Cindy Hyde-Smith

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Cindy Hyde-Smith, 2011

Cindy Hyde-Smith (born May 10, 1959 in Brookhaven , Mississippi ) is an American politician of the Republican Party . As of April 9, 2018, she has been the appointed interim successor to Thad Cochran in the United States Senate . From 2012 to 2018 she was the Agricultural Commissioner for the State of Mississippi. Previously she was from 1999 for the Democratic Party to the Mississippi State Senate on.

Family, education and work

Cindy Hyde-Smith grew up in Monticello , Lawrence County . Her family has been running a cattle ranch with fattening since 1942 . She studied at Copiah-Lincoln Community College and at the University of Southern Mississippi , where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree and then worked as a lobbyist in Washington, DC in transport and health policy. She runs the Lincoln County Livestock with her husband, Mike, a cattle farmer . Their daughter works in agriculture in the fifth generation. Cindy Hyde-Smith lives in Brookhaven and is a member of the local Baptist Church .

Political career

State Senator

Cindy Hyde-Smith joined the Mississippi Senate in 1999 for the Democratic Party and was a member of constituency 39 for twelve years. There she held the chairmanship of the Agriculture Committee for two legislative terms. She made a name for herself through her commitment to the Mississippi cod farming industry, which is why she received the Agricultural Ambassador award from the Mississippi Farm Bureau and was named MP of the Year. In December 2010 she moved from the Democrats to the Republicans.

Minister of Agriculture

In 2011, Hyde-Smith ran for the office of Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce. As one of three candidates, she prevailed in the Republican primary in the first ballot. She defeated Democrat Joel Gill with 57 percent of the vote in a year in which the Republicans won every state-wide election campaign. In 2015 she was re-elected with a large majority of over 61 percent. The office is responsible for inspections, reviews, including cattle theft, and marketing of the state's agricultural products. It supervises the Farmers Market and the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Museum in Jackson . The agricultural sector made up the largest part of the state's economy in 2017, with nearly $ 8 billion in added value and 29 percent of the workforce. Hyde-Smith became the first woman to hold the office in 1906. At the beginning of 2012, she replaced the long-time incumbent Lester Spell , who had not run again. She is the fourth woman in a state office. She supported Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election campaign . In Donald Trump's presidential election campaign , Hyde-Smith was one of the chairs of his agricultural advisory body from August 2016.

US Senator

Hyde-Smith was announced by Governor Phil Bryant on March 21, 2018 as the interim successor to the previous US Senator Thad Cochran , who had announced his resignation at the end of March 2018. She became the first woman to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate on April 9, 2018. Except for Mississippi, Vermont has never elected a woman to the US Congress. In the Senate, Hyde-Smith became a member of the powerful Grants Committee (as is tradition for Mississippi senators) and five of its subcommittees, including the Agriculture Committee. She is also a member of the Agriculture and Regulatory Committees .

Hyde-Smith had to stand for an extraordinary by-election for the remainder of Cochran's term of office (until January 2021) on general election day in November . As a Tea Party challenger State Senator is applied Chris McDaniel to this seat in which several candidates of a party without delay can compete for the Democrats joined the former agriculture ministers in Cabinet Clinton , Mike Espy at. Some representatives of the party leadership expressed doubts as to whether Hyde-Smith, as a former Democrat, could win the election against right-wing winger McDaniel, others have pointed to her conservative voting behavior in the State Senate, in which she had often voted with the Republicans. The White House announced that President Trump - whom Hyde-Smith supported in the election campaign and whose administration advised them - would neither speak for them nor stand up for them. The Cook Political Report postponed the election campaign from the Safe in Likely Republican category (safer to more likely Republican victory). Hyde-Smith was more successful in their fundraising by the end of June 2018 with $ 1.6 million than their competitors Espy with $ 308,000 and McDaniel with $ 272,000. Donations from outside Mississippi play an important role in this; she has received donations from fellow Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell , and entrepreneur Sean Parker , while her competitor McDaniel was supported by Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein . In the first ballot on General Election Day, Hyde-Smith received 41.5 percent of the vote and thus moved into the runoff election, which took place on November 27, alongside Espy, who received 40.6 percent. McDaniel got just 16.4 percent of the vote. Some of Hyde-Smith's statements dominated the pre-runoff election campaign, which many observers described as racist (see controversy ). The Walmart company then reclaimed its campaign donations from Hyde-Smith. On the Monday before the runoff election, President Trump made two campaign appearances for her in Mississippi.

Hyde-Smith prevailed in the runoff election with 54 to 46 percent of the vote, but much closer than the last result of Cochran in 2014 (22 percent gap) and President Trump's 2016 (18 percent gap). She will fill Cochran's remaining mandate until January 3, 2021; in the regular 2020 election the seat is up for voting again. ABC News reported in December 2018 that Hyde-Smith had failed to repay over $ 50,000 in donations corporations reclaimed over controversial statements in the Senate election campaign.

Positions and controversies

In her election campaign for the US Senate, Hyde-Smith emphasized her commitment to domestic cod farming against Asian competitors and praised President Trump for his work against regulations. According to the party line, she emphasized her support for the right to gun ownership ( Second Amendment ) and her rejection of abortion . She wants to work for the regional arms industry . The American Dream is alive in Mississippi. In the Senate, she wants to campaign on arms issues and against regulations at the federal level.

An election campaign statement on November 2, 2018 caused a sensation when Hyde-Smith said of one of her campaign supporters that if he invited her to "public hanging " she would be in the front row. Her opponent Espy and the NAACP condemned the statement, which suggests previous lynchings of African Americans in the Deep South . Hyde-Smith stated that her comment was just an exaggerated expression of appreciation for an invitation from the supporter; To give it a negative connotation is ridiculous. In another controversial statement on November 3, Hyde-Smith described it as a "great idea" to exclude certain democratically inclined voters from voting. She explained that it was obviously a joke. The fact that Hyde-Smith had accepted an election donation from entrepreneur Peter Sieve, who is known for his supporters of the white supremacy ideology , was also discussed before the runoff election. Shortly thereafter, a 2014 Facebook photo of Hyde-Smith became known in which she was wearing a Confederate hat and which she described as "Mississippi history at its best" (Mississippi history at its best). The Confederates had advocated the preservation of slavery in the United States . In a televised debate on November 20, she apologized for the first time for her comment about the hanging, but accused her challenger in the Senate election campaign, Espy, of distorting her words for political reasons.

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ^ Valerie Wells: Candidate of the Day: Cindy Hyde-Smith. In: Jackson Free Press , August 4, 2011.
  2. ^ Angela Rogalski: Cindy Hyde-Smith - Mississippi's Agriculture Commissioner. In: Delta Business Journal , online in: HottyToddy.com , April 10, 2015 (English).
  3. ↑ About Cindy Hyde-Smith. ( Memento of the original from March 21, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Commissioner of Agriculture & Commerce , Mississippi (English). @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdac.ms.gov
  4. ↑ Stephen D. Shaffer, David A. Breaux: Mississippi: Democrats Struggle in an Increasingly Dominant Republican State. In: Scott E. Buchanan, Branwell D. Kapeluck (Eds.): Second Verse, Same as the First: The 2012 Presidential Election in the South. The University of Arkansas Press, Fayetteville 2014, pp. 83-100, here p. 85.
  5. ^ A b c Hyde-Smith, Cindy. In: OurCampaigns.com (English).
  6. ^ A b Alan Fram, Emily Wagster Pettus: Hyde-Smith to become Mississippi's first female senator. In: Starkville Daily News , March 20, 2018.
  7. ^ Westley F. Busbee: Mississippi: A History. 2nd Edition. Wiley Blackwell, Malden, MA, Oxford, Chichester 2015, p. 433.
  8. ^ Brian Wilson: Agriculture and Commerce, Commissioner of. In: Ted Ownby, Charles Reagan Wilson (Eds.): The Mississippi Encyclopedia. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2017, p. 19.
  9. ↑ a b Niels Lesniewski: Cindy Hyde-Smith Gets Appointment to Mississippi Senate Seat. In: Roll Call , March 21, 2018.
  10. ↑ Miss. governor names Cindy Hyde-Smith to replace GOP Sen. Thad Cochran. She will be first female US senator from state. In: The Washington Post , March 21, 2018.
  11. ^ Women in the US Congress 2018. In: Rutgers.edu , Center for American Women and Politics.
  12. ^ Hyde-Smith gets committee assignments. In: WTOK.com , April 10, 2018.
  13. ↑ Eric Bradner, Kaitlan Collins, Ashley Killough: Mississippi governor picks Cindy Hyde-Smith to replace Sen. Thad Cochran. In: CNN.com , March 20, 2018.
  14. ^ Geoff Pender: Gov. Phil Bryant to appoint Cindy Hyde-Smith to Senate seat, but some in GOP are worried. In: Clarion Ledger , March 20, 2018.
  15. ↑ Jennifer E. Duffy: MS-B Senate: Bryant Appoints Hyde-Smith to Cochran's Seat. In: Cook Political Report , March 21, 2008.
  16. ↑ Emily Wagster Pettus: Senator raises more than challengers in Mississippi race. ( Memento of the original from July 25, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Times Union , July 24, 2018; Adam Ganucheau: Hyde-Smith, Espy and McDaniel still racking up out-of-state cash for Senate race. In: Mississippi Today , July 22, 2018. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.timesunion.com
  17. ^ Mississippi US Senate Special Election Results. In: The New York Times , November 7, 2018.
  18. ^ Daniel Strauss: Mississippi Senate race devolves into racial melee. In: Politico , November 20, 2018.
  19. ↑ Dan Mangan: Walmart asks GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith for campaign donation back because of furor over 'hanging' comments. In: CNBC , November 20, 2018.
  20. ↑ Watch Live: President Trump Rallies For Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi. Retrieved November 28, 2018 .
  21. ↑ Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Carrie Then: Just how lame will the lame-duck session be? In: NBC News , Nov. 28, 2018.
  22. ↑ Kendall Karson: Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith did not return over $ 50,000 in corporate donations following scandal-plagued campaign. In: ABC News , December 31, 2018.
  23. ↑ Joe Williams: Cindy Hyde-Smith Sworn In as Mississippi's Newest Senator. In: Roll Call , April 9, 2018.
  24. ↑ James Arkin: Hyde-Smith, running against black man, jokes she'd attend 'public hanging'. In: Politico , November 11, 2018; Emily Kopp: 'Public Hanging' Remark Provokes Outrage, Draws New Attention to Mississippi Senate Runoff. In: Roll Call , November 12, 2018.
  25. ↑ Allan Smith: Mississippi GOP Sen. Hyde-Smith calls voter suppression 'great idea.' Campaign: 'Obviously' joking. In: NBC News , November 16, 2018.
  26. ^ Ashton Pittman: Hyde-Smith Accepts $ 2,700 Donation from Notorious White Supremacist. In: Jackson Free Press , November 16, 2018.
  27. ↑ James Arkin: Embattled Hyde-Smith posted photo of herself in confederate hat. In: Politico , November 20, 2018.
  28. ^ John Whitesides: Mississippi Republican senator apologizes for 'hanging' comment. In: Reuters , November 21, 2018; Jonathan Allen: Democrat Espy charges in debate that Sen. Hyde-Smith's public hanging comment gave Mississippi 'another black eye'. In: NBC News , November 21, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Hyde-Smith, Cindy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Republican Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1959
PLACE OF BIRTH Brookhaven , Mississippi