5 min read
Major Takeaways
President Donald Trump will hold a Monday night rally in Corinth for Senator Cindy Hyde Smith, one week before Election Day.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns in Columbus on Thursday with Scott Colom, the Democrat trying to take her seat.
Forecasters moved the race closer this week, the polling average shows a single digit fight, and Black voters hold the balance in a state where they make up 37 percent of the eligible electorate.
Mississippi was supposed to be settled business this fall.
The Senate race here rarely draws a second look from Washington.
That changed this week.
A President Comes Back to Mississippi
President Donald Trump will travel to Mississippi on Monday night, October 26, to campaign for Senator Cindy Hyde Smith.
The rally is planned for the Crossroads Arena in Corinth, in the northeast corner of the state.
People familiar with the planning described the visit, and it arrives exactly one week before the November 3 election.
The Hyde Smith campaign has not formally confirmed the trip.
Asked about it at an event in Vicksburg on Wednesday, the senator said Trump is “trying to be helpful.”
“We feel very good about this,” she said. “It’s going to be 13 days, and we’re going to run through the tape so strong.”
The Corinth stop anchors a closing push for the whole Republican field in Mississippi, with the party’s House candidates also on the ballot this fall.
Trump endorsed Hyde Smith in March 2025 and called her “100% MAGA.”
He has carried Mississippi all three times he has appeared on its ballot, most recently by about 23 points in 2024.
Both Campaigns Are Calling In Their Biggest Names
Four days before Trump lands in Corinth, former Vice President Kamala Harris will be in Columbus on Thursday, October 22, campaigning with Scott Colom.
Columbus is home turf for Colom, who serves as district attorney for the 16th Judicial District.
Harris and the NAACP are also teaming up to mobilize Black voters in the closing stretch of this election.
Senator Raphael Warnock has already rallied with Colom in Jackson.
Former President Barack Obama recorded an endorsement message for him earlier this month.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is expected on the Gulf Coast next week.
The money followed the names.
Senate Majority PAC, the top Senate Democratic spending group, placed a $1.2 million television buy for Colom that started Wednesday and runs through Election Day.
It is the group’s first investment in Mississippi this year.
Colom answered the Trump news with a challenge of his own.
He said the senator is scared, “and that’s why she’s sending Donald Trump down here.”
“She’s scared to answer why she voted to cut health care, why she betrayed our farmers, and why she blocked the release of the Epstein files,” Colom said.
He then challenged the president himself to a debate.
Hyde Smith brushed off the parade of national Democrats.
“It tells me that Mississippi is pretty red,” she said, adding that she is tuning out the forecasters calling the race closer.
The Race Tightened on Paper
The Cook Political Report moved the race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican on Tuesday.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball made the same move a week earlier, so two major forecasters have shifted the seat in eight days.
The average of the last three public polls puts Hyde Smith at 46.0 percent and Colom at 41.7 percent.
The newest survey, finished October 14, had the race at 52 to 48.
Colom has outspent the incumbent so far, about $4.6 million to $3.2 million.
She still holds the cash advantage for the final stretch, with about $2.4 million on hand to his roughly $992,000.
Her campaign manager, Jake Monssen, said the team is confident voters will reject the Democratic agenda on November 3.
No Democrat has won a Senate race in Mississippi since 1982.
Independent candidate Ty Pinkins, a lawyer, is also on the November ballot.
What It Means for Black Mississippi Voters
Black Mississippians make up 37 percent of the eligible electorate in this state.
That is the foundation of Colom’s path, and the analysts who moved this race say he is counting on those voters to turn out in force.
They point to energy building after the Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act, a ruling that redrew the ground under Southern elections.
The stakes Colom talks about on the trail are concrete ones for Black families.
He argues that eight rural hospitals are at risk of closing and that hundreds of thousands of Mississippians live without health coverage.
Hyde Smith is running on her record and on the state’s conservative lean, and she says the outside attention changes nothing about her message.
If Colom wins, he would become the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Mississippi voters are already casting ballots, and federal officials are watching the state closely after suspicious letters sent to election offices drew a federal investigation.
The pattern is bigger than one state, with Black voters deciding a tied governor’s race in Georgia at the same time.
Thirteen days remain.
Both parties are spending and traveling like this race is real, because in Mississippi this fall, it is.
