Introduction
Weeks before a 2018 special U.S. Senate election in Mississippi, a video came out in which Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Mississippi Republican running for the seat, could be heard saying that if a political supporter “invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
Her comments set off a furor. Corporate donors such as Walmart, Major League Baseball, Google, and the pharmaceutical company Amgen, issued highly unusual requests for Hyde-Smith’s campaign to refund contributions from their corporate political action committees.
Investigations in your inbox
Email address
The Hyde-Smith incident foreshadowed what is happening in the wake of the violent breach of the U.S. Capitol: an unprecedented wave of corporations, trade associations and GOP-supporting groups vowing to cut off contributions to Republican members of Congress who objected to certifying the presidential election a group that includes Hyde-Smith.