WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats’ top campaign spending group is getting in on the action The U.S. Senate race in Mississippi for the first time this year, an aggressive move in a deep red state that signals a party on the offensive as Republicans seek to protect a slim majority.
The Senate majority PAC, aligned with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, will spend $1.2 million on a new TV ad to boost Scott Colomdistrict attorney, in his campaign against Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith. The announcement, first disclosed to The Associated Press, is expected to begin Wednesday and continue through Election Day.
“Senate Majority PAC has been watching this race closely, and it’s clear that Colom is running a competitive race that has Hyde-Smith on its heels,” the group’s spokeswoman, Lauren French, said in a statement.
With just two weeks remaining in the race, it is unclear what impact the publicity will have in a match held since Colom’s victory. a primary in March. Still, it’s a substantial investment in a race that has only generated about $8 million in total spending, with Colom spending between $4.6 million and $3.2 million on Hyde-Smith, according to AdImpact.
Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, pointed out that the spending was coming late in the race.
“Team Cindy is confident that voters will reject this radical agenda at the ballot box on November 3,” he said.
Hyde-Smith, first named then elected in 2018is running for reelection in a state that Republicans have long dominated. In the 2024 presidential race, Republican Donald Trump won Mississippi by nearly 23 percentage points over Democrat Kamala Harris, and no Democrat has won a Senate race in the state since 1982.
However, some Democrats believe that Hyde-Smith is vulnerable and that she underperformed Trump by 6 percentage points. in 2020the year he lost his bid for re-election to the White House to Democrat Joe Biden.
The TV ad touts Colom’s time as district attorney, while calling Hyde-Smith an “inactive” senator.
“A decade in office, Hyde-Smith didn’t pass a single piece of legislation, but she voted to kick people off Medicaid,” a narrator says in the ad, which will air on television stations across the state alongside a digital campaign.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Colom raised Democrats’ hopes in a year when electoral winds are behind them. Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock was the latest high-profile Democrat to campaign with Colom last week, and Harris, who was Biden’s vice president, is expected to rally behind Colom on Thursday.
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate and are expected to face a friendlier map this year with fewer seats to defend. But high costs and gas prices amid an unpopular war in Iran under a Republican president have Democrats optimistic, with the Senate majority PAC spending its final weeks investing in conservative territory. Expenditures have already been announced Kansaswhere megachurch pastor and Democratic candidate Adam Hamilton attempts to unseat Republican Senator Roger Marshall.
Colom would be his state’s first black senator since Reconstruction, the 12-year period after the American Civil War during which the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted.
Some Democrats have criticized national groups for not spending more on Southern states like Mississippi.
“I’m concerned, to be very honest, that the Democrats are missing a real opportunity to make a serious and lasting investment in the South,” Warnock said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
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