GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith Voted for Hillary Clinton in 2008

A previous leader of the Democratic party confirmed on Thursday that Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary.

Rickey Cole, the previous leader of the Mississippi Democrat Party, confirmed in a Facebook comment on Thursday.

“Cindy was for Hillary in 2008,” Cole wrote in a Facebook comment on Thursday night.

Cindy Hyde-Smith urged more women to run for office when asked about Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman nominated for a major political party in 2016.

“We are always supporting women,” Hyde-Smith told the Clarion-Ledger. We want to promote women. I think women make great leaders. The right one would do the right job.”

Cole’s revelation directly contradicts Hyde-Smith’s denial that she did not vote for either Democratic candidate in 2008.

Hyde-Smith told the Weekly Standard:

You can leave a ballot blank, or you can vote for the third or fourth person on there that nobody knows. Because I assure you that I didn’t vote for either. That is just honestly the 100 percent truth. It was probably a no-name, but I still can’t remember who the no-name was. But it certainly wasn’t either one of them. Because you have so many folks who just, you know, their names on the ballot or you can have a write-in. That was, gosh, 10 years ago, and I have no idea what the name was.

The junior Republican senator from Mississippi served as State Sen. for three terms and then switched to the Republican party in 2010 before running for statewide office in 2011. Before her service in the State Senate, Hyde-Smith worked as a lobbyist in D.C. during the Bill Clinton administration.

Tanner Watson, the spokesman for U.S. Senate conservative and populist candidate Chris McDaniel, said in a press release on Friday:

No one should be surprised that Cindy Hyde-Smith voted for Hillary Clinton. She voted exclusively in Democratic primaries before opportunistically switching parties to run for statewide office in 2011. Why wouldn’t she have voted for Hillary? Thankfully, Mississippians have an opportunity to right this wrong in November by electing Chris McDaniel, the only lifelong Republican and true conservative in the race.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant chose to appoint Sen. Hyde-Smith in March despite warnings from the White House that President Donald Trump would not endorse or campaign for her to replace the retiring Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) during the November special election. White House sources have argued that her former Democratic party affiliation would lead to a loss in November.

Until Bryant’s appointment, Mississippi State Sen. Chris McDaniel was the only Republican in the race for the U.S. Senate.

McDaniel warned in a Breitbart News Sunday interview in March that if the Gov. made a special appointment if would lead to a “bloodbath,” in November’s special election.

After the special appointment, McDaniel charged Bryant with following “the orders of the Washington establishment’s Mitch McConnell.”

McDaniel continued, “Knowing the establishment’s opposition to conservatives, it was not at all surprising that they would choose a former Democrat.”

The Mississippi conservative said Mississippians will get to “choose from among the Democratic candidates or they can vote for a lifelong conservative Republican.”

Former Democrats and establishment Republicans have not fared well in Republican primaries and races.

Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-WV), who ran for West Virginia Senate Republican primary, lost to Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Jenkins previously served the state of West Virginia as a Democrat for nearly twenty years; the West Virginia lawmaker switched parties to become a Republican in 2013. Jenkins supported 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and Hillary Clinton for president in 2008.

McDaniel then said:

The establishment should have learned their lesson in Alabama. By spending millions of dollars against conservative Mo Brooks, they ended up losing the seat to a Democrat. Now, they are going to appoint one in Mississippi. Instead of unifying around my candidacy, and beating the Democrats, the establishment is once again going to waste millions of dollars of donors’ money over what should have been a safe Republican seat in Mississippi.

McDaniel charged that “the D.C. establishment would rather let a Democrat have the seat than let a conservative win.”