Lynching remark puts spotlight on Mississippi Senate race

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A video of a white U.S. senator from Mississippi making a flip reference to a "public hanging" is incensing voters in a special election runoff, drawing attention to the state's history of lynching and boosting Democrats' hope of pulling off a stunner in the Deep South.

Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith is facing former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy, a black Democrat, in a runoff Nov. 27. She was captured on video praising a supporter by declaring, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."

After the video was made public Sunday, Hyde-Smith said her remark Nov. 2 at a campaign event in Tupelo was "an exaggerated expression of regard" for a friend who invited her to speak. "Any attempt to turn this into a negative connotation is ridiculous," she said.

At a news conference today with Republican Gov. Phil Bryant by her side, a stone-faced Hyde-Smith refused to answer questions about the hanging remark.

"I put out a statement yesterday, and that's all I'm going to say about it," she said.

Republicans have been counting on a Hyde-Smith victory over Espy as they try to expand their Senate majority. Her remark may not slow her down in the deeply conservative state, but it has highlighted a battle between Mississippi's past and future and put a painful coda to an election season marked by a resurgence of racism in Southern politics.

"It really rocked folks," said Democrat Rukia Lumumba, co-director of The Electoral Justice Project and a native Mississippian whose family has deep roots in the state's politics and civil rights activism. "The fact that she has yet to apologize, to recognize the impact of her comments or that people have suffered. ... I hope it makes us feel the urgency."