Former President Barack Obama has rolled out a new ad for Democrat Scott Colom against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982.
The Hill reported that Obama released the advertisement this week in support of Colom, the Democratic candidate seeking to unseat the Republican incumbent.
Hyde-Smith is running for a second full term. Colom is a district attorney in Mississippi’s 16th District and a former Biden judicial nominee whose path to the federal bench was blocked.
The ad lands in one of the reddest Senate maps in the country. Decision Desk HQ, a partner of The Hill, gives Hyde-Smith a 93 percent chance of holding the seat. The same outfit puts Democrats at a 56 percent chance of reclaiming the Senate overall.
Mississippi last sent a Democrat to the upper chamber in 1982, according to 270ToWin. That history frames the long odds facing Colom and the party figures now stepping in behind him.
In the spot, Obama presents Colom as a rooted Mississippian and casts the race as a call for change.
Obama says in the ad:
"Mississippi, it’s time for a change. That’s why you need to send Scott Colom to the U.S. Senate."
He continues with personal biography:
"Scott is a devoted husband and dad, a seventh-generation Mississippian, guided by his Christian faith."
And he closes the case on Colom’s record and agenda:
"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."
The message is familiar Democratic midterm language, wages, costs, and hospitals, aimed at a state that has rejected that brand at the Senate level for more than four decades.
Obama’s return to active campaign mode also fits a wider pattern of his political brand staying in the news, from Trump’s recent Truth Social meme on Obama to other legacy fights that keep his name in circulation.
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, Hyde-Smith and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., blocked the nomination through the Senate’s blue-slip tradition. That custom gives home-state senators an effective veto over district-court picks from their state.
So the Democrat now asking Mississippi voters to fire Hyde-Smith is the same figure she and Wicker already stopped from reaching the federal bench. The race is personal as well as partisan.
That history sits alongside other Obama-era political flashpoints still drawing attention, including old rebukes tied to Obama ahead of a Detroit rally and fresh questions about how his network operates off the campaign trail.
The Hill’s account ties the ad push to voter frustration on kitchen-table issues and cites AAA figures for the state.
As of Monday afternoon, the average price of regular gas in Mississippi stood at $3.93 a gallon, up $1.27 from a year earlier. Diesel averaged $5.87 a gallon, up $2.62 over the same stretch.
Obama’s script puts “lower costs” at the center of Colom’s pitch. Republicans will note that national Democratic leadership spent years defending the policies voters now blame for higher prices at the pump and beyond.
Institutional turbulence around the Obama brand has not stayed quiet either, with coverage of union pressure inside the Obama Presidential Center adding to the sense that the former president’s orbit remains a live political target.
While Obama drops into Mississippi on Colom’s behalf, President Trump has been on a midterm blitz across red and purple states, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Ohio, to help Republicans keep control of Congress.
That contrast is blunt. One side is defending a Senate majority with a president working the states that decide control. The other is investing former-president star power in a seat Decision Desk HQ rates as a 93 percent hold for the Republican incumbent.
Colom still has to persuade Mississippi voters to break a streak that has held since 1982. Hyde-Smith remains the clear favorite on the numbers the outlet itself published.
Even adjacent Obama-family political signals keep drawing coverage, such as Michelle Obama’s recent criticism of Trump White House changes, while separate reporting has noted institutions quietly distancing from the Obama name in other settings.
Obama’s commercial gives Colom national oxygen and a polished biography reel. It does not change the structural facts of the race.
Mississippi has not elected a Democratic senator in more than forty years. The incumbent blocked Colom’s judicial nominations. The polling average cited in the coverage still hands Hyde-Smith an overwhelming probability of winning again.
Democrats can air all the change ads they want. Voters in the Magnolia State have spent a generation answering that pitch the same way at the Senate level.
National liberals may cheer the celebrity assist. Mississippi Republicans still hold the seat, the record, and the odds.