[ad_1]
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – A recently released video shows a white Republican US Senator from Mississippi praising someone saying: "When he invited me to a public hanging, I would be in the first row."
Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith said Sunday that her November 2 remark was "an expression of exaggerated respect" for someone who invited her to speak and that "any attempt to turn that into a negative connotation is ridiculous".
Mississippi has a history of lynching black people with racial motivation.
Hyde-Smith faces a black Democrat challenger, former Congressman and former US Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, in the second round.
Espy's campaign spokesman, Danny Blanton, called Hyde-Smith's remark "reprehensible".
The winner of the second round wins the last two years of a tenure begun by longtime Republican Senator Thad Cochran. Republican Governor Phil Bryant named Hyde-Smith a temporary successor to Cochran, who retired in April due to health problems. It will serve until the special election is resolved.
Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41% of the votes during a four-man race that took place Tuesday to qualify for the second round.
If Espy is elected, he would be the first African-American since Reconstruction to represent Mississippi in the US Senate. Hyde-Smith, who is approved by President Donald Trump, is the first woman to represent Mississippi in either House of Congress and, after her nomination, attempts to become the first woman to be elected to the Senate American by the state.
"Cindy Hyde-Smith's comments are reprehensible," Blanton said in Espy's campaign statement Sunday. "They have no place in our political speech, in Mississippi, nor in our country, we need leaders, not separators, and her words show that she lacks understanding and judgment to represent the people of our state. "
The video was shot in Tupelo, in front of a statue of Elvis Presley, born in the northeastern city of Mississippi. He shows a small group of whites applauding politely for Hyde-Smith.
"I mentioned the acceptance of an invitation to speak," Hyde-Smith said in a statement on Sunday. "In referring to the one who invited me, I used an expression of exaggerated respect, and any attempt to turn that into a negative connotation is ridiculous."
Lamar White Jr., publisher of the Louisiana news site, The Bayou Brief, posted the video Sunday on social media. White told The Associated Press that he had received the video late Saturday from a "very reliable and trustworthy source", but that he would not reveal the name. of the person. He said that this source had received from the person who had filmed the video.
White said that he thought he had received the video because he was writing about racism in the South for a dozen years or so.
"There is no excuse for saying what she said," says White about Hyde-Smith.
NAACP National President Derrick Johnson of Mississippi said on Twitter on Sunday that "the shameful remarks of Hyde-Smith prove once again that Trump has created a climate that normalizes the racist and hateful rhetoric of political candidates."
The representative of the Republican state in Mississippi, the representative Karl Oliver, was sharply criticized in May 2017 after posting on Facebook that people should be lynched for removing the Confederate monuments.
___
For full coverage of US mid-term elections by AP: http://apne.ws/APPolitics. Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.
[ad_2]
Source link
