Campaigns Pour Money Into Mississippi Senate Race Before Nov. 3 Vote

Mississippi residents will decide on Nov. 3 whether Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith keeps her U.S. Senate seat or Democrat Scott Colom unseats her. Black voters make up close to 40% of the state's electorate, the highest share in the country, and their turnout is central to both campaigns' strategies in the final days before the vote.

President Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points in 2024. Democrats have not won a Senate seat in the state since the early 1980s, and the last Black candidate to win a statewide race there came during Reconstruction. Hyde-Smith defeated Colom's party by roughly 7 points in the 2018 special election for the same seat.

Colom, a district attorney, has criticized the national Democratic Party for directing funds elsewhere. "The Democratic Party has not been trying to win Mississippi. Let's stop kidding ourselves, right?" he told NPR. "They spent hundreds of millions of dollars in other states. They spent almost nothing in Mississippi." Hyde-Smith blocked Colom's nomination for a federal judgeship during the Biden administration.

Rallies for both candidates drew crowds in the state last week. About 1,000 people attended a Colom event at his hometown high school gym on Thursday, where former Vice President Kamala Harris appeared alongside him. Harris told the crowd, "We're 12 days out from an election. And it's time to turn that anger into action." A Trump rally for Hyde-Smith followed a few days later in Corinth, roughly 100 miles away. Hyde-Smith told attendees, "Endorsements don't win elections, votes win elections."

Spending data shows the two sides closing the gap. The Hyde-Smith campaign has spent more than $1.3 million on an ad titled "Most Radical," according to AdImpact. Democrats have outspent Republicans this month, about $5 million to $3.2 million, running ads that tie down-ballot candidates to Trump.

Redistricting also sits behind the race. After a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year rolled back part of the Voting Rights Act, Republican-led Southern states have moved to redraw congressional maps that reduce Black voters' ability to elect candidates of their choice. Mississippi Republicans have signaled plans to redraw state legislative and judicial districts after the midterms. Colom said, "What that tells us is you're trying to take away power from the voters and give it to the leaders."

Ashley Kennedy Shelton, who runs a nonpartisan civic engagement group in Louisiana, told NPR earlier this month that frustration with the system crosses party lines. "Folks are just tired," she said. "They're like: 'This doesn't work, and it hasn't been working for quite some time.'" Both parties are awaiting results on Nov. 3.