Voting season in Mississippi isn’t over yet.
The runoff election will be Tuesday, with Democrat Mike Espy facing Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the special Senate election.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Espy and Hyde-Smith gained majority of the votes in the Nov. 6 special election, defeating Republican Chris McDaniel and Democrat Tobey Bartee.
Hyde-Smith narrowly beat Espy, garnering 41.3 percent of the votes, while Espy received 40.9 percent.
Espy led in Pike County with 46.4 percent of votes, perhaps due to split factions among Republican supporters of Hyde-Smith and McDaniel, while Hyde-Smith led in neighboring counties.
Because neither received more than 50 percent of votes, the two will compete again in the run-offs.
If Hyde-Smith wins the runoff, she would give Republicans a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
A victory by either candidate will make history for the state. Hyde-Smith would be the first elected woman to represent Mississippi in the Senate if she wins. Espy would become the first African-American Mississippi senator since Reconstruction if he wins.
Since the contest is the runoff for a special election, party labels will not appear next to candidates’ names.
In the only public debate between the two candidates on Nov. 20, Hyde-Smith apologized to anyone who was offended by her videotaped comments about public hangings and voter suppression after the remarks garnered backlash.
In one, Hyde-Smith is seen praising someone at an event, saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” In another clip at a different event, she is shown talking about making it “just a little more difficult” for “liberal folks” to vote.
Before last week’s debate, President Donald Trump defended Hyde-Smith, saying the comments were made “in jest” and “it’s a shame that she has to go through this.”
“For anyone that was offended by my comments, I certainly apologize,” Hyde-Smith said during the debate. “This comment was twisted and it was turned into a weapon to be used against me.”
Espy said her comments reinforced stereotypes about Mississippi, giving “our state another black eye that we don’t need.”
“No one twisted your comments because your comments were live, it 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.”
During the hour-long debate, Hyde-Smith challenged Espy’s lobbying work for former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo, who is on trial for crimes against humanity.
Espy said he terminated the contract after he found out Gbagbo was “a really bad guy.”
The Senate race isn’t the only contest on the ballot. Mississippi College School of Law professor David McCarty and Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Jeff Weill Sr. are in a runoff for District 4 Court of Appeals Judge Position 2.
McCarty narrowly missed avoiding a runoff with 49 percent of the votes on Nov. 6, while Weill received 28 percent.
