Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith Wins Mississippi Senate Runoff Rocked by ‘Public Hanging’ Remark

(JACKSON, Miss.) — Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith won a divisive Mississippi runoff Tuesday, surviving a video-recorded remark decried as racist and defeating a former federal official who hoped to become the state's first African-American senator since Reconstruction.

The runoff was rocked by the video, in which Hyde-Smith said of a supporter, "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row.