Senate Democrats Launch First Mississippi Ad as Midterm Hopes Grow

WASHINGTON – The Senate Democrats’ leading campaign organization is entering Mississippi’s U.S. Senate contest for the first time this election cycle, making a significant investment in a reliably Republican state as Democrats seek to challenge the party’s narrow majority.

Senate Majority PAC plans to spend $1.2 million on a new television ad supporting Scott Colom, a district attorney challenging Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. The advertisement, first reported to The Associated Press, begins Wednesday and will run through Election Day.

“Senate Majority PAC has been watching this race closely, and it is clear Colom is running a competitive race that has put Hyde-Smith on her heels,” group spokesperson Lauren French said in a statement.

With only two weeks remaining, the effect of the ad is uncertain in a contest that took shape after Colom won the March primary. The spending is nevertheless substantial in a race that has drawn roughly $8 million overall. According to AdImpact, Colom has spent nearly $4.6 million, compared with Hyde-Smith’s $3.2 million.

Hyde-Smith, who was first appointed to the Senate and then elected in 2018, is seeking another term in a state long dominated by Republicans. Donald Trump carried Mississippi by nearly 23 percentage points over Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, and no Democrat has won a Senate race there since 1982.

Democrats nonetheless see an opening. Hyde-Smith underperformed Trump by 6 percentage points in 2020, when he lost his bid for reelection to Democrat Joe Biden.

The new television spot highlights Colom’s record as a district attorney while portraying Hyde-Smith as a “do-nothing” senator.

“A decade in power, Hyde-Smith hasn’t passed one piece of legislation, but she did vote to kick people off Medicaid,” the narrator says. The ad will air statewide and be supported by a digital campaign.

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The AP was seeking a response from Hyde-Smith’s campaign.

Colom’s campaign has fueled Democratic optimism during a year the party believes is increasingly favorable. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock campaigned with Colom last week, and Harris, Biden’s former vice president, is scheduled to join him at a rally Thursday.

Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and had been expected to benefit from a more favorable electoral map, with fewer seats to defend. But high costs and gas prices, along with an unpopular war in Iran under a Republican president, have encouraged Democrats. Senate Majority PAC is using the final weeks of the campaign to target conservative states, including Kansas, where Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor, is challenging Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.

If elected, Colom would become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, the 12-year period following the Civil War when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted.

Some Democrats have faulted national campaign organizations for failing to make larger investments in Southern states such as Mississippi.

“I worry, to be very honest, that Democrats are missing a real opportunity to invest in a serious and sustained way in the South,” Warnock said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”