The tightening Mississippi race for U.S. Senate is starting to look a lot like a preview of the 2020 presidential election, as President Trump and a slew of potential Democratic challengers have entered the ring to fight for their party contenders.
The contest between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic opponent Mike Espy is headed for a runoff on Tuesday after both candidates tied on Election Day in a race that has seen a spending frenzy on both sides of the aisle.
Hyde-Smith, who was appointed in April to temporarily fill the seat vacated by Thad Cochran, appears vulnerable in the deep-red state after becoming embroiled in a series of racially tinged controversies that have opened up a line of attack for her African-American opponent and his allies.
With the door open for Espy, a former U.S. agriculture secretary and U.S. congressman, top Democratic Party figures with an eye on 2020 have descended into Mississippi politics.
Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., himself a rising African American star in the party, stumped for Espy on Monday, touting Espy’s support for Obamacare and its pre-existing conditions provision and telling Mississippi voters not to assume the contest is a “lost cause.”
“Do not assume it is a lost cause. We are Americans. We have gone into lost cause after lost cause after lost cause and we have shown that this country’s very testimony, very truth, very history, is a shining example of the perpetual achievement of the impossible. We are Americans, and our country hangs in the balance right now, and the fulcrum for it is this election in Mississippi,” Booker said, according to the Jackson Free Press.
Rallying the black vote could be key for Espy, as 38 percent of the population in Mississippi is African American — the highest in the country.
Another top Democratic senator of color, California’s Kamala Harris, appealed to Democratic women to support Espy during an event in Jackson on Saturday. Her line “not every woman is for women” was a direct swipe at Hyde-Smith.
Among the list of other Democrats rumored to have 2020 ambitions to vocalize support for Espy in the past few days include former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.
On Nov. 6, both Espy and Hyde-Smith got about about 41 percent of the vote, knocking out another Republican challenger, Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel, and prompting the runoff. The winner will serve out the remaining two years of Cochran’s term.
Though McDaniel has said he supports Hyde-Smith and wants to GOP to unite around her, several missteps in recent days have thrown Hyde-Smith’s effort to stay in office in doubt. This includes her saying she would sit in “the front row” of a public hanging if asked by a supporter and photos showing her wearing a Confederate solider hat with the caption, “Mississippi history at its best.”
Her public hanging remark and suggestion that she would support measures to prevent “liberal folks” from voting prompted Walmart and other companies to request that her campaign refund all their donations.
Hyde-Smith offered an apology to “anyone that was offended” by her hanging remark during her sole public debate with Espy on Tuesday.
Hyde-Smith will also receive a Herculean lift from Trump coming to Mississippi to stump for her on Monday, one day before the runoff.
The president, who won Mississippi by more than 17 percent in 2016, also offered cover to Hyde-Smith amid the public-hanging-comment controversy.
“Cindy Hyde-Smith is a spectacular woman. She’s a great senator,” Trump told reporters as he departed Washington, D.C., on his way to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. “She came in, and she’s done a fantastic job in a short period of time.”
“She made a statement, which I know that she feels really bad about it, and was just sort of said in jest,” Trump added. “She’s a tremendous woman and it’s a shame that she has to go through this.”
