Scott Colom is a Black Democrat running for the U.S. Senate in Mississippi, and he’s trying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a white Donald Trump acolyte seeking her second full term. That’s the setup. A state long run by white conservatives is once again being asked to choose between the same political machinery and a challenger who says the system has already failed ordinary people.
Colom told The Associated Press, "I’m going to fight the corruption that we’re seeing in D.C. that’s making everything less affordable," pointing to Trump’s tariffs, the Iran war and the Republican-controlled Congress’ capitulation on both. He added, "Our junior senator has totally given away our voice. She’s not worried about us at all." That’s the language of a campaign, sure, but it also lands as a blunt indictment of how power works: decisions made far away, costs dumped on people at the bottom, and elected officials treating that as normal.
Who Has the Power
Colom, a gregarious prosecutor who grew up in Mississippi with a Republican father who campaigned for Ronald Reagan and counted political titan Thad Cochran as a friend, is an underdog in a state run for generations by white conservatives. But several variables — Colom’s biography, Mississippi’s demographics, lingering inflation and Hyde-Smith’s understated profile — make the race a wildcard as Republicans defend their 53-47 Senate majority at the midpoint of Trump’s second presidency. Through aides, Hyde-Smith declined an interview. Her campaign manager, Jake Monssen, said, "No one believes in Scott Colom except for Scott Colom," and called him a stooge of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and billionaire donor George Soros, whose family backed Colom’s district attorney races.
That’s the usual elite script. One side leans on billionaire money and party bosses, the other side sneers about it, and the people of Mississippi are left to sort through a contest shaped by donors, national party strategists and the same old hierarchy. Schumer recently held a fundraiser for Colom, and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Maryland’s first Black senator, traveled to Mississippi to support him as Democrats look for every path to Senate control. Alsobrooks said, "I can guarantee you one thing, I’m not the last." As they campaigned together, Colom invoked a biblical long shot and Mississippi’s history in the Civil Rights Movement. "We know a little something about David and Goliath in Mississippi," he said.
Who Gets Counted
The outcome hinges on what Charles Taylor, the Mississippi NAACP State Conference Executive Director, called "simple math." Colom’s weekend included a voting rights discussion at Jackson’s Farish Street Baptist Church, where Medgar Evers, the NAACP leader killed by white supremacists in 1963, held organizing meetings. Black voters make up about 37% of Mississippi’s 2.95 million residents and about a third of the typical November electorate, more than in any other state, according to strategists in both major parties. More than 9 out of 10 Black voters typically vote Democratic but turn out at a lower rate than white voters, especially younger generations. White voters opt by a 4-1 ratio or more for Republicans. Younger white voters trend slightly less Republican, but they’re also less likely to vote.
That math is the whole game. It’s not some grand civic ritual. It’s turnout, suppression, demographics and the narrow channels through which people are allowed to matter. In 2018, Hyde-Smith won a special election runoff over Mike Espy, Mississippi’s first Black congressman since Reconstruction and a former U.S. agriculture secretary, by 7 percentage points. She won a rematch in 2020 by 10 percentage points but trailed Trump’s 16-point margin over Democrat Joe Biden. Three years later, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection by 3 percentage points and finished less than 1 percentage point over the majority threshold Mississippi law requires to avoid a runoff in statewide general elections. Taylor said registration and turnout efforts by the NAACP and other groups could draw 75,000 more Black voters, enough to close recent gaps.
Wilbur Colom, who once lost a state treasurer’s race as a Republican, said his son could win by increasing the Black share of the electorate to 35% and getting closer to one out of four white votes rather than the typical 20% or less. "That’s hard," Wilbur Colom said. "But demographics are our friend here."
What They Call Representation
Scott Colom mostly sidesteps Mississippi history or electoral math unless asked. "We’ve made a lot more progress than we get credit for," he said. "A lot of Mississippians," he added, "want somebody that’s going to look out for them," regardless of race. On Republican gerrymandering after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a last key Voting Rights Act provision protecting minority voting strength, Colom steers the conversation to economics. Republicans, he said, "don’t want to be held accountable" for how things are going.
Asked about Biden tapping him for a federal judgeship only for Hyde-Smith to block the nomination, Colom said the campaign isn’t about that. He avoids personal shots at Trump, instead emphasizing Mississippi farmers harmed by the Republican president’s tariffs and "400,000 Mississippians that don’t have health insurance" because the state hasn’t expanded Medicaid and Republicans, Hyde-Smith included, let expanded insurance premium subsidies expire. Colom also mentions crime victims and their families in his jurisdiction, promising voters will see them vouch for him. He criticizes Hyde-Smith for using campaign funds at Las Vegas hotels.
"Voters in Mississippi were promised America first. They were promised lower grocery prices, no more endless wars, concepts of a healthcare plan," he said. "We’ve been betrayed on all three fronts, and Cindy Hyde-Smith won’t even do a town hall to justify any of it."
Hyde-Smith’s aides say she travels regularly to community events around Mississippi and only annually to Las Vegas for a national campaign fundraiser the onetime state agriculture commissioner plans around a professional rodeo event. Monssen said voters will see Colom as trying "to transition kids’ genders," raise taxes and give "healthcare to illegal immigrants" to please his "socialist supporters" from the coasts. Republican Steve Rogers, 73, of Brandon, said, "I like how she votes, and I think any Democrat’s wasting their time." He said Trump still gets high marks from him and that he hasn’t even heard of Colom. Trump’s slide "may give her some trouble," Rogers said, "but I think she coasts."
Colom acknowledged financial support from the Soros family but said no candidate controls outside political action committees. He pointed to his prosecution of a Democratic sheriff for sexual abuse of a prisoner as proof that partisanship doesn’t guide him. Voters, including many who’ve backed Trump and Hyde-Smith, "are smart enough," he said, to "see through the lies." Judy Weiner, a 72-year-old poll worker in Hinds County, said Hyde-Smith distinguishes herself only by her fealty to Trump and not by securing appropriations and helping rank-and-file Mississippians, as her predecessor Cochran did. "He made his decisions based on what was good for all the people in Mississippi, not because the president whispered in his ear," she said, noting Cochran attracted votes from Black and white Democrats.
The candidates’ campaign accounts and Mississippi’s inexpensive media markets add to the uncertainty. Through June, Hyde-Smith had raised $3.8 million this cycle and had $2.5 million left. Colom had raised $2.8 million and had $850,000 remaining. Colom outpaced Hyde-Smith among individual contributors, $1.9 million to $1.8 million, from the start of 2025, and more of his money, $536,000, came from Mississippi than any other state. There is no statewide TV advertising yet, but Senate Majority PAC spokeswoman Lauren French said the group is "watching closely." It doesn’t take seven figures per ad buy to penetrate the electorate, unlike in more populous states such as Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, so late national party or super PAC spending could matter. Alsobrooks said, "We need to be working for every single seat," and added, "and you know what, it always seems impossible until it’s done."