By Bobby Harrison

Mississippi Today    

On Tuesday night, after just under 10 minutes of questions, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Espy thanked a crowd of reporters and walked away from the podium.

The two dozen members of local and national media then waited for Espy’s opponent in the U.S. Senate race, interim Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who had just debated Espy in a room twenty yards from the podium, to take questions.

Instead, Mississippi’s other U.S. Senator, Roger Wicker, appeared. Asked if Sen. Hyde-Smith would be speaking to reporters, Wicker was curt.

“No. I think the debate speaks for itself,” Wicker said.

“I am glad to be here tonight as a spokesman… I think the story should be about the debate” and not what the candidates said after the debate, he added.

Until Tuesday night’s debate, sponsored by the Farm Bureau and WLBT-TV, the interim senator, who was appointed to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in March, had avoided public events and media appearances. After the debate, time was set aside to allow the candidates to answer questions from the media.

Espy was elected in 1986 as the state’s first African American U.S. House member since Reconstruction and later became U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in the 1990s. He and Hyde-Smith, a former state senator and state agriculture commissioner, are running in a special election to replace long-term Sen. Thad Cochran, who stepped down for health reasons. Hyde-Smith was appointed to the post in the interim by Gov. Phil Bryant and is the first woman Mississippi has sent to Congress.

Although Tuesday’s debate performance was intended to quell a perception that Hyde-Smith is unable to speak for herself, it may have instead fanned the flames of discontent among her detractors, including Espy who, in his remarks to reporters, accused Hyde-Smith of reading from prepared notes during their debate.

While the candidates did not know what questions would be asked by panel of three journalists during the debate, Hyde-Smith and Espy were given notepads one hour before going on stage and allowed to make notes before going on stage. Before the debate, the Espy campaign had lobbied that the Farm Bureau not allow either candidate to have notes.

“I had a couple of notes jotted down. She had 30 pages of notes,” Espy said. Reporters were not allowed in the room with the candidates, but what appeared to be two stacks of paper, approximately an inch tall, could be seen on Hyde-Smith’s podium.