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Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MI) won her runoff election last night over Democrat Mike Espy in Mississippi, so Republicans have a solid 53-47 majority. No longer will we have to deal with the Murkowski-Collins question when it come sot tight votes of judicial and Supreme Court nominations. We can run the table on paper, but we have a Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) problem. Yeah, Mr. Flake, the perpetual pain in the rear end of the Senate GOP, isn’t budging from his position of blocking Trump’s judicial nominees until a vote on a bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the...

Let's revisit this post from election week, in which I highlighted a number of notable Republican victors in the media's much-discussed "year of the woman."  Since that piece went live, a number of the tentative outcomes have changed: Young Kim narrowly lost in California, Martha McSally narrowly lost in Arizona (though could end up in the Senate anyway), and despite winning comfortably, Cathy McMorris Rodgers stepped aside from leadership, with Liz Cheney taking her place as the top-ranking Republican woman in the House.  A number of female incumbents from competitive districts also lost by a hair, such Mimi Walters and...

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has won Mississippi’s Senate runoff, defeating Democrat Mike Espy despite controversy over recent comments. Hyde-Smith had 56 percent of the vote to Espy’s 44 percent when the Associated Press called the race with more than three-quarters of all precincts reporting. The result means Republicans will hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate next year. The runoff for the remainder of Thad Cochran’s term was held because neither candidate got a majority of the vote in a crowded race Nov. 6.

Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican who was appointed to the Senate this year, faces Mike Espy, a Democrat and former congressman, in a special election runoff on Tuesday after neither candidate won a majority on Election Day. The election was held to fill the seat of Senator Thad Cochran, who retired earlier this year for health reasons.

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has defeated Democrat Mike Espy in Tuesday night's special Senate election in Mississippi, a contest tainted by race-related controversies, NBC News projects.

Voters in Mississippi on Tuesday will decide a U.S. Senate special election runoff marked by racial controversy and capped by a last-minute visit by President Donald Trump to shore up the beleaguered Republican incumbent. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white former state lawmaker who was appointed to the seat in April, is still favored over black Democrat Mike Espy in the reliably Republican state, which has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. But she has been engulfed in a political storm since a video surfaced showing her praising a supporter at a Nov. 2 public event by...

Don't be fooled, Mississippi. Democrat Mike Espy is no southern Democrat — he’s a radical liberal with a track record of supporting tax hikes and stifling economic growth with job-killing policies.Espy, who is running in the runoff election for the U.S. Senate against Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, has been able to keep a low profile during the chaos of the 2018 midterms, and now has an outside chance of becoming the next senator from Mississippi. That would be a disaster for the entire country, just as it was the last time we sent him to Congress.Espy was a registered lobbyist for...

It's "cui bono?" in Latin. Francophones ask, "à qui profite le crime?" Whatever your linguistic leanings, the point is the same. If you're trying to figure out who committed a crime, figure out who benefits from it. Let's apply the principle to the racially-charged Senate run-off race in Mississippi, in which the African-American Dem, Mike Espy, faces Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. One day before today's election, two nooses are found at the state capitol. So . . . who benefits? CNN's Joe Johns supplied the answer on this morning's New Day: "The President defending Hyde-Smith, and directly attacking her challenger, the...

Looking to bolster its Senate majority, the GOP wheeled out its biggest gun Monday in Mississippi as President Trump rallied to bolster Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith ahead of Tuesday’s run-off election. In Tupelo, Mr. Trump said he needs Ms. Hyde-Smith in Washington and urged voters to keep her there. “I’m here to ask the people of Mississippi to send Cindy Hyde-Smith back so we can make America great again,” Mr. Trump said, after some praise for Tupelo’s most famous son, Elvis Presley. “Don’t empower the radical Democrats to return us to the failure of the past.” As expected, Mr. Trump basked...

Mike Espy who is seeking to unseat appointed U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and serve the last two years of the six-year term vacated when Republican Thad Cochran retired for health reasons ... A Democratic Senate hopeful in Mississippi cashed in $750,000 after lobbying on behalf of an African despot currently on trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. Mike Espy, a former lobbyist and U.S. agriculture secretary under President Bill Clinton, is running against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed as a temporary successor to longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran after his retirement in April....

Two nooses were found hanging at the Mississippi State Capitol on Monday morning around 7:15, according to NBC affiliate WLBT. Hate signs also were found, although it unclear what they said or if the signs referenced the racially charged runoff Senate election taking place Tuesday between Democrat Mike Espy, who is black, and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. State Capitol police did not immediately respond to multiple requests for comment. Hyde-Smith has come under fire for her comment about attending a "public hanging" and voter suppression, which her campaign later said was a joke.

Ahead of Tuesday’s runoff election, a new poll from RRH Elections with Bold Blue Campaigns and JMC Analytics & Polling of 684 likely voters in Mississippi shows appointed Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R) with a significant lead in the runoff election to hold her Senate seat. The survey shows Hyde-Smith leading former Rep. and Clinton US Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy (D) by a margin of 54% to 44%, with just 1% undecided at this late date. The survey was conducted November 19-21 and 23-24, 2018 with 684 Live Response calls by Bold Blue Campaigns and JMC Analytics & Polling, and has...

Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith once promoted a measure that praised a Confederate soldier's effort to "defend his homeland" and pushed a revisionist view of the Civil War. Hyde-Smith, a Republican, faces Mike Espy, a Democratic former congressman and agriculture secretary, in Tuesday's runoff in Mississippi -- the final Senate race to be decided in 2018. The measure, which was unearthed by CNN's KFile during a review of Hyde-Smith's legislative history, is the latest in a series of issues that have surfaced during her campaign, many of which have evoked Mississippi's dark history of racism and slavery. The concurrent resolution was...

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...

Nearly a year ago, Democrats pulled off an upset in the South against a Republican candidate hobbled by controversy. Now, they’re hoping to duplicate that feat in Mississippi, in the last Senate election of the cycle. Virtually no prognosticator has given the party much of a chance. But this past week, the Republican in the race, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), has been caught twice making wild and insensitive remarks: the first expressing comfort attending a public hanging; the second openly musing about suppressing Democratic votes. All of which has encouraged the party to rethink whether the long shot Democrat in...

A review of the fundamentals in the November 27th Mississippi Senate runoff shows that Democrat Mike Espy has a big hill to climb; and the road is relatively flat and smooth for Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. On Election Day neither candidate received the necessary 50% plus 1 vote to win so there will be a runoff between Hyde-Smith who got 41.5% and Espy who got 40.6%. Hyde – Smith could not get to 50% plus 1 vote because there was a major third candidate in the race. That candidate, Chris McDaniel ran as a Republican and drew off 146,000 votes...

resident Donald Trump will make an eleventh-hour attempt to keep a Mississippi Senate seat in Republican hands later this month when he headlines two rallies there the day before a runoff election. His campaign organization announced Saturday the president will hold two rallies on Nov. 26 on behalf of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. He will be in Tupelo at 5 p.m. and then in Biloxi three hours later. Hyde-Smith faces former Democratic Rep. Mike Espy in the special election runoff after neither cleared 50 percent in the Nov. 6 jungle primary, which saw two Republicans and two Democrats run together...

The Senate is bracing for an end-of-the-year brawl over President Trump's judicial nominations. Republicans view filling the lifetime court seats as their top priority and are expected to confirm as many nominees as possible before the Senate adjourns for the year, infuriating Democrats and their allies who are powerless to stop Trump’s picks. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is already teeing up votes for two nominations — Jonathan Kobes to be an 8th Circuit Court judge and Thomas Farr to be a district court judge — for when senators return from their Thanksgiving recess. And Republicans expect McConnell to barrel...

JACKSON, Miss. – At a press conference today in Jackson, National Right to Life restated its unequivocal endorsement of Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith for the U.S. Senate. Hyde-Smith faces pro-abortion former Rep. Mike Espy in a November 27 run-off election. “Cindy Hyde-Smith is the only candidate in the November 27 run-off election who represents the true pro-life values of Mississippi,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Mike Espy does not.” As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1988-1992, Mike Espy sided with pro-abortion Democrats dozens of times. His record includes scored votes against the Hyde...

Mississippi Republican U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel has pulled to within five points of his Republican opponent Cindy Hyde-Smith and six points of Democrat leader Mike Espy in the latest NBC News/Survey Monkey poll. Espy leads with 25 percent, with interim Republican and former Democrat Cindy Hyde-Smith ranking second with 24 percent. McDaniel the conservative state senator stands at 19 percent with a full 27 percent undecided. The Mississippi Senate race will go to a runoff on November 27 three weeks after Election Day if none of the candidates clears 50 percent. The top two vote-getters will advance.