Kamala Harris heads to Mississippi Thursday as national Democrats back Colom late

Senate Democrats are spending $1.2 million on ads backing Scott Colom in Mississippi, a first-time investment in the deep-red state’s Senate race.

National Democrats have decided Mississippi is worth the money, which is not a sentence the party has produced in some time.

The Associated Press reported that the Senate Majority PAC, aligned with Chuck Schumer, will spend $1.2 million on a television ad supporting Scott Colom, a district attorney challenging Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. The spot begins Wednesday and runs through Election Day on television stations statewide alongside a digital campaign, marking the group’s first entry into the race this cycle.

Spokesperson Lauren French said the committee has been monitoring the contest and concluded Colom “is running a competitive race that has put Hyde-Smith on her heels.”

The ad leans on Colom’s prosecutorial record while characterizing the incumbent as ineffective. “A decade in power, Hyde-Smith hasn’t passed one piece of legislation, but she did vote to kick people off Medicaid,” the narrator says.

The investment is substantial relative to the race. Roughly $8 million has been spent overall, with Colom already outpacing Hyde-Smith nearly $4.6 million to $3.2 million, per AdImpact figures cited by the outlet. Whether an ad arriving with two weeks remaining can move a matchup settled since March remains an open question.

Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, Jake Monssen, dismissed the timing, saying voters will reject what he called a radical agenda on Nov. 3.

The arithmetic facing Colom remains daunting. Trump carried Mississippi by nearly 23 points in 2024, and no Democrat has won a Senate seat there since 1982. But Hyde-Smith, first appointed and then elected in 2018, ran six points behind Trump in 2020, a gap Democrats have read as an opening.

Should Colom prevail, he would become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, the twelve-year stretch following the Civil War that produced the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

Support has arrived from several directions. Sen. Raphael Warnock campaigned with Colom last week, and Kamala Harris is scheduled to rally with him Thursday. Campaign manager Gerard Henderson credited volunteers and small donors with keeping the race close, saying the campaign has both resources and momentum.

The broader climate explains the party’s confidence. Republicans hold a 53-47 Senate majority and expected an easier map this cycle, but rising costs and an unpopular war in Iran have shifted expectations. The PAC has also announced spending in Kansas, where Adam Hamilton is challenging Sen. Roger Marshall.

Warnock, meanwhile, has pressed his own party publicly. Speaking on “Meet the Press,” he expressed a worry that, “Democrats are missing a real opportunity to invest in a serious and sustained way in the South.”