Key U.S. Senate Democrat says Mississippi race is on national party's radar

“Mississippi is the new Georgia.”

That’s how U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a Delaware Democrat and vice chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, characterized the state’s political trajectory during an appearance on MSNOW Monday night.

Rochester added that she is personally paying close attention to the state’s Senate race, suggesting national Democrats increasingly see Mississippi as an opportunity rather than safe Republican territory unworthy of investment.

Currently, incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican, faces tandem challenges from Democrat Scott Colom, a prosecutor from North Mississippi, and Ty Pinkins, an independent.

Rochester’s comparison is notable: Georgia spent decades as a reliably red state before demographic shifts, the building of progressive infrastructure—notably including the 2018 gubernatorial campaign of Mississippi native Stacey Abrams—sustained organizing and national investment made it into a perennial battleground.

In 2020, the state sent two Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, to the U.S. Senate and delivered its electoral votes to Joe Biden. Georgia subsequently became the epicenter of President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful effort to overturn that election, and this year is home to one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races as Ossoff seeks reelection.

Mississippi Democrats point to recent polling as evidence that Mississippi may be following that path.

An April survey by progressive polling firm Impact Research found Republican Hyde-Smith with 42 percent support, Colom at 39 percent and Pinkins at 6 percent, with 13 percent of voters undecided. The poll, conducted April 8-12, carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

The survey also found just 33 percent of likely voters said they would definitely or probably vote to reelect Hyde-Smith, while 53 percent said they preferred someone else—an unusually weak reelection number for an incumbent in a state Republicans have comfortably carried for decades.

Those findings help explain why Rochester and national Democrats are increasingly talking about Mississippi in the same breath as the widely watched Georgia. The DSCC posted a graphic earlier this week highlighting Colom as a Democrat who could help the party retake control of the Senate this fall. The Mississippi Republican Party quickly seized on it as a fundraising opportunity.

It remains to been seen whether national Democratic dollars will flow into the state as a result. But so far, Mississippi Democrats are raising eyebrows with better-than-expected fundraising.

According to the latest federal campaign finance reports Democratic money is starting to show up in the state’s congressional races. District 1 U.S. House candidate Cliff Johnson cleared $500,000—an enormous jump from the recent baseline, and U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom has raised a record $1.6 million.

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Image: U.S. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Delaware (via official Facebook page)