as the national political environment improves for their party<\/a>. Democrats are hoping the momentum they have shown in elections around the country this year can translate into competitive races outside the top tier and deliver an unexpected win or two.<\/p>\nSenator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader who plays a central role in mapping his party\u2019s Senate campaign strategy, has long been intrigued by the prospect of competing in Mississippi. He met with Mr. Colom multiple times in recent years in an effort to recruit him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a good year to expand the map, and Mississippi is a long shot,\u201d Mr. Schumer said. \u201cStill, if it\u2019s ever going to be doable, this is the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
He and other Democrats point to a close contest for governor in Mississippi three years ago that suggested Democrats could still compete there given the right conditions. And they see Democratic success in Georgia, another Southern state with a significant Black population that has elected two Democratic senators, as a template for Mississippi. Plus, they say, President Trump is not on the ballot to draw out his base and Ms. Hyde-Smith, a low-profile lawmaker and former state agriculture commissioner, is vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Republican strategists in Washington and Mississippi dismiss Democratic designs on the state as a pipe dream, saying Ms. Hyde-Smith is well positioned to win a second full term after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2018. They say Mr. Colom is waging a campaign of retribution because she cost him the judgeship.<\/p>\n
\u201cColom should save himself the embarrassment of being denied a job twice by Hyde-Smith,\u201d said Bernadette Breslin, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.<\/p>\n
The Hyde-Smith campaign is hitting Mr. Colom with the same criticism the senator raised when she killed his nomination: he was backed in his races by contributions from the far left and supported transgender rights. The transgender issue played well nationally for Republicans in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cColom\u2019s extremist views have no place in Mississippi, which is exactly why Senator Hyde-Smith blocked him from the federal bench and will defeat him in November,\u201d Jake Monssen, who is managing the Hyde-Smith campaign, said in a statement that called the prosecutor the \u201ctransgender defender.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Colom, who in 2021 signed a letter with other prosecutors opposing the criminalization of transgender care, said her claim that he would not protect female athletes was wrong and noted that he coaches his two soccer-playing daughters.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not for biological boys playing girl\u2019s sports,\u201d Mr. Colom said.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said he didn\u2019t envision his candidacy as payback for the senator torpedoing his nomination and that he had forgiven her after witnessing some of the forgiveness expressed by victims of serious crimes he had prosecuted.<\/p>\n
But he said Ms. Hyde-Smith\u2019s opposition had led him to play closer attention to her record and that he did not like what he saw, including her votes against an infrastructure bill and for the major Republican policy law enacted last year that cut funding for safety net programs like Medicaid \u2014 a major source of health care in the state \u2014 to help pay for large tax cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are already in a situation where our rural hospitals are in terrible shape,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are already in a crisis, and she made it worse. We can\u2019t afford this type of leadership in D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite Ms. Hyde-Smith\u2019s objection, Mr. Colom\u2019s judicial nomination had significant support from other Mississippi Republicans, including the senior G.O.P. senator, Roger Wicker, as well as two former Republican governors, Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant. The Colom family has long ties to Republican leaders in the state.<\/p>\n
So far, the Democratic Senate campaign committee and the political action committee aligned with Mr. Schumer have not devoted resources to the race. But party strategists have seen signs that give them glimmers of hope, including a surge in primary turnout in the state in March that saw nearly as many people vote in the Senate Democratic contest as the Republican one \u2014 a notable difference from previous years. They also point to ongoing voter registration campaigns they believe could aid the Democrat.<\/p>\n
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York and the chair of the Democratic Senate campaign arm, called the possibility of Mr. Colom knocking off the senator who bounced him from the bench \u201cpoetic justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The clash is not the first time rejection for a federal judgeship has prompted an ex-nominee\u2019s interest in Washington. Jeff Sessions, the former Republican senator from Alabama and attorney general, had his nomination shot down by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986. A decade later, Mr. Sessions won election to the Senate, where he would eventually sit on that very panel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three years ago, Scott Colom, a state prosecutor in Mississippi, was on a bipartisan glide path to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[85643,86097,86098,651,416,44064,86096,86095,46937,16880,9,11,10,5285,24727,17085,855,1876],"class_list":["post-218357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-charles-e","tag-cindy","tag-colom","tag-democratic-party","tag-elections","tag-gillibrand","tag-hyde-smith","tag-kirsten-e","tag-midterm-elections-2026","tag-mississippi","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-republican-party","tag-schumer","tag-scott","tag-senate","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}