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Republican Caught On Video Endorsing Voter Suppression

Republican Caught On Video Endorsing Voter Suppression

Written by Dana Sanchez

Nov 16, 2018

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Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith endorsed voter suppression this month while on the campaign trail in Starkville, Mississippi, telling a group of students that efforts to undermine voting among liberals at certain colleges would be a “great idea.”

“There’s a lot of liberal folks in those other schools who maybe we don’t want to vote,” Hyde-Smith said on a video that was posted online Thursday. “Maybe we want to make it just a little more difficult. And I think that’s a great idea.”

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Campaign spokeswoman Melissa Scallan later said the video had been edited, and besides, Hyde-Smith was just joking, Huffington Post reported.

Then, speaking in third person, Hyde-Smith tweeted that out-of-state social media posts couldn’t mess up the punchline of her joke.

“It’s ok to still have a sense of humor in America isn’t it?” Hyde-Smith tweeted after the video circulated. “These students enjoyed a laugh with Cindy despite out of state social media posts trying to mislead Mississippians.”

In pro-Trump Mississippi, Democrats won’t flip the Republicans’ Senate majority, but they still have a chance to minimize it. Hyde-Smith is relying on something that worked well for her party’s leader: divide and conquer as a strategy to gain power.

Democratic former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy hopes to upset Hyde-Smith in a Nov. 27 Senate special election runoff. Hyde-Smith was appointed earlier this year to replace retired GOP Sen. Thad Cochran, and she hopes to serve the remainder of her predecessor’s term through 2020, CNBC reported.

Hyde-Smith has been the author of a series of divisive and racist slurs recently, which got her name into national headlines — a dog whistle if you will. Last weekend, she was criticized for joking with a crowd about attending a public hanging. Mississippi has a long history of racism with the highest rate of lynchings of African Americans during the Jim Crow era, according to a report by the Equal Justice Initiative, Huffington Post reported.

That makes her joke about a public hanging reprehensible ahead of the runoff election, Espy said.

Hyde-Smith’s slurs “have no place in our political discourse, in Mississippi, or our country,” Espy’s communications director Danny Blanton said Sunday in a statement. “We need leaders, not dividers, and her words show that she lacks the understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state.”

If elected, Espy will be the first black senator from Mississippi since just after the Civil War, according to The Washington Post.

In the video, Hyde-Smith referred to “other schools”. There are several historically Black colleges and universities in the state.

Because no candidate earned 50 percent of the vote in Mississippi, the top two candidates regardless of party advanced to a runoff. Hyde-Smith won 41.4 percent of the vote, and Espy won 40.7 percent.

Half of Mississippi’s likely voters said they would back Hyde-Smith, and 36 percent said they would support Espy, according to an NBC News/Marist poll. Voter turnout is expected to drop in the runoff.

Espy, 64, was agriculture secretary during the Clinton administration and represented Mississippi in the U.S. House. If elected, he’ll be the fourth current Black member of the Senate, and second currently representing a Southern state. Tim Scott, a Republican, represents South Carolina in the chamber.

Hyde-Smith, 59, was the state commissioner of agriculture and commerce before her appointment to the Senate. She is the first woman to represent Mississippi in the Senate.

Hyde-Smith should be worried about the youth vote. Voter turnout among 18 to 29-year-olds in the 2018 midterm elections was 31 percent, according to a preliminary estimate by Tufts University. Young people supported liberal candidates and ideas. About 67 percent supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 32 percent for Republican candidates, The Conversation reported.

HBCUs in Mississippi

  • Alcorn State University.
  • Coahoma Community College.
  • Jackson State University.
  • Mississippi Valley State University.
  • UNCF-Member Institution. Rust College.
  • UNCF-Member Institution. Tougaloo College. (Source: UNCF)

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