As with Roy Moore in Alabama and Ron DeSantis in Florida, Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith seems determined to test Republican voters’ tolerance for offensive, arguably racist oratory ahead of Mississippi’s runoff election next week. To wit, Hyde-Smith’s lead over Democrat Mike Espy in deep red Trump country has narrowed to just five points in recent polling, after she said of one of her supporters, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Mississippi, it goes without saying, has a long, detestable history of lynchings. Espy, her challenger, is black.

It has not been Hyde-Smith’s only transgression since being appointed to the Senate by Governor Phil Bryant in March, following the resignation of Thad Cochran. At a campaign stop in Columbus on November 2, the senator endorsed efforts to suppress Democratic votes as a “great idea.” More recently, CNN uncovered 2014 photos from the candidate’s Facebook account, in which she is wearing a Confederate hat and posing with a Civil War rifle. (“Mississippi history at its best!” she wrote). Neither is unforgivable among conservatives in the South. But both contributed to a familiar, Moore-ian unease—especially in a state not known for its record on civil rights. In the past week, numerous corporations, including Walmart and AT&T, have withdrawn their donations from Hyde-Smith’s campaign.

G.O.P. insiders fear that Hyde-Smith’s remarks will not only dampen Republican enthusiasm for the senator, but also drive black voters—who make up more than a third of the state population—to the polls for her opponent. “The race is definitely tighter than what it should be,” one Mississippi Republican told Talking Points Memo. “Her performance has lately not been great.” Another Republican expressed alarm over whether Hyde-Smith, who had refused to apologize for her “public hanging” comment, would put her foot in her mouth during a Tuesday night debate against Espy. “It’s all about whether we can get through the debate without saying anything that makes it worse,” the Republican said.

To their relief, she did not, though she offered a wobbly explanation for her comments (she was supporting a voter whose parents had both died of cancer), and accused the Democrats of “twist[ing]” her words. Espy, for his part, only twisted the knife halfway, perhaps in recognition of the state’s complicated racial politics. He refused to say whether he thought she was racist, but accused her of embarrassing the state. “No one twisted your comments. They came out of your mouth,” he said. “I don’t know what’s in your heart—but we all know what came out of your mouth . . . It’s caused our state harm. It’s given our state another black eye that we don’t need.” He focused the rest of the debate on pushing his desire to heal the partisan divide in Washington.

Their respective comments illustrate the balancing act that both Hyde-Smith and Espy must pull off for either to win election in Mississippi, a state home to one of the nation’s highest proportions of African-Americans, but one that went to Donald Trump by nearly 18 points in 2016. Hyde-Smith’s stumbles could cost her the support of white suburban voters, a constituency that swung blue and proved crucial to the Democrats’ success in the midterms. They could also galvanize black voters, ordinarily a low-turnout voting bloc in the state.

A similar dynamic led Democrat Doug Jones to triumph over Moore in Alabama, after all. But Hyde-Smith’s more moderate brand of conservatism could temper an all-out assault on her views toward black voters. While Democrats hoped for new gaffes Tuesday night, her muted, mostly uncontroversial performance at the debate—in which she voiced her support for Trump and accused Espy of being “too liberal” for the state, both fairly standard Republican talking points—deprived her critics of new ammunition, which would have been useful justification for ramping up their potential attacks.

Republicans have another wild card in their pocket, too: Trump, who is expected to fly to Mississippi to campaign for Hyde-Smith on November 26, the day before the election. (The president threw his support behind her on Tuesday, calling her remarks “sort of said in jest,” and saying it was a “shame that she has to go through this.”) Still, Democrats believe their centrist-oriented candidate can both pick up white fiscal conservatives and get Doug Jones-level turnout in the black community, possibly to pull off a final, long-shot midterm upset. The “public hanging” scandal won’t sink Hyde-Smith on its own. But, Democrats hope, it may just put them over the edge.

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