President Donald Trump flew to Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday to tell supporters not to stay home. The state he won by 23 points in 2024 has a Senate race, and the Republican incumbent, Cindy Hyde-Smith, is facing a Black Democrat she once kept off the federal bench.
The challenger is Scott Colom, a district attorney in northeast Mississippi. Mississippi has the highest share of Black residents of any state, close to 40%, and the last Democrat left the Senate from there in the early 1980s. The last Black candidate to win statewide office served during Reconstruction, NPR reported this week. Election day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Most national forecasters still rate the race solid or likely Republican, and Hyde-Smith is the favorite. But the money says someone sees a path. Democrats spent about $5 million in Mississippi this month to the Republicans’ $3.2 million, NPR reported, and the Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, bought $1.2 million in ads for Colom. Hyde-Smith’s campaign has put more than $1.3 million into ads calling him “the most radical Senate candidate in our lifetime,” according to NPR.
The two have a history. President Joe Biden nominated Colom to a federal judgeship in the Northern District of Mississippi. In 2023, Hyde-Smith announced she would not return her “blue slip,” the Senate tradition that lets a home-state senator block a nominee, even though the state’s other senator, Republican Roger Wicker, had already signed off. She cited his support for transgender rights, his opposition to legislation on female athletes, and backing he received in 2015 from a political committee funded by George Soros. The White House called the block unfortunate at the time.
Colom says his own party let Mississippi go. “The Democratic Party has not been trying to win Mississippi,” he told NPR.
Both sides came to the state in the past week. Former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned with Colom on Oct. 22 in Columbus, in a high school gym after Mississippi University for Women declined to host the event, according to WLOX. Trump spoke for more than 80 minutes in Corinth at Crossroads Arena. Voters interviewed by NPR cited the war in Iran, rising fuel prices and frustration with Trump’s second term.
The arithmetic is the old Mississippi arithmetic. With Black voters close to 40% of the population, a Democrat needs them to turn out in force and needs a slice of white voters to join them. NPR noted that extreme racial polarization has kept that second part out of reach. Hyde-Smith won her 2018 special election by about 7 points, in a Democratic wave year. Independent Ty Pinkins, a lawyer, is also on the ballot.
There is a second contest behind this one. After a Supreme Court ruling weakened the Voting Rights Act, NPR reported, Republicans in Mississippi have signaled they will redraw state legislative and judicial districts after the midterms.
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