Some of the two party’s biggest names, including President Trump and his opponent in 2024, Kamala Harris, have dropped in for rallies. Money is flowing in the millions of dollars. The airwaves are saturated with cutting political ads.
All for a Senate race in Mississippi, one of the most Republican states in the country.
The race between Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, an incumbent Republican, and Scott Colom, a district attorney with deep roots in the state, has raised a tantalizing question in the final days of the midterm season: Could Mississippi, a state flickering on the outskirts of the Democratic Party’s wildest ambitions, actually be in play?
Mr. Trump’s rally on Monday night with Ms. Hyde-Smith in Corinth, a short drive from the Tennessee border, seemed to indicate that it might be.
“I’m here because Cindy is doing great,” the president told the packed arena. “But I’ve just got to make sure.”
He went on to Mr. Colom. “How the hell do you say that guy’s name?” he asked, adding, “I don’t have to go into him — he’s a disaster.”
Mr. Colom seemed happy to take the slight. His campaign posted photos showing him at Mr. Trump’s rally talking to voters in line.
“I hope people will realize that Mississippi was always a state that had potential,” Mr. Colom said this month at a cafe in Jackson, the capital. “But it does need resources and attention.”
In a bastion of conservatism, a healthy dose of skepticism is warranted. Democrats here have let their hopes climb in recent years — with Mike Espy, a former agriculture secretary running for Senate, in 2018, and Brandon Presley, a candidate for governor in 2023 — only to see them dashed.
“We’ve seen this movie before,” Mike Hurst, the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, said in an interview. “I don’t see the doomsday coming on Nov. 3.”
But the flurry of high-profile surrogates and millions of national dollars from the parties’ official political arms, and their leaderships’ super PACs, signal a tightening race if not a tossup.
“He will never outwork me,” Ms. Hyde-Smith said of Mr. Colom during the rally. “I have a proven record to run on that I am very, very proud of.”
Beyond the rallies and star stand-ins, the money is speaking volumes. Some Black Democrats had clamored for the party establishment to invest in Mississippi and the man who would be the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. Mr. Colom, a relentless messenger, has capitalized on boiling voter anger over high prices, cuts to health care and food assistance and the war in Iran.
With the Senate races in Georgia and North Carolina seeming to shift toward the Democrats, Mississippi appears to be the new front in an expanding battlefield in the South.
That prompted a hefty round of spending from the Senate Majority PAC, which is affiliated with the Senate Democratic leadership. The Senate Leadership Fund, connected to Senate Republicans, has now pumped more than $1 million of advertising into Mississippi, according to AdImpact, which monitors campaign advertising,
“Whether he wins or not, he ran a good race,” Mary Wallace Hodge, 79, a retired store manager in Columbus, Miss., said of Mr. Colom. “Republicans are scared.”
Mr. Colom is the son of a barrier-breaking regional judge and a lawyer who worked on Ronald Reagan’s transition team.
Ms. Hyde-Smith, the first woman to represent Mississippi in the Senate, has not been as dominant as some of her other Republican counterparts. The state’s former agriculture commissioner, Ms. Hyde-Smith was first appointed to the Senate seat after the 2018 retirement of Senator Thad Cochran, who was adept at bringing federal funds to the state.
The state’s senior senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, has followed in Mr. Cochran’s footsteps as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Ms. Hyde-Smith has a seat on the panel that controls spending and has taken care in recent days to highlight the money that she has driven home. For some Republicans, that is enough to reliably support Mr. Trump’s agenda.
“He can’t do it by himself,” said Sharon Pannell, 57, a retired teacher who came to the rally in Corinth on Monday. “I think a lot of people don’t know how important the midterm election is.”
But Ms. Hyde-Smith has otherwise kept a low profile, declining questions from the reporters who prowl the Senate basement and refusing to debate Mr. Colom. In Starkville, Miss., one farmer told Mr. Colom that he wouldn’t know what Ms. Hyde-Smith looked like, if not for the fairly recent barrage of TV advertisements.
One of her decisions in the Senate was fateful: She refused to sign off on Mr. Colom’s nomination to the federal judiciary during the Biden administration, effectively blocking his path to the lifetime appointment and leaving him free to challenge her this year.
“I wouldn’t have left the bench to run for the United States Senate, that is fair,” Mr. Colom said. But, he said, his motivation was not personal.
“Mississippi did not matter enough to her,” he said. “Ultimately, that’s the betrayal.”
He has pilloried Ms. Hyde-Smith as “Cindy High Prices” and says she has not done enough for the state. He has worked to build a coalition behind the promise that “Mississippi Matters,” playing off a frustration that the state has struggled to climb national rankings.
Then there’s the protein ad.
In February, after a local TV anchor referenced the high price of beef while asking about the rising costs of food, Ms. Hyde-Smith observed: “You have so many proteins to choose from.”
Eight months later, Mr. Colom dropped a punchy, 30-second ad off the clip. A trio of dumbfounded voters riff on the same response: Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.
It has become the catchphrase on his campaign’s food truck (pick another protein — beef or chicken — for your taco), on campaign posters and even among some voters.
“I’d rather pick another senator,” Kierra Robinson, 33, told Mr. Colom as he knocked on doors in her Jackson neighborhood, quoting the ad back at him in recognition. “I like you.”
An energized Black electorate, which makes up about 40 percent of the state’s population, could lift Mr. Colom but only so far. Former President Barack Obama, whose 2008 campaign prompted a record surge of Black voting, reached about 43 percent that year.
The ongoing effort to redraw districts across the South after the weakening of the Voting Rights Act this year has also helped galvanize many Black voters.
“Mississippi’s not a red state — it’s a state that doesn’t vote,” said Carol Hall, 66, a Southaven, Miss., retiree who had been out canvassing prospective voters for the first time in her life.
But to win, Mr. Colom needs support from more than just Black voters.
Some of those voters seem willing to at least consider him. A young Catholic woman, passionate about her opposition to abortion, said she was looking for a candidate opposed to the data center development near her neighborhood in Horn Lake, Miss., a short drive from Memphis. A gaggle of 18-year-old men spoke about high gas prices and their worries about a protracted conflict in Iran as they debated their first vote.
Roger Keesling said he voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 but came to Mr. Colom’s rally with Ms. Harris earlier this month to learn more about the guy in the ads that popped up during an episode of “The Voice.”
“I’ve been doing my homework on Cindy Hyde-Smith, and I’m not that impressed,” Mr. Keesling said, speaking before the rally. Mr. Colom, he said, seemed like “he works for the people.”
The post A Tight Senate Race in Mississippi? Trump and Others Seem to Think So. appeared first on New York Times.
