By admin 
For Democrat Scott Colom, his quest to win a US Senate seat in Mississippi is a long shot but not a lost cause.
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The 43-year-old local district attorney is hoping to topple Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a deep-red state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the chamber in nearly four decades or elected a Black candidate in a statewide race since the Reconstruction era. President Donald Trump won the state two years ago by 23 points.
He and his allies argue that the GOP’s political headwinds and the state’s significant Black electorate – which at 35% is the largest of any state – puts Mississippi on the cusp of becoming competitive, with enough attention and money.
“I think the country has been conditioned to write off Mississippi when it comes to politics,” Colom told CNN in an interview ahead of a weekend of campaigning in Jackson. “It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. We don’t compete in Mississippi so we don’t do well, and then we say, “Well, we didn’t do well so we shouldn’t compete.’”
The charismatic Democrat seems to be turning a growing number of his party’s leaders into believers: Former Vice President Kamala Harris will join him on the trail Thursday. President Barack Obama cut an endorsement ad for him last week, and all four of the US Senate’s Black Democratic senators have trekked to the state in recent weeks. On Tuesday, a major Democratic super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced it would spend $1.2 million on an ad campaign to aid him.
“I’m glad the country is starting to pay attention because the reality is Mississippi’s not a lost cause,” Colom said. “It’s a betrayed cause.”
Across the South, Democrats are starting to hope they could prevail even in GOP bastions like Mississippi because of the unfavorable midterm environment for Republicans and what strategist Terrance Woodbury calls a “blacklash” building against the GOP’s aggressive moves to curb Black political power.
“There’s an activation amongst Black voters and a frustration amongst Republican voters that might make a place like Mississippi quite possible this year,” said Woodbury, the president of Democratic research firm HIT Strategies.
To pull off an upset, Colom will need huge turnout among Mississippi’s Black populace, combined with about 25% of the White vote, said Charles Taylor, executive director of the Mississippi NAACP.
The Democrat says he’s not deterred by the high hurdle.
“I have a message for all Mississippians,” Colon said. “When I talk about tariffs hurting Mississippians, I’m talking about all Mississippians. When I talk about raising the minimum wage, that’s going to help all Mississippians.”
New challenges to Black voting power
Colom’s drive for a Senate seat comes as Black representation in Congress faces its biggest threat in decades.
In a blockbuster redistricting case earlier this year, the Supreme Court gutted what remained of the power to bring claims of racial discrimination under the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Within days of the court’s decision in Louisiana vs. Callais, Republican-controlled legislatures in Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama raced to carve up congressional districts with substantial Black populations.
But despite the new challenges to African Americans’ electoral power across the region, several Black Democratic nominees are waging stronger-than-expected campaigns in Republican or Republican-leaning territory this fall.
In Alabama, for instance, where GOP map-drawers targeted Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures’ district, the independent political handicapper Inside Elections last week shifted the race in Figures’ direction, from “likely” Republican to “lean” Republican, citing the political environment.
One reason for some of the Democratic optimism: Black voters. Figures said Black voters still make up a substantial share of the electorate, roughly 40%, of his new district, down from 47% under the old lines. And the city of Montgomery – where the 1955 boycott against segregated public transportation launched the modern movement for civil rights – remains wholly intact.
“We still have some of those people that were around for those fights and certainly have a lot of their children and grandchildren that still have that same spirit, that same understanding of the importance of history,” Figures told CNN. “They are aggravated by what has taken place, and we think that’ll be reflected in November.”
In North Carolina, meanwhile, two-term Rep. Don Davis is running a competitive race against Republican Laurie Buckhout despite a new map that siphoned off Black voters from his current district and added in ruby-red communities. On the stump, the Air Force veteran touts his centrist record on Capitol Hill as he works to win over a new cohort of more conservative constituents.
Elsewhere in North Carolina, decisions this year by GOP-controlled state and county elections boards to reject early voting polling places on or near several college campuses have spurred protests among students who lack easy transportation to cast their ballots.
Last week, on the first day of early voting in the state, more than 300 students from North Carolina A&T State University marched to an off-campus polling location to cast their ballots. The school is the nation’s largest historically Black college or university.
“They are trying to disenfranchise and suppress the turnout of minority voters across the entire state,” Xavier Jones, a 21-year-old junior who helped organize the march, said of Republican policymakers. “I hope they see that even when they use their power to organize against the people, the people will organize right back.”
In Mississippi, redistricting also has stirred activism.
In May, after Mississippi considered but backed off redistricting, some 5,000 people still showed up on a rainy weekday to rally for voting rights, said the NAACP’s Taylor.
Redistricting remains on the agenda for GOP lawmakers in Mississippi, who soon plan to draw new lines at least for state legislative seats. The state’s Republican Gov. Tate Reeves suggested Republicans will target the district of Rep. Bennie Thompson, the only African American and Democrat in the state’s four-member US House delegation, in a future round of map-drawing.
“I’ve been in the barbershop and people who are not typically the most politically engaged have been asking me what’s happening with redistricting,” Taylor said. “They may not necessarily use all the jargon and know the technical language, but it’s clear that they have an understanding that Louisiana v. Callais was an attack on voting rights.”
This year, the group ran 11voter registration sites, its first major voter registration drive since 2012, he told CNN. The push added more than 17,000 people to the rolls.
Mississippi optimism
Colom faces steep odds. Another Democrat, former congressman Mike Espy, drew $12 million and the national spotlight in his bid to defeat Hyde-Smith just six years ago, only to lose by 10 points.
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But Colom and his allies see signs of hope for his candidacy.
Three years ago, Democrat Brandon Presley came within about three percentage points of defeating Reeves in the gubernatorial race. And in this year’s primary elections in March, Democratic voting surged – jumping by 75% over 2018, the last time a Mississippi Senate race did not overlap with a presidential election. Republican participation over the same period, meanwhile, held steady.
Republicans say Democrats are delusional if they believe Mississippians will toss out Hyde-Smith, who sits on the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, in favor of Colom.
“Mississippians know her record: billions brought home for infrastructure and rural health care; conservative judges confirmed and liberal ones blocked; tax relief for working families and small businesses; a secure border; and votes that keep men out of girls’ sports and locker rooms,” Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, said in a statement.
Austin Barbour, a veteran Republican operative in Mississippi, said the parade of prominent Democrats trekking to the state on Colom’s behalf could end up helping the incumbent.
“They have woken up the Republican base, who was pretty darn sleepy before this,” Barbour told CNN. “They’re like, ‘Ok, we’re not going let our party lose to the far left of the Democrat Party.’”
‘Fertile ground’
Colom says one of his big tasks is building the belief among his likely supporters that a Democrat can win.
To do that, he’s campaigned relentlessly, conducting 60 town halls across the state and traveling with his attention-getting “Mississippi Matters” food truck.
The campaign offers “pick-your-protein” tacos from the truck, a jab at a Hyde-Smith comment earlier in the cycle that there are “so many proteins to choose from” when asked about rising beef prices.
Last week, Colom’s campaign took the dig a step further, releasing a satirical video mocking Hyde-Smith’s statement that racked up 2 million views on X alone.“Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind,” one woman drawls in the video before taking a bite of fried catfish.
Colom’s energy and drive was on display over the weekend as he raced around Jackson and campaigned at Jackson State University’s homecoming with yet another of the out-of-state Democrats who have swooped in to lend support, Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
Crockett, a Dallas firebrand who lost her own Senate bid earlier this year, called Mississippi “fertile ground” for Democratic gains, in an interview with CNN.
“Demographically, Mississippi absolutely should be a blue state,” she said.
On Saturday, Colom started the day with a Zoom call with members of a machinist union before stopping in at Brent’s Drugs, a diner that’s a popular gathering spot in Mississippi’s capital city.
There, he wrote handwritten messages on postcards that his supporters, including Jackson-based businesswoman Toni Cooley, then addressed and prepared to mail to their family and friends.
Cooley pointed to the Democrat’s positions on healthcare and the need to bolster Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans, as one reason she backs him.
“I believe healthcare is a right,” said Cooley, 66, who expressed concern about the closures of rural hospitals and nursing shortages.
From Brent’s, Colom was off to Jackson State’s homecoming extravaganza.
Although he trails Hyde-Smith in available cash in the bank, the nearly $4 million Colom reported raising through the end of September, has allowed him to go on the airwaves. He told CNN he is one of only four Democrats in 15 years who’s raised enough money to run statewide TV ads in the state.
On Saturday, as he walked among the thousands of students and Jackson State alums partying and feasting on barbecue and fried chicken, there were signs his campaign was breaking through.
People recognized him, stopped for selfies and occasionally gave a shoutout to the “next senator.”
Crockett – with campaign stickers for Colom and Thompson affixed to her t-shirt – posed for pictures, did radio interviews and live streamed from outside the campaign’s food truck.
Colom’s wife Nadia, a graduate of Jackson State who danced for the HBCU’s Prancing J-Settes team, joined other alums on the field to perform Saturday.
During the football game, Colom worked the crowds inside the massive, horseshoe-shaped stadium and then watched the halftime show with his daughters, nine-year-old Luci and eight-year-old Madi, before slipping away to his Airbnb for a quick nap.
By 10 p.m., he was back on the trail, this time for the homecoming after-party, following Jackson State’s win over Florida A&M.
His Saturday ended at 2 a.m. Sunday.
“I’m giving it everything I got,” Colom said. “I’m going to leave everything on the field.”
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CNN’s Sarah Ferris and Edward Wu contributed to this report.