Mississippi’s October Surprise

President Bill Clinton spent some time in Tupelo, Mississippi, on Friday night explaining why he wanted Scott Colom in the Senate. Colom, Clinton said, impressed him as an independent thinker. Where his Republican opponent needed to consult Donald Trump before sharing her views, Colom would offer honest, unvarnished opinions. If a person had a different point of view, he’d listen. And, if you could convince him, “he’ll change his mind,” said Clinton. 

Indeed, Colom, the district attorney for the Sixteenth Judicial Court in Mississippi, has emerged as a master of the fine art of listening. He turned up before President Trump’s rally for his opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, in Corinth, a town near the Tennessee border, to speak with the MAGA faithful waiting in line. He posted a few photos of people he spoke with about the price of gas, groceries, health care, and more. 

One man in American flag gear recognized him from Hyde-Smith’s attack ads. After their conversation, Colom said the man agreed to support him and took a selfie. Some may find that pledge dubious, but how many Democratic candidates, much less African American ones, would even consider going to a Trump rally to hear out MAGA supporters? By the candidate’s own account, he’s participated in more than 60 town halls, visited housing projects, and gone to college campuses with a food truck. Hyde-Smith hasn’t held any town halls in six years and has refused to debate.

Hyde-Smith and Colom are well acquainted. When a seat on the federal court opened in the Northern District of Mississippi in 2023, President Biden nominated Colom to serve. GOP leaders—former Republican governors, along with Rep. Trent Kelly (R) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R)—lined up to support him.

But Hyde-Smith declined to return “the blue slip,” an arcane process whereby senators indicate support for a judicial nominee. The tactic has long been used by Senate Republicans to block Democratic picks to the federal courts. Hyde-Smith had to concede that Colom was “smart and well-liked,” but her opposition rested on the campaign funds he received through a PAC affiliated with financier George Soros and his support for transgender people.

When the door to the federal bench closed, Colom opened one to a Senate campaign. To vanquish the incumbent, he will not only need massive Black turnout. He’ll have to convince the tens of thousands of disillusioned traditional white conservatives who don’t stay home to shed their tribal loyalties.

CAN MISSISSIPPI SEND AN AFRICAN AMERICAN to the U.S. Senate in 2026? If Scott Colom goes to Washington, he would be the state’s third Black senator, but only the first one elected by popular vote. In 1870, when state legislators still voted for U.S. senators, the white men who controlled the Mississippi legislature during Reconstruction appointed Hiram Revels of Natchez to serve out his predecessor’s unexpired term; he resigned the following year. In 1874, state lawmakers voted in a man who had escaped slavery, Blanche K. Bruce, who served one term as the nation’s second Black senator.

Bruce and Revels personified the political advances African Americans could have made if it hadn’t been for the bizarre electoral circumstances that put Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohio Republican, in the White House in 1877. After his inauguration, the remaining federal troops that had been stationed in the South after the Civil War left, a cue for white Southerners to ramp up the terror already welded to the political, economic, and social contortions designed to keep African Americans poor and powerless. 

After the final blows came down on Jim Crow in the 1950s and ’60s, it still took decades before African Americans were elected to Congress. Former Rep. Mike Espy was elected in 1987, followed in 1993 by Rep. Bennie Thompson, who still serves today. 

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Colom’s rise owes much to Black voters’ widespread anger over the Supreme Court’s carefully crafted voting rights reversals. Convinced that the country had overcome, the Supreme Court began chipping away at the Voting Rights Act in the mid-2000s, culminating with the erasure of preclearance requirements. In April, after Louisiana v. Callais gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Southern states began to dismantle congressional districts with African American majorities.

Mississippi’s rich history of civil rights era grassroots movements from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Freedom Summer continues to power contemporary voting activism. Contemporary organizations like Mississippi Votes and One Voice Mississippi and funders like Democracy Alliance and the Ford Foundation have worked to fortify and extend voter education and civic engagement in the state’s Black communities. Fighting voter suppression has proven to be a constant with programs, such as Souls to the Polls, that provide voters with transportation and assistance in obtaining the photo IDs required to vote. 

Mississippi native Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia state representative and gubernatorial candidate, is well-known for her critical investments in the state through her voting rights advocacy organizations. She sees the opportunity to turn another Southern state purple by continuing to mobilize Black voters. “In Mississippi, whether we win or lose, we don’t leave,” Abrams told The Grio, a Black online news and culture outlet. “We are there to build, and when you are focusing on building versus winning, then winning comes.” 

“If you use the pillars of Mississippi and Georgia, you can set the framework for what can be delivered for the South,” she added. “And when you deliver that for the South, you’re delivering that for the nation.”

THE UNEXPECTED FORCE giving Colom an edge in this race is a savvy ad campaign. He has been applauded for the campaign’s Saturday Night Live-level videos, a high point in the otherwise depressing universe of how-low-can-you-go attacks that saturate television and social media. 

In response to a question about high beef prices, Hyde-Smith, a former state secretary of agriculture and a cattle farmer, suggested to an interviewer, “There are so many proteins to choose from.” The Colom campaign took that offhand remark and unfurled this response: “Pick another protein? Shiiit, I’d rather pick another senator instead.” The rest will go down in political advertising history. Even President Clinton quipped, “I don’t believe we need a senator to explain the existence of chicken.” 

The ad raised Colom’s profile, especially among the African American voters and the young people he needs to get to the polls. It was so successful it spawned sequels: a second ad with Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and a third after Hyde-Smith, presumably of her own free will, decided to try and explain away her original statement. (“Wow, she doubled down on ‘pick another protein,’” as Colom put it in the video.) 

If all of this wasn’t enough of a laugh riot, the campaign has struck gold with the Halloween debut of “Sinators,” an ad inspired by Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s 2025 horror movie hit. These ads won’t change made-up minds, but they may spur less-motivated voters to make a trip to the polls. They also demonstrate how humor and humans can power a campaign more effectively than AI slop or vile accusations.

If Colom prevails, it will be despite the Democratic powers that be. Party leaders have ignored the strong local coalitions and hedged their bets in Mississippi and the Deep South for decades, never believing that any white Democrat, much less a Black one, could turn the GOP tide. Colom, other Mississippi Democrats, grassroots organizers and fundraisers have bitterly criticized this flaw even as the evidence of the political shifts mounted.

“The DNC says they want minorities to run for office, but when they actually do, we don’t get the support that we need and deserve,” Espy told me six years ago when he ran against Hyde-Smith for a second time. “Where else in America is there an African American population of 40 percent? Where is it?”

The party didn’t go all out for Espy or Brandon Presley, a public service commissioner who ran for governor against Tate Reeves, the lieutenant governor, three years ago. Black voters turned out massively for Presley, Elvis’s second cousin, but with a few exceptions, white voters did not match that enthusiasm. But Presley only narrowly lost to Reeves, now in his second term, 51 percent to 48 percent. The margin was roughly 27,000 votes, which in Mississippi translates into a precious few ballots per precinct.

This time, the party’s notables got involved. Former vice president Kamala Harris, Sens. Cory Booker (NJ), Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE), Angela Alsobrooks (MD), and Raphael Warnock (GA), and former Biden transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg have all descended on the Magnolia State. Former New Orleans mayor and Biden administration infrastructure czar Mitch Landrieu, Democratic strategist James Carville, and Presley came to Tupelo with Clinton.

But even with President Trump and the GOP waging a national equal opportunity alienation campaign aimed at everyone who isn’t a billionaire in waiting, the Democratic chieftains controlling the purse strings only belatedly recognized there is an energized African American candidate in Mississippi. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer started thinking about the Colom campaign this past summer. In October, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee went in on a joint ad buy, and the Schumer-affiliated Senate Majority PAC pitched in for its own ad campaign. Warnock, who has called for a “new kind of Southern strategy,” has also backed Colom with cash. All told, Colom has outraised Hyde-Smith, $5 million to a little more than $3 million. 

 Seated next to Colom on stage Friday night, Presley said of his own run for office, “Close doesn’t count; you’re looking at living proof of that right here.” If Colom fails to pull off a victory, the next opportunities for Black political advancement in Mississippi will require even harder work to protect and secure. If he does win, the “pick another senator instead” campaign will be a textbook example of how untapped grassroots gumption can propel a savvy candidate against all odds.