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Three years ago, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith made sure Scott Colom would not become a federal judge. Now, he may take her Senate seat.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden nominated Colom, a district attorney in northeast Mississippi, to the federal bench in 2022, and Mississippi\u2019s other Republican senator, Roger Wicker, supported him. Hyde-Smith blocked the nomination because of what she called his \u201copposition to legislation to protect female athletes\u201d and because of past support from a PAC funded by George Soros. And so in 2025, Colom announced he would run against her.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been four years since that fated blocked nomination, and on Tuesday night, Colom led her by 1,138 votes in a state that hasn\u2019t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. While the race has yet to be called, it seems like the issue that got him in the lead was simply the price of beef.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many options\u201d<\/p>\n
In February, a TV reporter asked Hyde-Smith\u2014herself a cattle rancher who was the former Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce and also married a fifth-generation cattle rancher\u2014what Republicans were doing about rising beef prices. \u201cYou know, you have so many proteins to choose from,\u201d she responded.<\/p>\n
The question wasn\u2019t without a good reason: beef has gotten more expensive. The average pound of ground beef cost $6.79 in September, up from $5.55 when Trump returned to office in January 2025. <\/p>\n
And so in a widely-viewed political ad entitled \u201cPick another protein,\u201d Colom\u2019s campaign let her do the talking and used her February interview, juxtaposing that with people grilling and buying beef at the supermarket. \u201cPick another protein? She done lost her damn mind!\u201d one woman says in a diner. A man grilling burgers says he\u2019d \u201crather pick another senator instead.\u201d The spot ends with Colom at his own kitchen table, laughing as he delivers the same line.<\/p>\n
On Thursday morning, following newfound popularity into the ad following the election and as results showed him with a razor-thin margin, Colom wrote in a post on X that it was \u201cimportant people know the back story of this ad.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Open Society\u2019s Patrick Gaspard \u201cgave me the idea to take her inexcusable gaffe and do something edgy with it that could get attention,\u201d Colom wrote. Then, \u201cmy content creator Ryan Sayles \u201cdirected and edited it. He should be considered the breakout-star of this cycle. He\u2019s going to be a giant in the media consultant game. He did GAME CHANGING work with SO little.\u201d<\/p>\n
As of Thursday evening, seven counties Hyde-Smith carried in 2020 now favor Colom, who out-raised Hyde-Smith $5 million to a little more than $3 million after making the cost of living crisis the center of his campaign. <\/p>\n
No one talks about affordability<\/p>\n
Why a relative no-name challenger was able to out-raise an incumbent likely has to do with how Colom focused on wages, costs, hospitals and jobs\u2014and how inflation was eating away at people\u2019s stagnant earnings. <\/p>\n
There\u2019s a name for this: affordability. It\u2019s a word President Donald Trump has spent the past year telling Americans isn\u2019t real. \u201cThe word \u2018affordability\u2019 is a con job by the Democrats,\u201d he said at a Cabinet meeting last December. In June, at the G7 summit, he called it a \u201cfake word made up by the Democrats,\u201d as consumer prices rose at their fastest pace in three years. At a rally in July, he again repeated the mantra that it was something Democrats \u201cmade up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some Republicans had warned about dismissing the \u201caffordability\u201d issue. Pollster Frank Luntz said in December that Trump risked appearing out of touch if he kept calling affordability a \u201choax\u201d when Americans felt they were paying more.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just Trump\u2014it came up again just days before the midterms when a Texas Christian University student asked Vice President JD Vance at a town hall how young people could afford to start families when the average home costs more than $415,000. Instead of answering immediately, Vance joked that he was asked only one question about Ohio Sen. Jon Husted\u2019s backside, before conceding that Republicans hadn\u2019t done enough on affordability for young people.<\/p>\n
So come Tuesday, it was no shock that voters named the cost of living and government corruption as their top two issues in AP exit polls, after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress. <\/p>\n
A historic win<\/p>\n
If Colom wins, he\u2019d be the first Democrat Mississippi has sent to the Senate since John Stennis won his last term in 1982. Stennis, who served from 1947 to 1989, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That same summer, President Lyndon Johnson, also a Democrat, signed the law knowing it could cost his party the South. \u201cWell, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime\u2014and mine,\u201d Johnson told his special assistant, Bill Moyers, that night, according to Moyers\u2019s account to the Guardian. Moyers died in 2025.<\/p>\n
Among the counties now favoring Colom is Forrest County, home to Hattiesburg and named for Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Ku Klux Klan\u2019s first grand wizard. Colom would also be Mississippi\u2019s first Black senator since Blanche K. Bruce, who was born into slavery in 1841 and served from 1875 to 1881.<\/p>\n
Because Mississippi is the only state that doesn\u2019t allow recounts to be triggered automatically or requested by a candidate (so any challenge would go to court), the Democratic party is sending reenforcement to help with the remaining count. <\/p>\n
#HydeSmith #told #voters #pick #protein #Coloms #answered #Pick #senator<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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