Democratic candidates for high office in Southern states keep saying they have a better chance at victory this year. Maybe they do. Maybe the world of politics has truly changed as the midterm elections approach, and more conservative voters are unhappy enough to give Democrats a chance. Or in some cases, vote for a third-party candidate.
But until that actually happens, it’s just difficult — really, close to impossible — to expect it in the South. Maybe the best way to think about it is from the opposite side: In a solid blue state, who would count on a lot of Democratic voters supporting a Republican candidate?
Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race is a good example. Incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican from Brookhaven, faces Democratic challenger Scott Colom, a district attorney from Columbus.
Most years, a Democrat would be a very long shot to win such a statewide election. But Colom is getting help from a number of Republican missteps in Washington that directly affect voters: the Iran war, the higher fuel prices that it brought on, the inability to get inflation under better control and even the arrival of data centers. It also is likely that Republican votes against releasing the files from the investigation of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has soured a few conservatives.
In a story by The Associated Press, Colom said he believes he can win by increasing Black voter turnout and convincing enough disenchanted white voters to give a Democrat a chance. Anything certainly is possible, and Colom might pull off the upset of the decade. He is Black, which should increase turnout on Nov 3, but the real question is whether Hyde-Smith has disappointed enough whites to convince them to switch sides for one day.
Frankly, that’s hard to envision. Far-left Democrats in other parts of the country, such as socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, have become the main attractions for the party, which ultimately chose to let go of its working-class base in favor of extreme liberals. Democrats have paid a price for this, and that’s unlikely to change, especially in the South, until the party recruits more moderate candidates for key elections.
Similar stories are playing out in other states. The AP also wrote about the Alabama governor’s race, where Democratic nominee Doug Jones faces the man who beat him for a U.S. Senate seat in 2020, Republican Tommy Tuberville.
It should be pointed out that Jones won a special election for the vacant Senate seat because Republicans nominated a deeply flawed candidate. In 2020, when Tuberville challenged Jones for a full six-year term, the former Ole Miss and Auburn football coach easily won.
This year, Jones says, it’s different. He and other Democrats in the South say more people dislike the way things are going in the country or in their state, and are willing to consider alternatives. He noted that turnout for Alabama’s Democratic primaries this year was way up, and, like Colom, he believes victory depends on getting enough supporters to vote in November.
The same story is playing out in Texas. It is a Republican stronghold, but longtime Gov. Greg Abbott is facing a serious challenge from Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa. Abbott’s lead in many polls is surprisingly small, within the polling margin of error, 2 to 3 percentage points. That may have prompted his recent decision to put a halt to new data centers in the state.
The U.S. Senate race in Texas is where Democrats have the best chance of winning — again, because Republican voters, encouraged by President Trump’s endorsement, committed the five-word political sin of, everybody say it together, “nominating a deeply flawed candidate.”
Both Senate candidates are vulnerable to criticism. The state House impeached Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, but the Senate acquitted him. And Democratic state Rep. James Talarico, a few years ago, went overboard on the woke train and said there may be as many as six human genders. He has since, shall we say gently, changed his mind.
In recent polls, Talarico has a 2 to 3 percentage point lead over Paxton, so this race is on an Upset Alert. Will that spread to other Southern elections? Possibly. But that still remains difficult to believe.
— Jack Ryan, McComb Enterprise-Journal
