Mississippi’s Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith dismissed a new assessment showing a tightening race for her seat, calling it a desperate, 11th-hour attempt by the political establishment to prop up her Democratic challenger, Scott Colom.
“Team Cindy is confident that Mississippians will send Cindy Hyde-Smith back to the U.S. Senate on November 3rd,” Jake Monssen, the GOP incumbent’s campaign manager, told The Mississippi Independent in an emailed statement. “This is simply Washington insiders making a last-ditch effort to give life to Scott Colom’s failing campaign.”
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted its rating earlier last week of the Mississippi Senate race from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican,” a notable, if still modest, change in a state where Republicans have dominated statewide elections for years and where a Democrat last won a U.S. Senate seat was in 1982.
Mississippi was one of three Senate contests Cook analyzed this week. South Carolina shifted from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” putting it closer to tossup territory, while Minnesota moved in the opposite direction, from “likely Democrat” to “lean Democrat.”
Third-party candidate Ty Pinkins, who is running as an independent for Sen. Hyde-Smith’s seat, did not respond to questions about the latest report.
The shift comes amid signs of a changing national political environment that appears to favor Democrats as they seek to retain the House and win the Senate, while Republicans confront persistent voter concerns over the economy, the cost of living and the continuing war in Iran.
In response, the GOP has called on the White House for reinforcements.
President Donald Trump announced on Oct. 21 that he would travel to Corinth on Monday to campaign for Hyde-Smith, eight days before the election, marking a shift from her earlier stance on presidential assistance. He said she had previously told him, “I don’t need any rallies, sir.” The visit represents Trump’s fifth rally in the state since 2018, all but one of which have been for Hyde-Smith, whom he has described as “100 percent MAGA.”
For Colom, the Cook report change was long-sought evidence from an independent political forecaster that a race long considered safely Republican may be more competitive than it first appeared.
“Mississippi is in play because thousands of Mississippians volunteered and chipped in to make this race competitive,” Colom told The Mississippi Independent in an email. “We clearly have the momentum to win on November 3 and prove to the nation that Mississippi matters.”
Colom, who is running a centrist campaign, also accused Sen. Hyde-Smith of avoiding voters and misleading them about his record.
“And Cindy knows she’s about to lose, which is why she’s hiding from voters and blanketing the airwaves with lies about me,” he said, referring to a series of claims made on a GOP-controlled attack website bearing his name. “Folks are tired of paying more for everything while Cindy Hyde-Smith looks out for her donors, plain and simple.”
The spoof “ColomForSenate.com” website portrays Colom as a liberal tied to George Soros and national Democrats, attacks his record as a prosecutor and his support for gender-affirming care, revisits his blocked nomination to the federal bench and, more recently, prominently displays an apparent mug shot from his arrest as an 18-year-old.
Colom’s campaign has responded with an attack site of its own, “Where Is Cindy,” seeking to portray Hyde-Smith as inaccessible to voters and unwilling to publicly defend her record. The website alleges she has not hosted any town halls in the last six years and targets her record on tax breaks for the rich, the cost of living and her support for President Trump’s tariffs, which have hit Mississippi farmers hard.
The increasingly combative rhetoric is matched by a spending surge not ordinarily seen in Mississippi.
Last week, Democrats made their first significant advertising investment in the contest, with the Senate Majority PAC announcing a $1.2 million campaign attacking Hyde-Smith over healthcare and her ties to special interests. In addition to former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning for him last week, Colom received an endorsement from former President Barack Obama.
Beneath the increasingly bitter campaign is a more consequential question about how close the race really is.
Of the five polls conducted between April and August, all of which are affiliated with the Colom campaign or Democrat sponsors, Hyde-Smith leads by three to six percentage points. However, in every case, a double-digit percentage of voters said they still did not know who they would vote for on Nov. 3. In two of the polls, third-party candidate Pinkins was favored by 6 and 7 percent of voters.
Trump carried Mississippi by more than 20 percentage points in 2024.
One recent survey promoted by Colom’s campaign became a controversy in its own right.
A polling group using the name Wedgewood Polls showed Hyde-Smith leading Colom 52 percent to 48 percent in an Oct. 12-14 survey. Because its stated margin of error was 4.3 points, Colom’s campaign subsequently described the race as effectively tied.
But under scrutiny, Wedgewood later admitted that the Mississippi numbers, along with nearly all its other polling, were fabricated. The group said it created an “experimental project” to show how a fully fabricated polling organization could gain credibility and influence political coverage.
“Our fabricated numbers were given instant credibility across national media platforms,” the group said in a press release.
While Hyde-Smith, the former Mississippi commissioner of agriculture, remains an overwhelming favorite for reelection, the new Cook report rating places Mississippi in a category of races considered competitive enough to warrant greater attention from both parties in the final days of the campaign.
Jessica Taylor, Cook’s Senate and governors editor, said in a press release that the changes in Mississippi, South Carolina and Minnesota reflected, in part, the caliber of the candidates themselves.
“In Senate races, the quality of individual candidates can be magnified in ways that defy national trends, especially in midterm years,” Taylor said. “That’s the impetus behind three moves we are making today.”
Image: U.S. Capitol building (Mississippi Independent photo illustration)
