“Democrats have been way too timid and modest in their expectations in the past. There’s a real chance for something big happening with this election, and I’m kind of old. So why not see if you can if there’s anything you can do to help?”
That’s a quote from Steve Pajcic, who was a politician himself decades ago and appears to have made a bundle of money over the years and has become a fairly prodigious philanthropist. There’s a Times write-up of him today — that’s where the quote comes from — and it’s about his and his children’s decision to drop about $7 million late dollars in the longshot quartet of southeastern Senate contests in Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi and the no-longer-so-long-shot race in Kansas.
I want to zoom in on Mississippi. This is definitely a far, far reach for Democrats even in a flood tide political year. Democrat Scott Colom is challenging Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. As we’ve discussed, a lot of these front-line red state contests this year involve the interplay of two interrelated factors: very Republican electorates and very bad Republican candidates. The two factors run together. In most of these states you have pretty bad candidates because you don’t need terribly good ones. But this political cycle is putting that safety in question. Hyde-Smith is an example of that. She’s a bit like GOP Sen. Ashley Moody in Florida who was Florida Attorney General, an elected position but not a terribly hard race to win in recent years. She’s been involved in various DeSantis-adjacent scandals before being appointed by DeSantis to serve out the rest of now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s term. Hyde-Smith was Ag Commissioner in Mississippi before being appointed to serve out Thad Cochran’s term in 2018. She beat former congressman Mike Espy in 2018 with 54% of the vote after eliminating far-right perennial candidate Chris McDaniel. She beat Espy again for a full term in 2020, again with 54% of the vote. Hyde-Smith’s final vote was a fraction of a percentage point better in 2020 than 2018. But it’s notable, and not in a good way for Democrats, that she got the same result in the wave year of 2018 as the non-wavy presidential year of 2020.
Mississippi is a unique state. Almost 38% of residents are Black, and there’s a substantial base of Democratic voters. That’s the highest of any state in the union. But as is usually the case in the Deep South, racial polarization rises in proportion to the percentage of Black voters. So Democrats can get into the mid-40s in a statewide election. But getting to 50% is very, very difficult. Getting to 50+1 for Democrats, overcoming that intensity of racial polarization with the scant but non-trivial number of white Democrats in the state, has a bit of a Zeno’s Paradox feel to it.
Hyde-Smith is not a good candidate, just in pretty objective terms. And like Roger Marshall and Pete Ricketts she wasn’t expecting to be in any kind of real campaign. Colom is currently running a great and pretty hilarious ad which features a clip in which Hyde-Smith gets asked about the skyrocketing cost of beef and lamely answers “you know you have so many proteins to choose from.” This is followed by “voters” dumping on Hyde-Smith that they don’t want to “pick another protein”; they’d rather just pick a new senator. It’s a super good and entertaining ad. You can watch it here.
As far as I can tell every poll released to date was tied to Colom’s campaign or supporting his campaign. But a new poll just came out showing Colom four points back, 52% to 48%. (The pollster, Wedgepolls, seems relatively unknown but at least meets the criteria for inclusion of aggregators like the Times.) I don’t have any more insight than you about whether Colom has any kind of actual shot. If there’s a shot, it would turn on a mix of deep disenchantment with Donald Trump, a mix of a few Republicans voting for Colom mixed with a small but significant number not voting at all. Added to that is the fact that Mississippi is ground zero — or one of several — for the impact of the Supreme Court’s declared (Louisiana v. Callais) open season for racial gerrymandering and the elimination of Black majority districts across the South. (Mississippi was unable to use a new map this year but says it will in a future election.) So in addition to Democrats being super energized as they appear to be around the country right now, Black voters may have an extra level of motivation and turnout potential even on top of that reacting to the national assault on Black voting power, especially in the Deep South. If you assume that 52% to 48% margin in this first independent poll is accurate, it’s conceivable that that’s a margin that could be overcome by strong differential turnout.
Looking at the history and the numbers it’s hard to conclude that there’s much real chance of overcoming these inflexible realities of Mississippi politics. But if there’s a year to watch for it, this would be it.
