Geoff Pender | The Clarion-Ledger

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant is expected to pick state Agriculture Commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith to replace Sen. Thad Cochran, many GOP sources say, a move likely to gain approval from President Trump in the lead-up to the midterms.

Bryant has not made an announcement, but by Monday had narrowed his short list down to Hyde-Smith and Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, sources close to the governor said.

The decision will come as Cochran plans to leave the Senate on April 1. His seventh term runs through January 2020.

Republican Hyde-Smith, 58, a beef cattle farmer from Brookhaven and former longtime state senator, would become the first woman serving in the U.S. Senate in Mississippi history. Assuming she would seek the post permanently, she would run in a special election Nov. 6.

Republican state Sen. Chris McDaniel and Democratic former Rep. Mike Espy, who served as agriculture secretary during the Clinton administration, have announced they are running for the seat.

Some state GOP sources are questioning whether Hyde-Smith, who served in the state Senate for years as a Democrat, would be vulnerable to a far-right challenge from McDaniel. Others say that as a Democrat, she had a conservative record and she has been a leader in the state and national GOP as agriculture commissioner. She has a strong base among rural conservatives.

Hyde-Smith served in the Mississippi Legislature from 2000 to 2012. She was first elected as a Democrat, but switched to the Republican Party in 2010. As a Democrat, she was known to frequently vote with the GOP on many major issues. She served as chairwoman of the state Senate Agriculture Committee for eight years.

Hyde-Smith was elected agriculture commissioner in 2011, the first woman to hold that position, and was re-elected in 2015.

McDaniel, who's already running a conservative and Tea Party-fueled campaign, is likely to try to make hay of Hyde-Smith being a Democrat until 2010. The race, which will be a free-for-all with no primaries, already also has a serious Democratic contender in Espy, raising concerns of splitting the Republican vote.

McDaniel and his supporters have called for Bryant to appoint McDaniel in the interim to "unite the GOP." But Bryant was emphatic last week that he would not appoint McDaniel, calling him "opportunistic" after McDaniel dropped out of the race against Sen. Roger Wicker to run for the Cochran seat.

Bryant, who also has strong support among more conservative and rural Republicans last week said that whomever he appoints as interim to the Senate seat will subsequently have his strong support in the special election, and likely that of Bryant's close ally, President Trump.

Hyde-Smith helped the Trump campaign in Mississippi and had been considered a candidate for Trump’s agriculture secretary. She served as co-chair of the Trump campaign’s agriculture advisory committee. Hyde-Smith also participated in U.S. Department of Agriculture trade missions to China, working to open the market to American beef exports.