Mississippi to alienate voters. And if, on election night, Cindy Hyde-Smith winds up conceding defeat, I’ll be on the front row.
NEXT: Check out TBR’s deep dives into the Senate races in Ohio and New Hampshire!
