Former President Barack Obama has released a new campaign ad for Democrat Scott Colom in Mississippi, urging voters to oust Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a deep-red state.
Obama appears in the spot rolled out this week and makes a direct pitch for Colom, the district attorney in Mississippi’s 16th District who is challenging Hyde-Smith for her Senate seat, The Hill reported.
The former president casts Colom as a faith-driven local prosecutor ready to lift wages, cut costs, and protect hospitals. Hyde-Smith, a Republican seeking a second full term, remains the heavy favorite in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982.
Decision Desk HQ, a partner of The Hill, gives Hyde-Smith a 93 percent chance of holding the seat. The same model puts Democrats at a 56 percent chance of retaking the Senate overall. The gap between those two numbers captures the mountain Colom still has to climb.
In the ad, Obama opens with a call for turnover in Mississippi’s Senate representation.
Obama says:
"Mississippi, it’s time for a change. That’s why you need to send Scott Colom to the U.S. Senate,"
He then frames Colom in personal and religious terms familiar to Southern voters.
Obama continues:
"Scott is a devoted husband and dad, a seventh-generation Mississippian, guided by his Christian faith."
The close ties Colom’s record as a prosecutor to kitchen-table promises on pay, prices, and health care.
Obama adds:
"Scott made his community safer, prosecuting violent crimes as district attorney, fighting corruption in Columbus. Now he’s running for Senate to raise wages, lower costs, and save your healthcare and hospitals. Mississippi, your vote matters. Let’s get this done,"
Colom has not been quoted in the available reporting responding to the ad. Hyde-Smith likewise has not been quoted reacting to Obama’s entry.
Before this Senate bid, former President Biden nominated Colom twice to serve as a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Mississippi. Both times the nomination stalled.
Hyde-Smith and fellow Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker blocked the picks through the blue-slip tradition. That long-running Senate practice lets home-state senators halt judicial nominees from their own state. Congress.gov records from the 117th and 118th Congresses reflect the two nominations.
Democrats often treat blue slips as pure obstruction. Home-state senators treat them as a basic check on who gets life-tenured power in their courts. In Colom’s case, both of Mississippi’s Republican senators used the tool available to them.
The ad’s talk of lower costs lands against real price pressure at the pump. As of Monday afternoon, AAA put the average price of regular gasoline in Mississippi at $3.93 a gallon. That is $1.27 higher than a year earlier.
Diesel is steeper still. A gallon averaged $5.87, up $2.62 from a year ago. Those figures hit farmers, truckers, and working families who cannot shift the cost onto someone else.
Obama’s script blames the need for change on Washington and promises relief. It does not grapple with how national Democratic energy and spending choices shaped the broader price environment voters still feel.
Mississippi’s Senate history is blunt. Per 270ToWin, the state has not sent a Democrat to the chamber since 1982. That four-decade run is the backdrop for any Obama ad cut for a Democratic challenger here.
Hyde-Smith’s 93 percent retention odds from Decision Desk HQ match that history. Colom can win headlines with a former president on camera. He still has to move a Republican-leaning electorate that has rejected his party for the Senate for more than 40 years.
President Trump is traveling through red and purple states, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Ohio, to shore up Republican chances of holding Congress. The White House is treating the midterms as a fight worth working. Obama’s Mississippi buy is the other party’s counter-move in a place where the math has long favored the GOP.
Colom’s résumé is local: district attorney, corruption cases in Columbus, two failed bids for a Northern District judgeship. Obama’s ad tries to nationalize that résumé with White House-era credibility and a closing line that “your vote matters.”
Voters in Mississippi have heard national Democrats make that case before. They have answered by keeping both Senate seats in Republican hands. Hyde-Smith already cleared the blue-slip fight over Colom’s judicial nominations. She now faces him as a candidate rather than a would-be judge.
The ad is polished. The structural problem for Democrats is not production quality. It is a state that last elected one of theirs to the Senate when many of today’s voters were not yet born, paired with a sitting Republican whose reelection odds sit in the low 90s.
Celebrity endorsements make good television. In Mississippi, the Senate record since 1982 still speaks louder than any outside narrator.
