We asked our readers to choose their favorite of the five flag designs the Mississippi Flag Commission selected Aug. 18 from a narrowed pool of thousands of original entries.
We wanted to show you how your reader poll results measure up against the commission’s selections.
Of the 2,647 readers who participated in our poll, 39% selected Flag 2, which was not one of the two designs selected by the commission.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Flag 2
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Flag 4
Flag 4, which includes a magnolia blossom on a blue background with red and gold stripes, received 25% of the votes from our readers. It was one of the two selected by the commission.
Flag 1, also one of the two selected, received 16.8% of our readers’ votes. The design includes a red-white-and-blue striped shield, which pulls inspiration from the state’s territorial seal of 1798.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Flag 1
Neither Flag 3, with 10.6% of our readers’ votes, nor Flag 5, with 8.7%, made it to the final round of designs.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Flag 3
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
Flag 5
On Sept. 2, the flag commission will pick one of the two designs, which will appear on the Nov. 3 ballot for voters to accept or reject a new Mississippi state flag.
School resource officer Derrell Washington gets emotional as he holds up the picture of Maxine Waters that Fullilove shared on his Facebook.
CLARKSDALE — Nearly an hour into an emotional and intense school board meeting, school resource officer Derrell Washington stood up to address the Board of Trustees of the Clarksdale Municipal School District. As I heard his voice cracking, I looked in his direction, repositioning my foggy glasses on top of my white N95 mask.
With tears in his eyes, Washington said he was offended.
After all, H. Clay “Sandy” Stillions, board president of the Clarksdale schools — a predominately Black school district — held his left hand in front of him to show a piece of paper to the meeting attendees, which included about 10 Black people and three white. It was a photo of a frowning U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, the Black California congresswoman known for clashing with the Trump administration. The photo bore the caption: “This Is What Coronavirus Looks Like Under A Microscope.”
“Everybody look at this picture and tell me that’s not a scary picture?” Stillions, who is white, said.
Washington immediately replied, “That’s not a scary picture.”
“It looks pretty scary to me,” Stillions responded.
As the country is forced to face a national reckoning on race and racism, this Mississippi Delta school district is, too. That night, a high school senior and youth advocate gathered community members, politicians, and students to protest racism within the Clarksdale Municipal School District.
The Waters photo was a topic of discussion at the meeting because it was shared by a district employee on his personal social media. Rodger Fullilove, director of facilities in the district, shared the meme of Waters on his Facebook page on April 3. Stillions, the board chair, laughed at the post on social media and commented, “Man, that’s some scary stuff.”
When Stillions was confronted about his comments at the board meeting that night, a tense exchange followed that prompted tears from several Black attendees. As it was all happening, my right leg began shaking. I constantly looked down at my audio recorder, trying to collect my thoughts and keep my composure.
Any good journalist is trained to remain neutral while covering meetings like these, but how could I? I looked around the room to connect with all the other Black people present, and all I could think about was, “What if Maxine Waters’ face was replaced with mine?”
And as I’ve personally covered race-related issues several times this year, this moment mirrored the larger issue of inequitable systems and privilege disproportionately affecting Black people.
So there I was again, covering a powerful white leader doubling down on insensitive comments that hurt Black people. This time, he was doing it to our faces. However, I did what so many Black journalists across the country have been forced to do this year: I gathered my composure as best I could in a difficult situation, and I kept observing the exchange.
Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today
Marchellos Scott, Jr. speaking to press before his protest
At the school board meeting, Clarksdale High School student Marchellos Scott, Jr., 17, stood in front of the district’s central office in his navy blue suit jacket, gray vest and pants, and matching tie. He carried a black briefcase while waiting on his group to show.
Less than thirty minutes before the start of the school board meeting, more than 20 participants held signs in their hands with phrases like “He Must Go!,” in reference to Fullilove, as well as different signs that read “Black Lives Matter,” and “Get In Good Trouble,” inspired by the late civil rights pioneer Rep. John Lewis.
Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today
Students and Clarksdale Mayor Chuck Espy takes a photo in front of the Clarksdale Municipal School District central office before the protest.
People came to the meeting to ask for the facilities director’s termination, and to chastise the board chair for engaging with his posts.
“(Stillions) said it was funny. He said he liked (the Facebook post) because it was funny,” Washington, the resource officer, nearly yelled in the meeting.
“You pointed (the paper) to us and said “Ain’t this a scary picture.” Washington continued.
“They are saying, this is what the coronavirus looks like, ‘She’s ugly. She’s nasty. She’s disgusting. She’s deadly.’ … I’m a district employee, and I had no intention to come and interrupt the board and say anything because I don’t want to lose my job.”
The photo of Waters was the first of many posts shared by Fullilove, the white facilities director. For example, he wrote “F. BLM. Terrorists” in a June 7 post. The original post has been deleted. Another picture Fullilove shared on his page featured a man holding up a Confederate battle flag with the words, “I wonder if I said, ‘God Bless Dixie!’ How many of y’all will say it back?”
The social media posts sparked outrage among students, parents, and community members on social media. Scott, the youth activist, called attention to it on his own page. Scott and his community group wanted Fullilove terminated immediately.
After multiple community members tagged me in social media posts, I emailed Joe Nelson, Jr., Clarksdale superintendent, Carlos Palmer, school board attorney, and the school board.
In the July 24 email, I attached four screenshots of posts Fullilove made and shared that were hateful and offensive to Black people. I asked the school administration if they were aware of Fullilove’s posts, if they had any comment, and how they determine if an employee speaks for themselves or on behalf of the district on social media. Nelson forwarded my email to the board and Palmer without a response.
In the district’s social media and personnel policies, it states that employees, faculty and staff should never use their personal accounts to speak on behalf of the district and are expected to conduct themselves in positive manners.
This was the center of heated debate at the school board meeting — was Fullilove just using freedom of speech, or hate speech?
“How do we expect children to show up to school everyday … If we don’t take care of them? If we don’t look out for them, then what are we doing?” Bishop Zedric Clayton, newly appointed board member, said at the meeting. “As a parent, I would not want my child pulling into a building where potentially they can run into somebody that sees them as a terrorist. My question is what do we do?”
Originally set to discuss student safety during the executive session, Scott, the 17-year-old passed folders to the district officials, including four of the five board members present (one attended the meeting via phone). This folder had copies of Fullilove’s posts and the district’s policies, among other things.
Scott reviewed his material to the board, reiterating that students don’t feel safe knowing employees spew degrading comments about Black people.
Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today
Marchellos Scott Jr., youth activist and Clarksdale High School senior, address board president H. Clay Stillions about racism in the district.
“Posts about political affiliations and his values, those are considered freedom of speech, but “F. Black Lives Matter, terrorists, that’s not freedom of speech—,” Scott said.
“No it’s not—,” Stillions, the board chair, interrupted.
“That is hate crime,” Scott said.
“No, it’s not. That is freedom of speech. That is not a hate crime. When you start saying people can’t express their opinion about any group or any church or any organization or any government, you’re controlling speech. That is not hate speech,” Stillions told the high school senior.
“He works at a predominately Black school district.”
“It still doesn’t make any difference. He got a right to express what he thinks.”
“… You indulge in racist comments,” Scott said, referencing the Waters meme.
Stillons, stopped him, “…wait a minute, you’re talking, let me talk. … Yeah, I saw that and I laughed about it. That’s a funny picture, not because she’s Black, but because of her expression.”
“Did you or did you not say it’s some scary stuff under this post?” Scott asked.
“I sure did. You look at that face and tell me that’s not scary,” Stillions responded.
Though multiple people, including board members, spoke up to say Fullilove’s actions on social media were offensive and made them or their children feel unsafe and disrespected in the district, neither the superintendent nor board members took any action regarding Fullilove.
In the end, Stillions thanked Scott for his presentation and said he admired him for speaking up.
In order to move this district, state, and country forward, citizen Ralph Simpson, stated you must “ensure Black lives matter.”
Aallyah Wright, Mississippi Today
Ralph Simpson, community member, tells the board that Black lives do matter.
“When people falsely accuse us, when we can’t walk into neighborhoods where we’re working hard to spend the money to buy houses without getting shot down like dogs, when people put their foot on us ‘til we can’t breath and call our mamas, when we can’t ride in our car without profiling, and then we march in the streets,” Simpson said.
“They’re marching everywhere, Black and white hand in hand …to get the message and understanding to you Sandy Stillions, that Black lives do matter. You can have freedom of speech. But you can’t defringe the rights of others. When you say my life doesn’t matter, you defringe my rights.”
When I started writing this story, I knew I would be criticized for inserting my voice into this. If you go on Facebook and look at the comments on articles I’ve previously written pertaining to racism, you’ll see the critics. But I keep writing and reporting on these stories because it’s important. My job as a journalist is to report the facts, seek the truth, and hold officials accountable.
Part of my job is to speak for marginalized communities who don’t have the space or opportunity to do so and confront racism head-on. In the words of the late Mississippi civil rights activist, suffragist and journalism icon Ida B. Wells: “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
You can ask an Alexa or Google home assistant questions about facts, news, or the weather, and make commands for whatever you’ve synced them to (lights, alarms, TVs, etc.). But helping you find things is a capability that hasn’t quite come to pass yet; smart home assistants are essentially very rudimentary, auditory-only “brains” with limited functions.
But what if home assistants had a “body” too? How much more would they be able to do for us? (And what if the answer is “more than we want”?)
If Facebook’s AI research objectives are successful, it may not be long before home assistants take on a whole new range of capabilities. Last week the company announced new work focused on advancing what it calls “embodied AI”: basically, a smart robot that will be able to move around your house to help you remember things, find things, and maybe even do things.
Robots That Hear, Home Assistants That See
In Facebook’s blog post about audio-visual navigation for embodied AI, the authors point out that most of today’s robots are “deaf”; they move through spaces based purely on visual perception. The company’s new research aims to train AI using both visual and audio data, letting smart robots detect and follow objects that make noise as well as use sounds to understand a physical space.
The company is using a dataset called SoundSpaces to train AI. SoundSpaces simulates sounds you might hear in an indoor environment, like doors opening and closing, water running, a TV show playing, or a phone ringing. What’s more, the nature of these sounds varies based on where they’re coming from; the center of a room versus a corner of it, or a large, open room versus a small, enclosed one. SoundSpaces incorporates geometric details of spaces so that its AI can learn to navigate based on audio.
This means, the paper explains, that an AI “can now act upon ‘go find the ringing phone’ rather than ‘go to the phone that is 25 feet southwest of your current position.’ It can discover the goal position on its own using multimodal sensing.”
The company also introduced SemanticMapnet, a mapping tool that creates pixel-level maps of indoor spaces to help robots understand and navigate them. You can easily answer questions about your home or office space like “How many pieces of furniture are in the living room?” or “Which wall of the kitchen is the stove against?” The goal with SemanticMapnet is for smart robots to be able to do the same—and help us find and remember things in the process.
Semantic MapNet, our new framework for building top-down semantic maps and spatio-semantic memories (“mental maps”) from egocentric observations. This enables remembering where objects are and reasoning about spatial tasks (e.g. find the table). https://t.co/3JpXpK0YCYpic.twitter.com/uxduRnzoOM
The company envisions its new tools eventually being integrated into augmented reality glasses, which would take in all kinds of details about the wearer’s environment and be able to remember those details and recall them on demand. Facebook’s chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, told CNN Business, “If you can build these systems, they can help you remember the important parts of your life.”
Smart Assistants, Dumb People?
But before embracing these tools, we should consider their deeper implications. Don’t we want to be able to remember the important parts of our lives without help from digital assistants?
Take GPS. Before it came along, we were perfectly capable of getting from point A to point B using paper maps, written instructions, and good old-fashioned brain power (and maybe occasionally stopping to ask another human for directions). But now we blindly rely on our phones to guide us through every block of our journeys. Ever notice how much harder it seems to learn your way around a new place or remember the way to a new part of town than it used to?
The seemingly all-encompassing wisdom of digital tools can lead us to trust them unquestioningly, sometimes to our detriment (both in indirect ways—using our brains less—and direct ways, like driving a car into the ocean or nearly off a cliff because the GPS said to).
It seems like the more of our thinking we outsource to machines, the less we’re able to think on our own. Is that a trend we’d be wise to continue? Do we really need or want smart robots to tell us where our keys are or whether we forgot to add the salt while we’re cooking?
While allowing AI to take on more of our cognitive tasks and functions—to become our memory, which is essentially what Facebook’s new tech is building towards—will make our lives easier in some ways, it will also come with hidden costs or unintended consequences, as most technologies do. We must not only be aware of these consequences, but carefully weigh them against a technology’s benefits before integrating it into our lives—and our homes.
Shad White speaks at the Westin Jackson Tuesday, November 5, 2019.
For at least the sixth time since last spring, State Auditor Shad White has formally warned the Mississippi Department of Education about their enforcement of rules and administrative spending.
In this case, White sent a letter to Gov. Tate Reeves and legislative leaders voicing concern that MDE is forcing local school districts to buy their technology from only certain companies or risk losing reimbursement.
“I have concerns that the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) has ignored state law and made it more difficult for schools to purchase technology using the Coronavirus Relief Funds (CARES Act) appropriated by the Legislature,” White wrote in the Aug. 24 letter.
School districts are in the process of purchasing computers after the Mississippi Legislature this year passed a law enacting the “Equity in Distance Learning Act” as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many schools to pivot to online learning.
Rogelio V. Solis, AP
Carey Wright, State Superintendent of Education, answers questions about staffing during a legislative working group hearing centering on agencies personnel and their cost effectiveness, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, at the Capitol in Jackson.
State Superintendent Carey Wright called the letter “inaccurate and devoid of all context about the intent of this law,” in a statement released by the MDE responding to White’s accusations.
White’s letter explained that the department was to set up a list of approved vendors for school districts to purchase laptops and other technology needs in light of increased virtual learning caused by COVID-19. Districts could either buy off that list, or could also purchase items from vendors not on that list, as long as they meet certain criteria.
“The Office of the State Auditor has learned that MDE has decided that no school — regardless of whether they meet the criteria — may purchase technology outside of MDE’s preferred list and be reimbursed,” White’s letter reads.
It also says that, “robbing districts of this flexibility will slow down their ability to buy computers for students who may need to learn at home. Multiple districts have contacted my office about this issue. Two districts have informed us that buying from MDE’s favored vendors will cost tens of thousands of dollars more than they would otherwise have to spend.”
During an Aug. 6 State Board of Education meeting, Department of Education officials went into great detail about how they selected the vendors to supply the state with necessary technology.
It boiled down to three main categories: could the company deliver a large volume in a short timeframe, did the company have experience in dealing with a large, complex order such as this, and what the company’s strategy was for delivering thousands of computers all across the state.
In their responding press release, MDE on Tuesday disputed that it was not allowing districts to purchase devices from vendors outside of the ones that they chose.
To do that, local school districts have to demonstrate to MDE that those products have the “software, security and support features of products on the (preferred vendor list), meet or exceed the technological specification and functionality required by the MDE, and can be purchased at a price that is less than any of the prices listed on the (preferred vendor list),” the press release read.
“The intent of the legislation is for MDE to use the buying power of the state so individual school districts are not competing against each other to find a vendor who can guarantee delivery of computers by within the deadline set by the law,” said Jason Dean, chairman of the Mississippi State Board of Education. “School districts around the country are having their computer deliveries delayed because millions of people around the world are all trying to buy computers at the same time.”
Hours after the department released its statement, White shot back a response with documents attached in a press release, showing multiple documented instances where the department said districts could not buy from vendors outside of the ones MDE has approved.
One attachment was an internal MDE email that said the state department negotiated these contracts based on what local districts said they needed and that after the contracts are signed, “districts should not purchase items on the (MDE preferred vendor list) from other vendors.”
In his response, White said he was glad that MDE has reversed course.
“Today MDE wrote a press release finally acknowledging that schools do not have to buy from MDE’s preferred vendors. I’m glad they changed their position, even if it did take them being called on the carpet. I hope this will give school districts at least some flexibility to buy outside of MDE’s favored vendor list.”
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For America
Mike Espy, former congressman and former U.S. agriculture secretary.
Dozens of potential Mike Espy donors listened as Stacey Abrams, the Mississippi native and Georgia activist who was earlier tabbed as a possible running mate to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, spoke on a virtual fundraising call on May 29.
“We know that if we do the work now, that if we invest now in Mike Espy and his vision for Mississippi, we don’t just change Mississippi, we change the South. And when we change the South, we change America,” Abrams said of Mississippi’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.
The Abrams fundraiser was one of more than 40 virtual events the Espy campaign has hosted in 2020, as campaigns across the nation scramble during the pandemic to engage voters and generate enthusiasm.
Working to do just that and share his vision with Mississippians, Espy has built as large a campaign organization as any statewide Democrat in the state’s history. As of this week, the campaign has hired 15 full-time staffers — at least twice as many staffers as his opponent, incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
The campaign is managed by Joe O’Hern, a nationally sought-after Democratic political operative with experience from presidential politics down to local politics. O’Hern has hired a mix of strategists with both national and home-grown experience, and the campaign staff make-up is 60% people of color and 66% women.
Separate from the campaign, the state Democratic Party’s coordinated campaign — a team of mostly field staffers that uses funds from the national party to support the state’s candidates — has built an even larger staff that will directly benefit Espy’s candidacy. The coordinated campaign has hired more than a dozen full-time staffers and has plans to have 30 total staffers in place before Election Day. They will focus completely on direct voter outreach and turning out Democratic voters.
That team is led by Jared Turner, an experienced political strategist who has managed or worked dozens of high-profile Mississippi races.
“Electing history-making candidates up and down the ticket requires a history-making effort,” Turner said. “The Campaign for Mississippi is building an organization of Mississippians to turn out the vote in all 82 counties across our state.”
The Espy campaign’s approach during the pandemic has been centered on virtual events and conference calls, such as the one with Abrams. His campaign has hosted events including the “Mississippi Moving Forward Tour” kick-off, which had 200 participants on a Zoom call for one-and-a-half hours. It hosted a roundtable call with young Black leaders, a roundtable with education experts regarding school reopenings and the state of education in Mississippi, and a healthcare telephone town hall that drew 3,000 participants.
And when he can, Espy has shown up in person. With his wife and kids, Espy attended the June Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Jackson. He’s helped healthcare workers deliver free masks and other PPE to people in long car lines in Greenwood and Meridian.
The Espy camp’s fundraising has also turned heads in Mississippi and nationally. To date, Espy has raised $1.9 million. At this point in his race two years ago, he’d raised less than $700,000. He’s outraised Hyde-Smith in all but one campaign finance reporting period of 2020 as the incumbent struggles to raise cash.
And campaign aides say donations from Mississippians are up — a possible indication of enthusiasm for his candidacy in the state. Espy has received nearly 10 times as many contributions from Mississippi donors this cycle as he received to this point in 2018. Already this cycle, Espy has received contributions from 7,600 Mississippi donors, the campaign said. In the entire 2018 cycle, he earned the support of about 5,000 Mississippi donors.
But even with the staffing and fundraising advantages over Hyde-Smith, Espy has his work cut out for him. He’s running in one of the reddest states in the nation, where any Democrat — even one with moderate platforms — is strategically paired with national progressives with high disapproval ratings among conservatives and independents.
A Democrat has never been elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi in modern times, and Espy himself lost to the same opponent by seven points just two years ago.
“Espy is doing everything he can do, but there’s something to be said that there are a lot of voters who vote against the opposition more than they’re voting for someone,” said Marvin King, associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi. “For Cindy Hyde-Smith, as long as you’re polling ahead, despite not raising as much recently, and as long as Trump is polling ahead, she can just say, ‘I’m a Trump Republican.’ That very well might be all she needs to do.”
Espy, if elected, would be just the 11th Black U.S. senator in the nation’s history. Two of them — Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce — were Mississippians, but they were elected by the majority-Black Legislature during Reconstruction, not by popular vote.
While a victory in ruby red Mississippi remains elusive for statewide Democrats, the optics of the state’s 2020 Senate election — as Black Lives Matter protests demand the attention of campaigns across the nation and influence policy — seem increasingly appealing for Espy in this national moment: a Black candidate who has already broken racial barriers in his political career challenging a white incumbent who has a questionable history on race.
“Given the current racial climate in America, the candidates enter the contest where race is already a salient issue and therefore neither of the candidates will be forced to incorporate such language while on the stump,” said D’Andra Orey, professor of political science at Jackson State University. “I do expect, however, each of the candidates to use such language when speaking to their base. For example, it will be impossible for Espy to speak to his base without mentioning race-specific issues such as the death of George Floyd or Breonna Taylor. Hyde-Smith, on the other hand, will be expected to mention the protests as a need for law and order.”
Despite the odds, Espy campaign leaders hope the money they’ve raised, combined with the nation’s hyper-focus on race in politics, can spark a flame in Mississippi. And several campaign staffers believe the infrastructure they’re building can benefit Democratic candidates in years to come.
“Mike Espy and the Espy for Senate campaign are dedicated to building an organization that can serve as the model for other statewide and local campaigns,” said Jacquie Amos, a former longtime staffer of the Mississippi Democratic Party and the Espy campaign’s outreach director. “This campaign is about an investment in the future for Mississippians.”
Commissioners selected this design called the “Great River Flag” as one of two finalists to become the new state flag.
After seeing five finalist designs flying over the Old Capitol on Tuesday, the flag commission on Sept. 2 will pick one of two designs to put before voters as a new Mississippi state flag.
“I think I’m going to love whichever one they pick,” said Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who was among a small crowd outside the Old Capitol watching the five finalists hoisted up a flag pole one after the other.
Voters in November will get a chance to accept or reject either a flag with a red-white-and-blue striped shield — inspired by the state’s territorial seal of 1798 — or a magnolia blossom, the official state bloom, on a blue background with red and gold stripes. Both, as required by a new law, have the words “In God We Trust” on them.
Both also include a large, main star with a diamond in it, representing the state’s Native Americans, and 20 smaller stars, representing Mississippi becoming the 20th state in 1817.
Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today
The second finalist chosen on Tuesday to become the new state flag.
The commission has winnowed the choices to these two out of thousands of submitted designs.
The Mississippi Legislature, after decades of debate, voted in June to remove the 1894 state flag with its divisive Confederate battle emblem. The legislation it passed created the commission to choose a new flag to put before voters on the Nov. 3 ballot. Voters can either approve or reject the new design. If they reject it, the commission will go back to the drawing board, and present another design to voters next year.
Hosemann on Tuesday declined to say if he had a favorite among the finalists or to handicap whether voters would ratify the final picked by the nine-member commission appointed by Hosemann, the governor and House speaker.
“It’s like (other elections), the primaries will soon be over and voters will have a design to look at and discuss the underlying meaning and symbolism,” Hosemann said. “It will be with a presidential election, so we’ll have good turnout. It will be the people’s flag, and if they don’t vote for this one, then we’ll do another.”
Felder Rushing, a noted horticulturist, radio show host and writer, was among the crowd watching the five finalists fly Tuesday.
“They look better in person than on paper,” Rushing said, a sentiment held by many attendees and commissioners on Tuesday. Rushing added that he is pulling for a design with a magnolia bloom.
The commission will take public input and online polling on the two remaining designs before picking a final one on Sept. 2.
The commission has had an attorney working with finalists to make sure there are no copyright or intellectual property issues — one of the finalists weeded out Tuesday included clip-art that would have posed a problem. And the commission instructed an attorney general’s office lawyer to do a background and social media check on designers. The lawyer said he had already done a preliminary check and none had criminal backgrounds.
“We don’t want to end up being embarrassed by someone whose background is not appropriate to what we are doing,” said commission Chairman Reuben Anderson.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith greets voters at a campaign event in 2018.
Incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, about two months from the November election, is keeping a low profile, riding an apparent lead in the polls and banking on proxy support from President Donald Trump’s popularity in Mississippi.
She’s so far done little public campaigning in person or virtually amid the pandemic.
“I definitely think the school of thought with (presidential candidate Joe Biden) is the same thing going on in Cindy Hyde-Smith world: Let’s lay low. We have a lead,” said Henry Barbour, longtime Republican strategist and Mississippi Republican national committeeman. “That’s a tried-and-true strategy. If you’re winning, keep your head down. That’s the same reason that (former U.S. Sen.) Thad Cochran didn’t debate Chris McDaniel in 2014. Why do it? Don’t give your opponent the platform.”
Hyde-Smith campaign spokesman Justin Brasell said Hyde-Smith “has not slowed down one bit,” is making public appearances and doing “telephone town halls and lots of small group meetings.” But many of these events are for her job as senator, which Brasell said is her main focus rather than campaigning. These tele-town halls have apparently not been widely publicized or archived for public viewing.
Hyde-Smith, who declined an interview for this article, planned to be in Gulfport for the opening of the Mississippi Aquarium this week, Brasell said, but “we really don’t have any public campaign events scheduled right now.”
In lieu of public campaign events, Hyde-Smith has been posting “100 Accomplishments in 100 Days” to social media — listing her accomplishments as senator, such as supporting “record ICE detention capacity with no limitations on interior enforcement operations,” and helping provide hundreds of millions of dollars in grants to charter schools nationwide.
Brasell said Hyde-Smith’s campaign is up and running with offices in Jackson, Tupelo and Gulfport, has hired seven staffers and has volunteers in every county in the state. He noted campaign volunteers had a big presence at a recent boating Trump rally on the Coast, with Hyde-Smith signs on many boats and homes along with waterway for the boat parade.
Campaigning during a pandemic is uncharted territory, Brasell said, and normal retail politicking isn’t possible.
“We are anxious to get out and hold events and do normal campaign things, but she’s being super careful and following guidelines,” Brasell said. He said the campaign has received an invite to participate in a debate, but hasn’t decided if it is doable because of her Senate work schedule.
Hyde-Smith, 61, a cattle farmer from Brookhaven, was serving as state commissioner of agriculture when she was appointed by Gov. Phil Bryant in 2018 to temporarily fill the Senate seat vacated by longtime Sen. Thad Cochran. She beat Democrat Mike Espy in a 2018 special election runoff to fill out the term, becoming the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi. Espy is challenging Hyde-Smith again this year.
Trump and some in the Mississippi Republican hierarchy were reportedly lukewarm on Hyde-Smith when Bryant appointed her, largely because she had served for years in the state Legislature as a Democrat. But Trump endorsed her and stumped for her in Mississippi in 2018. In turn, she has been one of his staunchest allies in the Senate, unwaveringly supporting most of his policies and defending him during impeachment hearings.
With Mississippi considered by national pundits firmly in the Trump column for November, it’s unlikely Hyde-Smith would receive the same personal help from him this cycle, but she will likely still be a beneficiary of his popularity here.
“I think this will be a big turnout because it’s a referendum on Donald Trump and how the country is doing,” Barbour said. “I think that is going to help Cindy Hyde-Smith. George Floyd, the protests, that will help Mike Espy, but I think Democratic voters in Mississippi know that Donald Trump will win Mississippi, so it’s a little hard to get low-propensity voters to show up on the Democratic side.”
In her 2018 campaign, Hyde-Smith drew national attention from some gaffes on the stump, most notably from comments she made about attending a public hanging and about voter suppression.
Nathan Shrader, political science professor at Millsaps College, said the Hyde-Smith campaign is likely to benefit from the limits on campaigning forced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I sincerely believe this plays into her campaign strategy: attempt to limit face-to-face interaction or ways she could get in trouble like with the public hanging comments or posing wearing a Confederate cap,” Shrader said. “This limits the opportunity for things where their campaign might be forced to go into defense, making apologies or walking back things.”
Barbour said he believes Hyde-Smith will benefit from a large Republican presidential turnout and from “a clear choice” voters have in the Senate race.
“If you like the way Nancy Pelosi leads in Congress, then you want to vote for Mike Espy,” Barbour said. “If you want somebody who will vote with Donald Trump, then you want Cindy Hyde-Smith. I think for most people it’s just about that simple, and that’s clearly a Cindy Hyde-Smith advantage.”
“They are both good people, but they have differences on issues that are distinct,” Barbour continued. “Mike Espy unfortunately has taken on the positions of the liberal Democratic Party.”
