A comedian mocked Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) after her defeat in the Mississippi Senate election — a race in which she dismissed voter concerns over rising beef prices by advising constituents to "pick another protein." The remark was turned against her by her victorious opponent, District Attorney Scott Colom, who urged Mississippians in a viral campaign ad to instead "pick another senator."

Comedian Walter Masterson visited a Hyde-Smith campaign office after the race was called, delivering the news of her loss directly to staffers on camera.

"You guys hear the news?" Masterson said while walking into the office. "They called it."

After noting that "Cindy lost," Masterson joked with the workers inside: "Thank y'all. So they did pick another... What protein is that? There you go."

At another point, he added, "They picked a new senator. Good job, Scott."

Filming from outside the office building, Masterson joked that "it's even funnier to know that we filmed this video two days before the race was called." One of his colleagues added, "We lied and now they're all scrambling to check the news. We're posting it as we won. Just gotta give him a little pre-heart attack."

Hyde-Smith conceded to Colom on Wednesday, after his victory became a mathematical certainty. A concession is not legally required under U.S. election procedures, but it typically signals that a campaign is ending its effort to contest the result.

Her campaign had earlier signaled during the counting process that it intended to keep pressing forward. "With the vast majority of Election Day ballots reported, the margin is measured in just dozens of votes," Hyde-Smith's team wrote. "We have thousands of outstanding ballots, including affidavit and absentee ballots, which still must be processed and verified under Mississippi law." Affidavit ballots are used when a voter's eligibility cannot be confirmed at the polls, and they are counted only after election officials process and verify them.

Her representatives continued: "Our campaign is closely monitoring the remaining count. We remain confident that when every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted, Mississippians will have reelected Cindy Hyde-Smith."

Some Democratic critics accused Hyde-Smith of delaying her acceptance of the result as an intimidation tactic.

"I don't know Cindy Hyde-Smith and how she may react to this personally, whether she understands the math and whether she's being stubborn or recalcitrant or truly trying to get every vote counted, which would be fine and, I know, a part of the process when the race is very, very close," Democratic strategist Dan Kanninen told MS NOW on Wednesday. "I do think in the South in particular, there is just this history of using tactics to intimidate voters into not participating. And we talked about this the other day with the affidavit ballots, where they use Experian credit data to put people on an inactive list. With the idea being that when you show up and you're a Black voter, you think you're active, you're on the wrong list, then maybe you go home because it seems not worth it to do an affidavit ballot."

He continued: "And everything from [Attorney General] Todd Blanche's saber-rattling to, I think, the elongation of this kind of long, drawn-out process when it's [clear who] the winner is, is part of at least the instinct about the strategy: to put up barriers, cast doubt on the validity of elections and ultimately keep folks at home and not participate in these elections."

Source: Alternet