By MARSHA MERCER
If you thought the midterm elections were over except
for those messy recounts in Florida, think again. A special election for Senate
in Mississippi goes to a runoff Nov. 27.
Until this week, few people outside Mississippi paid
much attention, because history points to the Republican’s sailing to victory.
No Democrat has occupied either Senate seat in Mississippi in 30 years.
But Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s loose lips may
sink her ship.
A video posted on social media Sunday showed her
making a racially insensitive remark Nov. 2. Standing with a local rancher at a
gathering in Tupelo, Hyde-Smith joked: “If he invited me to a public hanging,
I’d be in the front row.”
The comment and her ham-handed handling of the uproar
that followed have breathed life into the campaign of her opponent Democrat
Mike Espy, who has rebounded from a political corruption scandal in the 1990s.
How Mississippi votes won’t alter Republican control
of the Senate, but the state will make history, regardless of its choice.
Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner and
state senator, was appointed by the governor in April to fill the seat of Sen. Thad
Cochran who retired because of poor health. She could become the first woman
elected to the Senate from Mississippi.
Or Espy, who was the state’s first black congressman
since Reconstruction, serving six years
in the House before becoming President Bill Clinton’s agriculture secretary, could
become the first black senator from the state since the Reconstruction era.
Hyde-Smith hasn’t apologized for her remark. To the
contrary, she issued a statement saying she had “used an exaggerated expression
of regard, and an attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous.”
Espy’s spokesman called Hyde-Smith’s comments
“reprehensible.”
The controversy likely will motivate black voters, who
make up nearly 40 percent of the vote.
“For many in Mississippi and beyond, the mention of
public hangings stirs memories of Mississippi’s history of racist violence,”
Mississippi Today reported.
The state carried out public hangings until 1940 as an
official method of capital punishment, and also has a history of allowing white
mobs to commit lynchings, the news outlet reported.
Mississippi had 654 reported lynchings between 1877
and 1950, more than any other state, according to a study by the Equal Justice
Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala.
The primary ballot Nov. 6 listed four candidates without
party affiliations. President Donald Trump campaigned for Hyde-Smith, but she
and Espy each won 41 percent of the vote. A runoff is required if no candidate
reaches 50 percent.
Trump reportedly is now weighing whether to return to
Mississippi on her behalf.
Espy’s rise shows there can be second acts in
politics. When he stepped down as agriculture secretary in 1994, The New York
Times opined that “Mr. Espy’s behavior gave, at the very least, the appearance
of conflict of interest. It was also colossally stupid.”
He had allegedly accepted gifts, including Super Bowl
tickets and free trips, from lobbyists and companies he regulated.
When Espy was indicted by an independent counsel three
years later, The Times wrote: “It is sad to see a young politician’s promising
career go down the drain in a personal corruption scandal.”
Espy stood trial for seven months, charged with illegally
soliciting and accepting gifts worth $35,000. Prosecutors showed he received
the gifts but could not prove he did any official acts in return. He was acquitted
of all 30 counts of corruption in 1998.
“I knew from Day One that I would stand before you
completely exonerated,” Espy told reporters at the time.
He has practiced law in Jackson but this is his first
campaign since the trial.
“I had to rebuild a life,” he told the Jackson Free
Press.
“Mississippians are a forgiving lot,” Mac Gordon, a
former Mississippi newsman wrote in the Jackson Clarion Ledger in August, long
before Hyde-Smith’s “hanging” comments. Gordon was referring to his belief Espy
should and would win.
Forgiveness is a word we rarely associate with politics.
But in a year of election surprises, the winner of Mississippi’s
Senate runoff may be the candidate voters are most willing to forgive.
© 2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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