Former Vice President Kamala Harris is campaigning in Mississippi on Thursday for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom, as Republicans face an unexpectedly competitive contest in a state President Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024. Harris is scheduled to rally with Colom in Columbus on Thursday evening, following a rural-healthcare roundtable in Clarksdale.
Her visit comes just four days before Trump is due to travel to Mississippi to campaign for incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith at a rally in Corinth, underscoring the unusual national attention being devoted to a Senate race in one of the country’s most reliably Republican states. Hyde-Smith campaign manager Jake Monssen told Newsweek on Thursday that Trump had offered to help the senator “rally voters and support her get-out-the-vote efforts.” He rejected suggestions that the visit reflected vulnerability. Newsweek reached out on Thursday to the Colom campaign for comment.
Mississippi would ordinarily be an unlikely Senate battleground. Trump carried the state with 60.9 percent of the vote in 2024, compared with 38 percent for Harris, and Republicans have the seat for decades. Axios reported Wednesday that the Senate Leadership Fund, which is aligned with Republican Senate leadership, had reviewed Mississippi two weeks earlier and concluded that spending was not necessary but is now reassessing the contest and may spend to protect Hyde-Smith.
The Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC announced Tuesday that it was spending an initial $1.2 million on television statewide through Election Day, November 3, along with a digital campaign. Senate Majority PAC spokesperson Lauren French told Newsweek on Thursday that the $1.2 million campaign would run statewide through Election Day and that the group would “keep watching this race closely for further investments.” The investment marked a change in strategy after Democrats previously said their resources were stretched too thin across an expanding Senate map to spend in Mississippi, Politico reported Tuesday. Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Ruben Gallego of Arizona had pushed for more investment in the contest, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York had pitched donors on Mississippi and hosted a fundraiser for Colom earlier this year.
French said that Trump’s planned visit was evidence of how competitive Democrats believe the race has become. Colom campaign manager Gerard Henderson pointed to the investment as evidence of the campaign’s momentum. The survey of 1,018 likely voters was sponsored by the Democratic-aligned Way to Lead PAC, Democracy Alliance and Democracy Strategy Partners.
Prediction market Kalshi, meanwhile, gave Hyde-Smith a 90.3 percent chance of winning as of Thursday afternoon, compared with 9.7 percent for Colom. The late spending and visits by national political figures provide separate evidence that both parties are paying closer attention to the contest but do not show that Hyde-Smith is likely to lose. Harris is the latest in a series of nationally known Democrats to get behind Colom.
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