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In a race supposed to be a Republican rout in the Great South, the GOP party's campaign holder, Cindy Hyde-Smith, seems to have been doomed to fail after the publication of a series of public statements on video and a collection of 2014 public photos, challenging it. points of view on race and voting rights.
On Tuesday, photos surfaced on Facebook showing Hyde-Smith wearing a Confederate soldier's hat, with the caption "The Mississippi Story at Its Best". The existence of photos has been reported for the first time by Politico.
The Hyde-Smith campaign declined to comment on the ABC News report.
The campaign of his Democratic opponent, Mike Espy, did not immediately respond to ABC News.
This new controversy comes amidst many of Hyde-Smith's mistakes, including the outcry over a "public hangings" racist joke, which propelled the race into the limelight and an unexpected change in the Content of the race was beneficial for the Democrat. National party leaders, including potential candidates for 2020, flock to Mississippi to campaign for Espy, on the sidelines of the latest scandal preceding the special election – the last Senate seat in the 2018 midterm elections .
President Trump defended Hyde-Smith when he was questioned Tuesday about his candidacy for White House North Lawn.
"She is a spectacular senator who has arrived and done a fantastic job in a short time," said Trump. "She made a statement that I know she's feeling very bad about it and that has just been said in joke." She's a terrific woman, and it's a shame she must pass by there. "
Although she failed to win 50 percent of the vote on November 6, Hyde-Smith had already taken a winning run in the second round on Nov. 27 against Espy, a former clinton secretary.
The two candidates must face for the first time during a debate Tuesday evening from 20h. AND.
The White Republican Senator kissed a supporter during a campaign stop on Nov. 2 in Tupelo, after renting and declaring in front of a cheering crowd: "It 's me". invited to a public hanging, I would be in the first row. "
Only four days later, another video was shown showing Hyde-Smith appearing to support the crackdown on voters.
"Then they remind me that there are a lot of liberals in these other schools who say we may not want to vote, maybe we want to make things a bit more difficult, and I think it's a great idea, "she added. told a group of supporters in Starkville on November 3rd.
Courtland Wells / The Vicksburg Post via AP
While evoking a language reminiscent of the lynchings that mark Mississippi history and also seemingly support the suppression of voter turnout – another fighting injury for South African-African-Hyde-Smiths is not enough. 39 is excused for any of these comments.
Instead, she called the first "an expression of exaggerated respect" and the last one "a joke".
The long offer of his African-American challenger has now become a competitive terrain and the National Democratic Network has mobilized in the hope of creating a potential for anger.
Giving resources to strengthen the support of the state's Democratic base and sending Senator Kamala Harris of California, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and the former Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu campaigning to sides of the former congressman, the Democrats hope that Espy continue their momentum midway through.
On Monday, former vice president Joe Biden, another potential candidate for 2020, endorsed the former secretary of agriculture in a video.
The super democratic PAC for Democratic Senators, the PAC with a Senate majority, has invested $ 500,000 to flood the waves of states. The purchase of advertising began on November 16th. An initial announcement targeted health care for Hyde-Smith, suggesting that it would be in the pocket of health insurance companies and that it would increase health care premiums – not to mention the Affordable Care Act.
As a democrat in the south of the country, Espy's job is to balance his constituents, which he can help bring back to national politics, while convincing the more moderate voters of his political independence.
Using his moderate appeal to attract white voters, Espy presents himself as an "independent" democrat.
"Even though I am a Democrat, I am an independent – a small" I "- Democrat, which means that I am a Mississippian first," Espy told ABC News last month.
During the campaign, Espy gained momentum as he surpassed both Republicans by raising $ 1.17 million in the third quarter. He raised more than $ 163,000 in new contributions on November 13, according to his latest deposit with the FEC.
Voters in Mississippi are expected to return to the polls next week. Among them, the African-American population of this state, which accounts for 38% of the total, is the largest in the country, according to the US Census Bureau. In the November 6 election, black voters represented 33 percent of the electorate and Espy had captured 91 percent, according to polls conducted at the polls.
The challenge facing Democrats as they compete in unexplored areas of the country, however, is the long history of the Mississippi as a ruby red bastion for Republicans. The last time the state elected a Democrat in Congress, it was in 1982, when former Senator John Stennis had obtained a seventh term. The last time the state sent an African-American to the Senate, it was at the time of the reconstruction, when the state voted for the former senator Sens. Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce at the end of the 19th century.
In the 2016 presidential election, Trump brought the state to almost 20 percentage points over Hillary Clinton. And although he reached the second round after defeating another Republican in the race, said Sen. Chris McDaniel, Espy only benefited from the non-partisan primary format of the special election jungle, which forces a candidate to win the majority of votes to win.
Rogelio V. Solis / AP
Espy qualified for the second round after the two Republican candidates split from the GOP vote, getting 40.6 percent of the vote on Nov. 6, just 0.8 percent behind Hyde-Smith. McDaniel garnered about 16% of the vote.
Now, Magnolia State finds itself in the same breath as its neighbor Alabama, a state that sent Democrat Doug Jones to the US Senate last year, after a sexual misconduct scandal crippling Republican candidate Roy Moore, supported by Trump. Jones, a civil rights lawyer, became the first Democrat in Alabama to be elected to the Senate in 25 years.
Espy hopes to replicate Jones' impressive victory and reduce the GOP advantage in the next Senate. Similar to the coalition that sent Jones to the Senate successfully in 2017, Espy will have to convince African-American voters and appeal to moderate white voters to win.
"We need more African-Americans to vote than ever before," he told ABC News. "We need to make sure that everyone, regardless of race, will come out." Get the vote from African Americans Get enough of what I call "purple people." They can be Republicans, they can to be freelancers, I do not care. "
But some Republicans are stepping up efforts to ensure that Hyde-Smith retains its seat, while his candidacy raised growing concerns.
On the eve of the special election, President Trump returns to the state for two rallies in order to save his presumptive lead. His visit to Tupelo and Biloxi, two GOP fortresses in the state, is reinforced by the support of national Republicans, who spend over a million dollars on state-wide ads.
Trump said on Tuesday that it was a "shame" that Hyde-Smith was criticized for a comment "said in jest".
"I know that she feels bad about it," the president told reporters.
Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images
Independent spending by the National Committee of Republican Senators contributes more than $ 700,000 in ads and could increase spending, according to a Republican source familiar with the purchase of advertising. A first advertisement began airing on Nov. 15, highlighting Trump's rallying cry of "clean up the swamp" and attacking Democrat Mike Espy as a "well-paid lobbyist."
The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super Republican, also began running ads across the country on Nov. 16. The purchase of ads has reached a little over a million dollars for television and radio. There is also a digital component of $ 130,000, according to spokesman Chris Pack.
A new digital ad drawn from the Hyde-Smith campaign, released Friday, denounces an alleged link between Espy and the African despot who refused to give up power in Ivory Coast and who is currently being tried for crimes against humanity. 39, humanity before the International Criminal Court.
The statement and announcement are based on a Fox News report, released on Thursday, which released a document of the Foreign Ministry's US Department of Justice Registration Act that asks if Espy lied about the payment of payments under a lobbying contract with the former president of Cote d Ivoire.
Hyde-Smith announced Tuesday 17 new contributions for a total of $ 65,700, including 5,000 Google's CAP, soon after the controversy erupted, according to Open Secrets.
Google's contribution is the PAC's first contribution to the Hyde-Smith campaign, but the company told Open Secrets that this was done well before its controversial remark.
"This contribution was made on November 2, before Senator Hyde-Smith's remarks were made public on November 11," a Google spokesman told Open Secrets. "We do not tolerate these remarks and would not have made such a contribution if we had known them."
But some high-ranking Republicans have distanced themselves from Hyde-Smith as a result of his controversial comments and even acknowledged that the end of this race was no longer in the hands of the GOP.
"I think we need to be worried when candidates say stupid things," said Chris Christie, contributor to ABC News and former governor of New Jersey, in This Week. "The candidates are importing, and now this race will be much more watched, I think the Republican will win, but I think they'll be much more watched because when the candidates say things that, you know, are not not correct, are not smart, they receive more attention. "
When asked if he thought the seat was legitimately at stake, Michael Caputo, a former senior advisor to the Trump campaign, said, "I think so." Mike Espy, by the way, likes voters a lot. This is a very brilliant man, with a lot of history of strong contributions to Washington. "
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