President Trump is headed to Mississippi to campaign for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a move supporters hope solidifies her lead over fellow Republican Chris McDaniel in a November special election.
Trump on Oct. 2 was to hold a signature “#MAGA” rally in DeSoto County, a region of Northwestern Mississippi, near Memphis, that overwhelmingly voted for McDaniel in the 2014 when the state senator challenged then-Sen. Thad Cochran in a GOP primary. The president is popular with Republicans in Mississippi, and Hyde-Smith backers expect his endorsement, delivered in person in the heart of a McDaniel stronghold, to be a major boost.
“I am honored that the President was able to reschedule his visit to Mississippi to show his support for our state and to campaign on my behalf,” Hyde-Smith said in a statement issued by her campaign. “It has been a privilege to back his ‘America First’ agenda, and I look forward to welcoming him to DeSoto County.”
Trump was originally set to rally for Hyde-Smith in Jackson, the state capital in Central Mississippi where her support is stronger. The event and others like it was canceled due to Hurricane Florence. Southaven, in DeSoto County, where Trump is now to appear, is brimming with Mississippi transplants who get most of their news from the Memphis media market and are detached from state politics.
In general, the Republicans there tend to be anti-establishment conservatives — another reason McDaniel did so well there in 2014 running against a long-time incumbent. Hyde-Smith was appointed by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant to succeed Cochran after he resigned from the Senate earlier this year, and enjoys the strong support of the party establishment in Jackson and Washington, D.C.
This suggests that the Trump campaign’s choice of DeSoto County was finely targeted. Jim Antle, in a story for the Washington Examiner, dissected the implications of where the president is — and is not — traveling in advance of a midterm election that threatens to dislodge the GOP from power on Capitol Hill.
Hyde-Smith is laser-focused on Northern Mississippi. Her campaign is planning to invest additional resources in the Memphis media market upcoming. She has been on cable television there since mid July.
The top-two finishers in the special election, held Nov. 6, the same day as the regular general election, are expected to proceed to a runoff a few weeks later. Democrat Mike Espy, a former cabinet secretary under President Bill Clinton, is projected to be one of the runoff candidates, leaving Hyde-Smith and McDaniel to vy for the other spot.
The winner of the runoff holds the seat until 2020, when it was next scheduled to be up for election. Depending on how the battle for the Senate finishes nationally, the Mississippi runoff could determine which party holds the majority in January.
