Cindy Hyde-Smith

Cindy Hyde-Smith (née Hyde; born May 10, 1959) is an American politician serving as the junior United States senator from Mississippi since 2018.

A member of the Republican Party, she was previously the Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce and a member of the Mississippi State Senate.

Born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Hyde-Smith is a graduate of Copiah–Lincoln Community College and the University of Southern Mississippi.

In 1999, she was elected to the Mississippi State Senate as a Democrat.

She represented the 39th district from 2000 to 2012.

Hyde-Smith was a member of the Mississippi Senate, representing the 39th District from 2000 to 2012.

For part of her tenure, she chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee, which led her Senate colleagues to encourage her to run for Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce.

She had a conservative voting record in the state Senate.

During her time in the state Senate, 79 of her bills became law.

She supported measures to collect DNA samples from people in custody of the Department of Corrections and authored a bill to ban most abortions after 12 weeks.

After the abortion restriction bill passed and was signed by then-Governor Haley Barbour, it was overturned in federal court.

On the Senate Agriculture Committee, Hyde-Smith also helped manage the fallout from a controversial beef plant that defaulted on a $55 million state loan.

In 2001, Hyde-Smith introduced legislation to name a portion of Highway 51 for Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, who had no ties to the area.

The bill died in committee.

Hyde-Smith also voted for resolutions honoring civil rights leader Medgar Evers, the Freedom Riders and Hiram Rhodes Revels, who, through legislative appointment during Reconstruction, became the first African American to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate.

The state sued firms involved in the construction of a 400-employee plant in Yalobusha County that closed three months after it opened, in August 2004.

The state eventually settled with the plant owners for $4 million.

In 2009, Hyde-Smith led an effort to override Barbour's veto of a bill that sought to restrict the power of eminent domain to public use, thereby prohibiting eminent domain for private economic purposes.

The bill passed the state House 119-3 and the state Senate unanimously.

Barbour vetoed the bill on the grounds that the restriction could harm the state's business climate.

The legislature attempted to override his veto, but was unsuccessful.

In the House, the override vote was successful with a 101–19 vote, but it failed in the Senate, 28–22.

Hyde-Smith was critical of senators who switched their vote after the veto, saying, "Not only could you never come to this podium again and say 'I protect private property rights', you're still gonna have to say 'I changed my vote to vote against private property rights'."

In 2010, Hyde-Smith switched parties and became a Republican, citing her conservative beliefs.

On December 28, 2010, Hyde-Smith announced that she had switched her party affiliation from Democratic to Republican.

Her switch made the Senate equally divided between Republicans and Democrats, with each party holding 26 seats.

Hyde-Smith was elected Mississippi agriculture commissioner in 2011, the first woman elected to that office, and reelected in 2015.

On March 21, 2018, Governor Phil Bryant announced his intention to appoint Hyde-Smith to the United States Senate seat being vacated due to the resignation of Thad Cochran.

Hyde-Smith was sworn into office on April 9, 2018.

She is the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress.

Hyde-Smith was a candidate in the 2018 U.S. Senate special election for the remainder of Cochran's term, which expired in 2021.

She finished first in the top-two general election on November 6, 2018, but did not receive more than 50% of the vote, thus advancing to a November 27 special runoff election versus Mike Espy.

Hyde-Smith won the runoff election, becoming the first woman elected to Congress from Mississippi.

Hyde-Smith was born in Brookhaven, Mississippi, the daughter of Lorraine Hyde and Luther Hyde, and grew up in Monticello, Mississippi.

She attended Lawrence County Academy in Monticello, a segregation academy established in response to Supreme Court rulings ordering the desegregation of public schools.

The school's team nickname was the Rebels; the mascot was a "Col. Reb" who carried a Confederate flag.

Hyde-Smith graduated from Copiah–Lincoln Community College with an Associate of Arts (AA) and the University of Southern Mississippi with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in criminal justice and political science.

She is one of the few U.S. senators who attended community college.

After her studies, she worked as a lobbyist for the Southern Coalition for Safer Highways and National Coalition for Healthcare, with offices in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.

She served as the state director for Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee during her time with the National Coalition for Healthcare, which advocated nationwide healthcare coverage.