STARKVILLE, Mississippi — Michael Ward walked past his three farm-haul trucks, all idled by the high cost of diesel fuel, and pointed out the red trailer he recently bought to spread chicken litter on the fields because fertilizer costs too much.
As a Black farmer in the Deep South, Ward, 55, grew up chafing at political forces beyond his control, but he hopes this year is different. Scott Colom, a Black district attorney in the nearby city of Columbus, is running for U.S. Senate, and Ward thinks he has a chance to make history.
“Right now everybody is hurting so bad that they done forgot the Black and White issue, and it’s about the survival issue,” he said. “Everybody is in the same boat right now, hurting to make ends meet.”
The formula for Colom to win is deceptively simple: He needs a huge turnout from Black voters and about a quarter of the White vote. Doesn’t sound that hard, yet no Democrat has solved the problem in Mississippi in more than 40 years, and no African American has won statewide since Reconstruction.
This year the stakes are especially high, with control of the Senate in the balance and President Donald Trump’s agenda riding on it. Across the nation, deep red states have shifted in recent weeks and become unexpectedly competitive battlegrounds — nowhere more remarkably than in Mississippi.
Colom’s Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, was first appointed to the seat in 2018 when her predecessor resigned over health issues. She defeated former agriculture secretary Mike Espy, who is Black, by a surprisingly close seven percentage-point margin in a special election that year. She overcame an uproar when she told a cattle rancher she’d be in the first row if he invited her to a “public hanging,” evoking the state’s ugly history of lynching, and beat Espy again by 10 points in 2020.
Hyde-Smith has made few appearances in the state this election season and has been criticized even by some Republicans for keeping a low profile. Hyde-Smith’s campaign didn’t make her available for comment or hold any public events in the past few days, saying that Trump’s decision to visit the state next week has scrambled her plans.
Earlier this year in an interview with a local television station, Hyde-Smith dismissed concern over high beef prices by saying Mississippians can simply choose another protein.
The comment has reverberated ever since, with Democrats urging voters to “choose another senator” and Colom campaigning with a taco truck offering a choice of meats.
Austin Barbour, a GOP consultant and former state party official, acknowledged unfavorable conditions for Republicans but said he sees little reason to think Colom can break the state’s overwhelming tradition.
“You’re not going to get rural White voters to move in any kind of significant numbers toward a Democratic nominee,” Barbour said.
Mississippi voters see their choice as an obvious one between left and right, he said, and Colom surrogates like Kamala Harris, who rallied for him Thursday, reinforce that perception.
Janet Middleton, who is retired from law enforcement and said she supports Trump “100 percent,” said she is not happy with most of the senators in Washington and not particularly enamored of Hyde-Smith, whom she described as “lax” in her duties.
Middleton lives on a small farm in the county outside Starkville and said she knows Colom from being in the community, calling him an “all-right guy” who she’d love to see run as a Republican.
But she won’t vote for him because flipping Mississippi’s seat might give Democrats control of the Senate. In her eyes, Democrats refuse to meet Republicans halfway, are blinded by their hatred of Trump and won’t stand up for “simple, moral issues,” such as opposing abortion.
Colom’s family gives him a measure of crossover appeal. His father is a prominent lawyer and former Republican who served on Ronald Reagan’s presidential transition team and won the GOP nomination for state treasurer in 1987. His mother was the first African American elected to a Chancery Court judgeship in their part of the state.
Colom was elected district attorney for the area around Columbus in 2015, unseating a nearly 30-year incumbent after running on a reformist agenda that emphasized diversion programs for nonviolent offenders. He has personally prosecuted more than two dozen jury trials and obtained guilty verdicts in nearly all of them.
President Joe Biden nominated Colom to be a federal judge in the Northern District of Mississippi in 2022, garnering support from a slate of state Republicans. But Hyde-Smith blocked his nomination, accusing Colom of being a far-left extremist.
Her decision to foil his legal career could upend her own political career. Colom has outraised her and has been crisscrossing the state, at one point holding town halls throughout the week and visiting four churches on Sunday. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report recently changed its rating of the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican,” and both parties are now pouring money into Mississippi to air ads.
Believing victory is possible is the first crucial step, Colom said, in a state that has long felt like a stepchild to the rest of the country and among Black residents who — despite making up about 37 percent of the population — have felt powerless for generations.
Some of the highest profile Black Democrats have come to Mississippi to juice up turnout, including Harris, Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia). Most have invoked the Supreme Court’s rollback of protections in the Voting Rights Act, which shows signs of leading to a surge in Black voters worried about losing their rights or representation.
“Kamala Harris ain’t coming down here if I’m down 10, 15 points,” Colom said.
Colom says he knows exactly whom he needs to persuade to make the difference: working-class voters, Black and White. They’re all over the state, he said — from the suburbs of Jackson to the casinos of the Gulf Coast to the outskirts of Memphis, a city so expensive that workers live over the line in Mississippi.
Colom also hopes to distinguish himself from other Democrats in Washington to woo independent and right-leaning Mississippi voters. He calls himself a “common sense capitalist” who opposes tariffs and favors the free market but believes in raising the minimum wage. He and his wife own guns. He said Trump has “done a good job securing the border,” but that immigration officials shouldn’t be “killing American citizens.”
Delisa Woodruff, 38, drove an hour and a half to see Colom and Harris on Thursday night.
Woodruff, who is Black and works as a seamstress in a factory, said she was counting on Colom to “stand up to Trump” and do something about the economy. “I can barely make bills,” she said, adding that she’s unable to put away savings as she raises two teenage boys and eats vegetables from her mother’s garden to spend less.
Bridget Pieschel, 69, and her husband, Steve, 84, are White and have three children who went to Columbus High School with Colom. “We’ve known him all his life,” Bridget Pieschel said. “He is a man of genuine character.”
She is a member of the town’s racially diverse Federation of Democratic Women. “You’d be surprised how many White Democrats are in Mississippi, and they’re motivated to get out and vote,” Pieschel said.
But Columbus, a city of about 24,000, is more than 60 percent African American and is an island of blue in the red countryside.
The surrounding Lowndes County has voted Republican in presidential contests going back more than half a century, but it came within 200 votes of picking Barack Obama in 2012. White voters around the state might not share the same willingness to vote for Democrats.
Colom’s best hope might be that some Republicans are demoralized enough to stay home on Election Day (Mississippi has very limited early voting).
Steve, a 64-year-old White farmer in Canton, said he doesn’t like Colom or Hyde-Smith, whom he said hasn’t done anything to counter what he sees as corruption in Washington.
“I voted for her last time but, man, there is so much fraud in this freakin’ country,” said Steve, who declined to give his last name because he didn’t want to be seen discussing politics.
Making things worse: a data center has opened three miles from his family farm, his electricity bill hit $700 last month and his property taxes are skyrocketing.
“My way of life is over with,” he said.
He couldn’t vote for a Democrat, he said, and hadn’t yet decided whether to vote at all.
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