Posted on 11/24/2018 1:17:52 PM PST by yesthatjallen
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s (R-Miss.) campaign on Saturday ripped an article from the Jackson Free Press reporting that she attended and graduated from a Mississippi segregation academy in the 1970s, calling it part of the “gotcha liberal media.”
Hyde-Smith spokeswoman Melissa Scallan called the report "a new low" in a statement to The Hill while claiming the report was intended to help Hyde-Smith's Democratic opponent Mike Espy, who she is facing off against in Tuesday's runoff election.
“In their latest attempt to help Mike Espy, the gotcha liberal media has taken leave of their senses. They have stooped to a new low, attacking her entire family and trying to destroy her personally instead of focusing on the clear differences on the issues between Cindy Hyde-Smith and her far-left opponent,” Scallan said in the statement.
The Jackson Free Press report, published Friday night, shows a yearbook picture in which Hyde-Smith poses with other girls and a mascot seemingly dressed as a Confederate general and holding a Confederate flag. The school was one of several private institutions set up to bypass integration after Mississippi Gov. John Bell Williams in 1969 ordered that public schools integrate.
There’s “no doubt that’s why those schools were set up,” former Democratic Rep. Ronnie Shows (Miss.), who taught at the school and was Hyde-Smith’s basketball coach, told the Jackson Free Press.
“When the public schools in Mississippi were ordered desegregated, many thousands of white families cobbled together what they could laughingly call a school to send their children to for no other reason except they didn’t want them to be around n-words or to be treated or behave as equal to black people,” former Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey Cole echoed to the news outlet.
The Jackson Free Press reported that Hyde-Smith also sent her daughter to such a school.
Shows told the outlet on Friday that Hyde-Smith "was always a great person back in those days" and said he "called Cindy and talked to her about this campaign, and I told her I loved her, and I’d do anything for her.”
Still, the former Democratic lawmaker said he would not support her reelection bid on Tuesday after video surfaced earlier this month of her remark about a "public hanging."
Espy's campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill on Saturday about the report.
Hyde-Smith has faced backlash in recent weeks after a reporter published a video earlier this month showing the GOP senator saying that she’d be “on the front row” should a supporter she was campaigning with invite her to a “public hanging.”
Hyde-Smith has said she made the comment in jest and repeatedly declined to comment on the matter beyond a statement describing the remark as an "exaggerated expression of regard" for a supporter.
Mississippi had the highest number of lynchings from 1882-1968, according to the NAACP. Espy, who is running to be Mississippi’s first black senator since Reconstruction, ripped the comment as "reprehensible" and "hurtful."
The Republican candidate also caught attention this week after a 2014 photo resurfaced showing Hyde-Smith posing with Confederate artifacts, including wearing a Confederate soldier's hat, while visiting the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library. The photos were accompanied by the caption “Mississippi history at its best!”
The Washington Post also reported Thursday that as a Mississippi state senator in 2001, Hyde-Smith filed a bill to rename a stretch of highway the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. The Confederate president did have strong ties to the state, but no known connections to Hyde-Smith’s then-district.
The whirlwind of news has caused concerns among Republicans who fear that Espy could pull off an upset in the ruby-red state reminiscent of that in Alabama last year when Democrat Doug Jones defeated scandal-plagued GOP candidate Roy Moore.
With the runoff already expected to be a low-turnout contest, the comments have energized Espy’s supporters. Republicans hope two rallies with President Trump on Monday, the day before a runoff, can do the same for their side. Trump won Mississippi by nearly 20 points in 2016 and remains popular there.
From now on, every Republican candidate is going to have to remember if they wrote any cheeky comment in a yearbook or if the yearbook can be used as evidence against them.
THIS attack WILL backfire in Mississippi. This is a Kavanagh like low blow.
In 1999, Hyde-Smith was elected to the Mississippi State Senate as a DEMOCRAT. She represented the 39th district from 2000 to 2012. In 2010, Hyde-Smith switched parties and became a Republican, citing her conservative beliefs." And this is the BEST a REPUBLICAN Governor could do?
I rarely make it a point in one of these articles to read the author’s name first, but considering the content, I wonder who this “Tal Axelrod” is? Is he related to Obama’s attack dog David Axelrod?
The Dems are desperate to win this race, the strategy being that a 52/48 Senate will empower a Romney/Collins/Murkowski alliance to thwart President Trump’s judicial picks.
Oh, heck, I went to a Prep School in Connecticut that was founded in the 18th century. Until the mid-70s, it would have been as white as any “segregation” school in Mississippi would have been (save for the occasional Cuban aristocrat). Going to the prep school wasn’t my idea, and when black students started to come in, some of them had the skills not only to succeed, but to excel. That does not change the fact that the school would have been indistinguishable from a “segregationalist” school just a few years earlier.
Again! With the high school yearbooks! Smh
Bingo! If things are so perfect in the northeast, why are schools so segregated (usually self-segregated on the part of whites)?
Just reading about her here on good ol FR she seems to be a ehacko....but we need another R in the Senate.
She’ll win by double digits.
[But, make no mistake about it, in her earlier career she was a hardcore Democrat. Although it’s hard to know who she voted for in General Elections, her voting records show that she voted in every Democratic primary and runoff until her switch in 2011, so we can only logically conclude that she supported the Democratic nominee in the General.]
“She’ll win by double digits.”
The average Joe Blow Republican precinct captain would win MS by 25+ points.
But this woman will win by single digits.
She’s about as bad a candidate as you could find in MS.
Don’t know, but there are hijinks going on at any rate. We did absentee ballots today and there was a line, with racial breakdown about 35 % white and 60 % black, 5% Hispanic during the time I was in line. We had a issue with our regular polling place last election, and I was not sure my vote for Chris McDaniel was counted. I’m pretty sure the dems will win this thanks to Gov. Bryant falling behind the wrong person.
McDaniels, a lifetime and career length republican was a solid conservative. HydeSmith, meh, not so much.
Has this Dim forgotten that his is the party of segregation, the KKK, slavery and secession.
“Bingo! If things are so perfect in the northeast, why are schools so segregated (usually self-segregated on the part of whites)?”
A good friend of mine grew up in Dedham, MA in the 1960s, went to Roxbury Latin Prep, and then to Harvard. He said he didn’t know any blacks until he moved to the South when he was a middle-aged adult.
Democrats and their “Lap Dog” Media Goons tried the same tactics with Beto O’Rourke in Texas, Andrew Gillum in Florida, and Stacey Abrams in Georgia. All three lost their races, even with tons of fraud voting that could not save these incompetents...period!!!
Any voter in MS that votes for Mike Espy is throwing their vote away. Just take a gander of what French voters are doing to Paris today (burning down the streets) because of Socialist, Communist failures. Wake up, MS people!!!
The DUNGHill, publishing liberal crap again.
The point is Mrs. Hyde Smith went to school where her parents sent her. I doubt if she had much choice in the matter. After all it was not 2018 where kids tell parents what to do and how it will be done. Plus the fact that she was a Democrat for many years. Mike Espy still has a history of being a crook. The Obama children were segregated also from poorer public school kids, so this is not even an issue.
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