Independent Women’s Forum is delighted to announce that Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the first woman elected to Congress from the state of Mississippi, is the latest in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.

Sen. Hyde-Smith was appointed to fill the remainder of the late Sen. Thad Cochran’s term when he stepped down in 2018 and subsequently won the seat in a notably brutal special election.

The campaign grabbed headlines when the national media sought to make it more about Mississippi’s past than the state’s present economic needs. Hyde-Smith won 53.9 percent of the vote.

She moved on from the heated election, determined to make use of her new job to improve things in her state.

Hyde-Smith had just come from lunch at the White House the day she spoke to Independent Women's Forum. She has a great relationship with president. “He's been very kind, very gracious, and I certainly appreciate the relationship that I have with the president,” she says. She would fly with him to Tupelo, Mississippi for a rally the next day.

She has deep roots in Mississippi and is married to a fifth-generation cattle rancher. Their first date was to the Dixie National Rodeo in Mississippi. “The two things he did that impressed me the most was that,” she says, “first he tithed to the church, and second of all he could saddle his own horse. And those two things really impressed me; I knew I had quality.”

We know you will enjoy meeting Mississippi’s straight-talking, cowgirl senator and learning about all the firsts she racked up before joining the Senate.