JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Latest on a U.S. Senate special election runoff in Mississippi (all times local):
3:15 p.m.
A political ad uses a 1930 photo of a white crowd in Indiana posing as two black men are lynched in a tree. It superimposes an unrelated photo of a current white senator from Mississippi as text appears: "This is where Republican U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith would like to be."
The ad on Facebook paid for by PowerPACPlus, a California-based political action committee that's backing Mike Espy, Hyde-Smith's Democratic challenger in a Nov. 27 runoff.
A video that surfaced Sunday shows Hyde-Smith at a Nov. 2 campaign event praising a supporter by saying: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."
Espy and the Hyde-Smith campaign are both condemning the ad.
A spokeswoman for the PAC did not respond to questions Wednesday or Thursday.
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11:16 p.m.
A black Democratic challenger in a runoff against a white Republican U.S. senator in Mississippi says his opponent needs to fully explain her comment about a "public hanging" that's causing an uproar.
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith made the remark in a video that surfaced Sunday. She praised a cattle rancher at a Nov. 2 campaign event in Mississippi by saying: "If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row."
Mississippi has a history of racially motivated lynchings.
Democrat Mike Espy said Wednesday that the comment was both "hurtful and harmful."
The winner of the Nov. 27 runoff will serve the last two years of a six-year term begun by Republican Thad Cochran.
Espy wants to become Mississippi's first black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
