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JACKSON, MISS. –
A US Republican Senator from Mississippi is featured in a new video talking about "Liberal People" and making the vote "a little harder" for them.
Spokeswoman Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith criticized the video, saying the senator was joking. The brief clip appeared on social media on Thursday, a few days after another video showing Hyde-Smith praising someone at a different event saying: "It's inviting me to a public hanging, I would be in the first row. "
Both videos were posted on Facebook and Twitter by Lamar White Jr., editor of the Bayou Brief, a liberal news site in Louisiana. He claimed to have received them from a reliable source and that neither of the two videos had been modified to change Hyde-Smith's comments.
Hyde-Smith, who is white, will face Democrat Mike Espy, who is black, in the second round. The winner wins the last two years of a six-year term.
Republicans hold most offices in the state of Mississippi, and it's the most disputed US Senate race in a generation.
Mississippi has a history of racially motivated lynchings. Civil rights activists were also beaten and killed in that state as they called for the right to vote of African Americans, particularly from the end of the Second World War to the 1960s.
White said the latest video was shot on Nov. 3 as Hyde-Smith was campaigning in Starkville, home of Mississippi State University.
"And then they remind me that there are a lot of liberals in these other schools who may not want to vote, maybe we want to make it a bit more difficult. is a great idea "Hyde-Smith tells a small group.
Hyde-Smith campaign spokeswoman Melissa Scallan said of the new video on Thursday: "Senator Hyde-Smith was making a joke and it is clear that the video was mounted selectively . "
Espy campaign spokesperson, Danny Blanton, said: "For a state like Mississippi, where the vote was obtained by sweat and blood, everyone should understand that this n & # 39; It's not a matter of laughter, Mississippians deserve a senator who represents our best qualities, not a walking stereotype that embarrasses our state. "
Espy seeks to become the first US Senator of African American descent from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Hyde-Smith, backed by President Donald Trump, is the first woman to represent Mississippi in either House of Congress. She has been in office since April, after the Governor of Mississippi appointed her to temporarily succeed Republican Sen. Cochran, who retired.
A political advertisement on Facebook this week uses a 1930 picture of a white Indiana crowd posing around a tree while the lifeless bodies of two black men are hanging overhead. they lynched in a noose. The advertisement overlays a photo of Hyde-Smith unrelated to the following: "This is where US Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith would like to be."
The ad is paid for by PowerPACPlus, a California-based political action committee that spent nearly $ 1.8 million on advertising to support Espy.
A video that surfaced on Sunday shows Hyde-Smith at a campaign event on Nov. 2 in Tupelo making the comment "Suspended in Public". She said the sentence was "an expression of exaggerated respect" for the partisan and "any attempt to turn that into a negative connotation is ridiculous". At a press conference on Monday, she did not want to answer reporters' repeated questions about the "suspended" comment.
The Espy and Hyde-Smith campaigns have both condemned advertising.
"It's the same outside group that spends millions of dollars on the promotion of Mike Espy and has now led his campaign into the lowest depths imaginable," said Scallan. "It's time for Mike Espy to tell his group to stop this terrible divisional attack."
Espy said his campaign did not control what PowerPACPlus was doing, and he called the ad "useless."
"I can not bring them down because we did not ask them to ride it," said Espy. "It's a racial division – it's something that we have not approved and we would like them to reduce it."
Under federal election campaign laws, super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with candidates.
The PowerPACPlus website indicates that the group's mission is to "strengthen the political power of the multiracial American majority".
Marvin Randolph, spokesperson for PowerPACPlus, said that advertising with the lynching image was the first in a series of online advertisements funded by at least $ 25,000 in expenses.
"We hope to reach more than a million online viewers," Randolph said. "This announcement will also appear on Instagram and Twitter."
The two national parties are investing considerable efforts in the special elections. Hyde-Smith and Espy each received about 41% of the votes for a group of four on November 6th to qualify for the second round.
In 1986, Espy became the first black member of the Mississippi House of the United States since the Reconstruction. In 1993 and 1994, he was US Secretary of Agriculture.
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For full coverage of US mid-term elections by AP: http://apne.ws/APPolitics. Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.
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