When U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said she would block Scott Colom from becoming a federal judge in April 2023, she cited as one reason that he had received district attorney’s race campaign funding from George Soros, the investor and philanthropist reviled by conservatives because he is a major liberal donor to Democratic political campaigns.
Hyde-Smith’s claim was untrue. Though Soros funding was used to promote Colom’s candidacy, neither he nor his campaign received any of the money, nor was there any coordination.
In a statement her office still posts online, Hyde-Smith explained her rationale for undermining Colom’s judicial nomination.
“I visited with the District Attorney recently, and I recognize that he is smart and well liked in his district,” Hyde-Smith said. “However, there are a number of concerns I have regarding his record.” Among them, she cited his position on legislation concerning female athletes, then this: “The significant support his campaign received from George Soros also weighs heavily against his nomination in my view. I simply cannot support his nomination to serve on the federal bench in Mississippi for a lifetime.”
Under Senate custom, a home-state senator’s withholding of support can stop a district court nomination without a vote. Colom was first nominated on Nov. 15, 2022, and renominated on Jan. 23, 2023. He never got a hearing, and the nomination was returned to President Joe Biden at the end of the 118th Congress.
The support Hyde-Smith referred to came from the 2015 race that made Colom district attorney for Mississippi’s Sixteenth Circuit Court District. A committee called Mississippi Safety and Justice registered that year, and the report it filed with the Secretary of State’s Elections Division on Jan. 8, 2016, covering Oct. 25-Dec. 31, 2015, lists $923,226.45 in disbursements for the year. The largest share of that, $716,125.72, went to the New York communications firm Berlin Rosen for work the committee itself described on the form as ‘Independent Expenditure - Support Scott Colom’ and ‘Independent Expenditure - Oppose Forrest Allgood,’ the incumbent district attorney. Every dollar the committee took in that year came from George Soros. The form reports $926,500 in contributions from him for 2015, the last of which was for $101,500 on Oct. 28, and lists his employer as Soros Fund Management and his occupation as chair.
Colom’s campaign did not receive any of the money. The committee registered as an independent expenditure group, which by law cannot coordinate with the candidate it supports. Nsombi Lambright signed the report as the committee’s contact person and swore before a notary that the spending was “not made in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of” any candidate or a candidate’s committee or agent.
Three years after Hyde-Smith’s erroneous statement, Colom is the Democratic nominee for her Senate seat. And this time he is, in fact, getting Soros money.
On Sept. 12, 2025, nine days after Colom registered his Senate committee, George Soros and his son Alexander each gave it $3,500 for the primary and $3,500 for the general, the maximum an individual may give for each election. Both listed the same New York address and gave their occupation as philanthropist. Stacey Abrams gave $1,000 on Sept. 30, 2025, routed through ActBlue and designated for the primary. The committee’s first report, covering Aug. 21-Sept. 30, 2025, lists $569,792.59 in contributions and a $25,000 loan from Colom to his own campaign, $594,792.59 in all. Through the committee’s most recent report, covering activity to June 30, 2026, it has listed no refund of either Soros contribution.
Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has kept using the 2015 money as a political cudgel even though its claim of a campaign contribution is erroneous. In a statement issued on March 10, 2026, after the primary, the NRSC’s regional press secretary Samantha Cantrell called Colom “handpicked by Chuck Schumer and George Soros to push their leftist agenda on Mississippi” and said he had “received $716,000 in support from a PAC bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros” in his first race for district attorney. That is the amount the committee reported paying Berlin Rosen.
Colom was nominated to the seat that opened when Judge Michael P. Mills took senior status on Nov. 1, 2021. It stayed empty for the rest of President Biden’s term. President Trump nominated James Donald Maxwell II to the judgeship on Sept. 2, 2025, the Senate confirmed him on Dec. 9, 2025, and Hyde-Smith’s office announced the confirmation. Colom is on the November ballot against her.
Image: Scott Colom, Cindy Hyde-Smith (via Creative Commons)
