Cindy Hyde-Smith (née Hyde; born May 10, 1959) is an American politician serving since 2018 as the junior United States senator from Mississippi. A member of the Republican Party, she served from 2012 to 2018 as the Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce and from 2000 to 2012 in 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 conservative Democrat. She represented the 39th district from 2000 to 2012. In 2010, Hyde-Smith switched parties and became a Republican. Hyde-Smith was elected Mississippi agriculture commissioner in 2011 and she was 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. She was sworn into office on April 9, 2018. Hyde-Smith won the 2018 special election for the remainder of Cochran's term, and was reelected in 2020.
On January 6, 2021, Hyde-Smith supported Trump's efforts to overturn his election loss, joining other far-right senators in voting to object to the certification of Arizona's and Pennsylvania's electoral votes.
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 and the University of Southern Mississippi with a Bachelor of Arts in criminal justice and political science. After her studies, she worked as a lobbyist for the Southern Coalition for Safer Highways and National Coalition on Health Care, with offices in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. She served as the state director for Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee during her time in the 1990s with the National Coalition on Health Care, which advocated nationwide healthcare coverage.
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. 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 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.
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 had 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'."
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 first sought election to the Mississippi Senate in 1999, as she concluded her career as a lobbyist and transitioned back to the state. She returned to Mississippi, gave birth to her daughter, and qualified to run for state Senate all in one year. Her opponent in the 1999 Mississippi Senate Democratic primary was 20-year incumbent W. L. Rayborn. She perceived that Rayborn prioritized his personal interests over his district's and had supported his opponents in the previous two elections. During the campaign, Hyde-Smith refused to criticize him or target specific issues. Rayborn was known for a pet cause—allowing non-dentists to make false teeth. A denturist without a dental degree, he showed up to the Capitol a few days each session adorned with buttons and stickers promoting his bill "The Freedom of Choice Dentures Act." In 1999, his last year in office, it died in committee. Hyde-Smith defeated Rayborn in the Democratic primary and Republican Helen Price and independent Frank Greer in the general election, with 75.36% of the vote.
In the 2003 Democratic primary, Rayborn challenged Hyde-Smith in the newly redrawn state Senate District 39 and lost, 65.47% to 34.53%. Hyde-Smith was unopposed in the general election.
In 2007, Hyde-Smith was unopposed in the Senate District 39 Democratic primary. In the general election, she defeated Republican Edwin V. Case with 79.45% of the vote. This was her last election in the Senate district.
Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce
In January 2011, Hyde-Smith announced her candidacy for Mississippi's commissioner of agriculture and commerce. She won the Republican nomination in August and the general election in November, defeating Democratic nominee Joel Gill, to become the first woman to win this position. She took office on January 5, 2012.
In June 2012, in response to a massive infestation of plant bugs in cotton farms throughout the Mississippi Delta (which had caused approximately $81 million in damages), Hyde-Smith said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had approved an emergency exemption to help farmers exterminate the bugs.
In January 2013, Hyde-Smith successfully pushed for legislation to help fund a big renovation project for the Mississippi Coliseum. In December 2013, she received a Service Award from the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation for the project.
Hyde-Smith was reelected in 2015, defeating Democratic nominee Addie Lee Green by over twenty points. She was sworn in for her second term on January 7, 2016. In April 2016, Hyde-Smith announced that the Mississippi Department of Agriculture would be accepting proposals for both the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program and the Federal-State Marketing Improvement Program for the year's federal budget.
On March 21, 2018, Governor Phil Bryant announced Hyde-Smith as his choice to fill the United States Senate seat held by Thad Cochran, who indicated he would resign the seat due to health issues. Cochran resigned on April 1, and Bryant formally appointed Hyde-Smith on April 2. Hyde-Smith became the first woman to represent Mississippi in the United States Congress. The Senate was in a district work period and was not conducting legislative business at that time, so she did not take the oath of office until the Senate reconvened for legislative business on April 9. At her ceremonial swearing in, Hyde-Smith was accompanied by her husband, Michael, and U.S. Senators Roger Wicker, Orrin Hatch, Lamar Alexander, Chuck Schumer, and Susan Collins. Hyde-Smith announced that she would seek election to the seat in the 2018 special election on November 6.