Elise Jordan

Special to the Clarion Ledger

Mississippi Republican voters face an imperfect decision when they head to the polls on Tuesday to elect a new senator, but it's ultimately a decision of how they want Mississippi to be viewed in the world.

Since leaving Holly Springs at 18, I’ve had a front-row seat to national Republican politics and foreign policy working as a speechwriter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a National Security Council aide in President George W. Bush’s White House and an adviser to Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign.

Working in Afghanistan and Iraq for the State Department impressed upon me the importance of electing Congressional leaders possessing common sense, judgment, and the humility to apologize when they get it wrong.

These days, I’m lucky to make my living as a political analyst un-beholden to the Republican Party apparatus for any part of my livelihood, so I have the freedom to say what I think.

My loyalty is to the place I love and call home, filled with the people I love, not a political party. More than anything, I want to see a better Mississippi for all Mississippians. Tuesday’s special election is bigger than party affiliation — it’s about the values we want our great state to represent in the world.

I worry that Mississippi is about to send a senator to Washington lacking the critical character traits of common sense, judgment and the humility to apologize. I know that many Mississippians worry about sending a Democratic senator to Washington, but I worry more that Cindy Hyde-Smith, who gave only a belated and cursory apology for comments supporting voter suppression and, of all things, public hangings, will be a constant reminder of the darkest days of our history. Is that a reputational risk Mississippi can afford to take?

For Republicans weighing a vote for Democrat Mike Espy, the stakes are historically low. Republicans already hold a clear 52-seat majority in the U.S. Senate, and the two-year seat will be up for reelection in 2020. If Espy won, he’d be under immediate pressure to satisfy the crossover voters who elected him if he hoped to keep the seat. Meanwhile, the state GOP would have two years to find and field a more competent candidate to challenge him in 2020.

Two years, though, will be a long time for Mississippians to suffer headlines of more Hyde-Smith unforced errors. If there’s one lesson I’ve learned in politics, it’s that a politician prone to racist gaffes rarely improves with time. Instead, they tend to ferment into a heartier brew of the original product. (For example, see Congressman Steve King of Iowa.)

It comes down to the question of judgment, and it's hard to argue that Hyde-Smith passes the basic test of judgment for any statewide official who is seeking to represent all Mississippians. I'll use one of my mama's favorite phrases: She just doesn’t seem to have good sense.

Was it good judgment to talk about a “public hanging” in a state where mobs lynched over 600 African-American men and women from 1877 through 1950? The terror and the memories never go away. A woman in Clarke County recalled a 1918 lynch mob that hung two brothers and two pregnant sisters from a bridge.

“People says they went down there to look at the bodies,” the Mississippi woman said, half a century later, “and they still see those babies wiggling around in the bellies after those mothers was dead.”

It was not an isolated joke, as Hyde-Smith’s campaign and surrogates would have you believe, but one of several disturbing incidents representing a consistent pattern of ignorance and insensitivity of the history of the state she wants to serve.

Was it good judgment to endorse voter suppression in a state where the Ku Klux Klan firebombed Vernon Dahmer’s home in 1966 for helping other African-Americans vote? Dahmer died in the hospital room he shared with his severely burned 10-year-old daughter, his wife Ellie at his side.

“Some of the last words he said was, 'If you don't vote, you don't count.' That's on his tombstone," Mrs. Dahmer told NPR last year. “It's a night I can never forget. It's been over 50 years, and seems like it were yesterday."

Was it good judgment to pal around in 2014 with Greg Stewart, a disbarred lawyer and Confederate flag activist, pose in a Confederate soldier cap with a gun at the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library, and write on Facebook: “Mississippi history at its best!”?

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I think the answers are obvious. These actions aren't just buffoonish, tone-deaf, and offensive to our African-American neighbors, as well as plenty of other Mississippians of good conscience — they're also radioactive to the kinds of businesses our state needs to attract to help lift half a million of our people out of poverty. Corporate campaign donors like Walmart, Pfizer, AT&T, Leidos and Boston Scientific found Hyde-Smith’s comments sufficiently disturbing to ask for their money back.

Here's another question that probably answers itself: Is it good judgment to profess blind loyalty to President Donald Trump’s policies, even when his policies — like his trade wars — go against the interests of almost thirty percent of Mississippians who depend on agriculture, the state’s largest employer, for their livelihoods? As a fourth-generation cattle farmer, you’d think Hyde-Smith would be concerned that net farm income is half of what it was in 2013.

“I have not spoken with one (farmer) yet that is not on board with the president,” Hyde-Smith said of the tariffs. I can sure find a few in Marshall and Benton counties who will give her an earful.

I’m not impressed that Espy represented a brutal dictator for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But at least he’ll take questions and own up to it, as he did without hesitation on every topic I had for him when I interviewed him for an hour in September in Oxford for my Words Matter podcast. I asked Espy tough questions about domestic and foreign policy; his knowledge of trade policy was particularly impressive and I came away thinking he just might be a forceful advocate for Mississippi's farmers in the Senate after all.

In contrast, Hyde-Smith's handling of the fallout from her comments again gave us reason to doubt her judgment. Instead of immediately apologizing, she kept referring reporters back to her statement like a broken record. And when she finally apologized, nine days later, she had to look at her notes to do it. Her performance provides little reassurance that she'll do better when she’s expected to speak on behalf of Mississippians on a difficult subject — be it race, health care, or trade policy — or represent us in a vote to send our young men and women to war.

Sometimes elections present hard choices. Sometimes it's difficult to tell what choice will be best for our state, our livelihoods, and our families. I'm not convinced this is one of those times. Mississippi, let’s think twice before rewarding this series of dubious judgment calls with an all-expenses-paid trip to the U.S. Senate. America is watching, the world is watching, and, most important of all, our kids are watching.

More:What's up with the voter suppression joke caught on video? Cindy Hyde-Smith campaign talks

More:Who is Mississippi Senate candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith?

More:Scandals, health care, 'public hangings' and more: Key takeaways from #MSSen debate

— Elise Jordan, a native of Holly Springs, is the co-host of the Words Matter podcast, an NBC News political analyst, and a TIME columnist.