Democrats Try to Put Mississippi in Play Against Cindy Hyde-Smith

Democrats need at least four net Senate seats to flip the chamber, and they're apparently willing to spend money looking for them in Mississippi. Scott Colom, a Democratic district attorney, is challenging Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith as she runs for her second full term, according to the Associated Press.

"We can win here, and we're going to," Colom said. Mississippi hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate since the 1940s, and those senators were Jim Crow segregationists who predate the modern party realignment, per the AP.

If Colom wins, he'd be Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction. It's also a heavy lift in a state that has long favored Republicans in presidential and federal races.

The Math Colom Needs

Mississippi's 2023 governor's race was decided by just 3 percentage points, according to the AP. Colom's team is pointing to that as proof the state isn't as locked-down red as its Senate results suggest.

To actually close that gap against Hyde-Smith, Colom would need higher Black turnout than Mississippi usually sees, plus a bigger slice of the white vote than Democrats typically pull in the state. That's two separate hard problems, not one.

Colom is betting his message can do it: tying Hyde-Smith to Trump's tariffs, which have hit Mississippi farmers directly, and to broader economic frustration, including higher gas prices and harder access to health insurance for Mississippians. Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, campaigning for Colom, put it bluntly: "They cannot afford their groceries. They cannot afford the cost of gas. They cannot afford housing. It's all over the country."

That's a real economic argument and voters in plenty of red states are feeling inflation regardless of party. But feeling squeezed by prices and voting out an incumbent Republican senator in Mississippi are two very different things, and Colom still has to build name recognition. Fundraising and cheap Mississippi TV ad rates are his best tools for that, per the AP's reporting.

Republicans Aren't Panicking

Republicans say Colom has little shot, and there's no polling data in the available reporting to suggest otherwise. Senate Majority Leader John Thune actually argued in a fundraising email that a wider map cuts against Democrats, not for them: "By scrambling the Democrats, we'll spread their resources thin, making it nearly impossible for them to flip the seats they need to take the majority."

Democrats can't fund unlimited longshot races in Mississippi, Texas, and Ohio while also defending must-win turf in Michigan, Georgia, Maine and New Hampshire. Every dollar spent chasing Hyde-Smith's seat is a dollar not spent on races Democrats actually need to win the majority.

Michigan Complicates the Math

Democrats' four-seat target just got harder. Progressive Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan's Democratic Senate nomination this week, and Republicans reportedly feel more confident about that race as a result, according to the AP. If Michigan tightens, Democrats can't afford to lose ground there while also gambling on Mississippi.

A broader map means more opportunity, but only if the party actually has the money and organization to compete everywhere at once. Right now nobody's shown Colom has closed the enormous financial gap he needs to actually put Hyde-Smith on defense in paid media.

Colom hasn't released internal polling, and no independent survey is cited in current reporting showing the race within single digits. Until that changes, or until Colom's fundraising numbers show he can actually compete on Mississippi television, this remains a longshot bid getting attention mostly because it's unusual, not because it's close.

The next real marker will be fundraising reports and whether national Democratic money, beyond a single visit from Alsobrooks, actually follows Colom into the state before Election Day in November.