Give Scott Colom, the Columbus district attorney running against U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, credit for a good campaign.
He worked hard to introduce himself to voters around Mississippi as the midterm elections approach. He has not come across as an extremist, as have a couple of his Democratic peers in other states.
Colom also benefits from ideal political timing, though he could not have known it when he decided to run. He can thank President Trump. With Republicans in Congress dutifully in tow, Trump promised to do a better job of managing inflation than President Biden did, and he promised to keep the country out of expensive and demoralizing wars.
Instead, Trump’s tariffs have increased prices, and he ordered a second bombing run against Iran in February, even though he said after a prior attack in 2025 that the country’s nuclear ambitions had been completely annihilated.
When Iran responded by blocking 20% of the world’s crude oil supply from getting to refineries, the large increase in the price of gasoline and diesel fuel turned up the heat on the affordability fire that is certain to reduce the number of Republicans in Congress next week.
For Mississippi, the question is whether Hyde-Smith will be among the lawmakers voted out. Despite Colom’s energetic campaign, Mississippi remains a strongly Republican state, and it’s difficult to see her losing this race.
Colom has run well. He recently got $1 million from national Democrats, and a number of prominent officials, from Kamala Harris on down, have visited Mississippi to campaign with him. He contends that a huge turnout of Black voters, plus the support of 25% of white voters, would provide one of the state’s more memorable election upsets.
It is wise to never say never. But while Colom’s math may be correct, no election professionals see it happening. No polls show him leading, and no non-partisan election forecasts are predicting that he will to win.
He clearly has cut into Hyde-Smith’s built-in Republican advantage. Two highly regarded political analysts in recent weeks have moved Mississippi’s election to “leaning Republican” from “likely Republican,” meaning a GOP victory is not as certain as it once appeared.
There have been far fewer polls of the Mississippi Senate race than of those in other states, and they generally show Hyde-Smith with a lead of 4 to 7 percentage points over Colom. Both Republicans and Democrats can argue truthfully that polls are less reliable than they used to be. But impartial observers should acknowledge that the reported margin in those polls sounds about right.
Hyde-Smith does have some vulnerabilities. Her loyalty to party and president resulted in a One Big Beautiful Bill vote to reduce Medicaid and food stamp eligibility in America’s poorest state, as well as increasing the federal debt over the next decade with tax cuts. And she greatly misread the public mood by voting with Senate Republicans against the release of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s files before the Senate. It took two more months before the Senate unanimously approved making them public.
Are votes like that, plus the Republican majority’s responsibility for continually rising prices and a standoff of choice with Iran now eight months long, enough to flip Mississippi’s Senate seat to a Democrat?
If it happens, it will be national news. But it just seems more possible in other Republican states like Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Kansas, Iowa or Alaska. Mississippi, not as much.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
