Who's running for U.S. Senate in Mississippi? Meet the candidates
At the top of the ballot, and likely top of mind for most Mississippians, is perhaps the most competitive U.S. Senate race that Mississippi has seen in decades.
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a conservative Trump loyalist , is vying to keep her seat and kick off her second full term. Her challengers are Democrat Scott Colom , a district attorney from Columbus, and Independent Ty Pinkins , a lawyer and veteran from the Mississippi Delta.
Both of the major party candidates have federal buy-in. Hyde-Smith has the much-desired Trump seal of approval and will campaign alongside him in Corinth about a week before Election Day; Colom has courted a revolving door of national politicians, including a hometown visit from former Vice President Kamala Harris, alongside largely unprecedented out-of-state investment for a Mississippi Democrat.
Who is Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith?
Incumbent Hyde-Smith has held the office since April 2018, securing election later that year and again in 2020. She has operated in lockstep with Trump and Republican Party leaders while in Congress.
She holds a handful of key committee assignments, including a spot on the appropriations committee, which decides how federal dollars are spent, and the agriculture committee. Hyde-Smith, whose family owns a cattle farm in Brookhaven, has leveraged her position on the committee to advocate for tax incentives for farmers and strengthening domestic production.
Hyde-Smith runs a true conservative campaign; she considers the Mississippi-led overturning of Roe v. Wade the state's greatest triumph, she has campaigned on closing the southern border and she was one of the loudest supporters of the tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Her first election came in November 2018, just over six months after she was appointed. Hyde-Smith, bolstered by Trump ally and then-Gov. Phil Bryant, secured Trump's endorsement and a campaign drop-in from him the night before Election Day.
She beat her opponent Mike Espy by around seven percentage points in a runoff after a narrow general special election. She won the 2020 race against him comfortably.
Hyde-Smith has been a politician for more than 25 years. She got her start in the Mississippi Senate in 2000. She was elected as a Democrat and racked up a conservative voting record before switching parties in 2010. She won the agriculture commissioner race in 2011 and served for around six years, becoming the first woman to hold the title in the state's history.
Who is District Attorney Scott Colom?
Colom's 2026 Senate campaign is his first bid for federal office. He rotates through a Rolodex of campaign slogans at his events, but chief among them is his, "lower costs, higher wages, save our health care, save our hospitals," chant.
His main priorities include raising the federal minimum wage, which stagnated at $7.25 an hour in 2009, and cutting costs for average Americans, which he has said should include ending the ongoing war with Iran and building affordable housing.
He has also focused in on health care, particularly surrounding rural hospitals. Mississippi's health outcomes in cancer, heart disease and chronic conditions are some of the worst in the nation, and Colom has campaigned on bringing funding to keep health care facilities open and update their technology.
An Oct. 22 poll from FiftyPlusOne has Colom trailing Hyde-Smith by about 3 percentage points, which is within the margin of error.
Colom is the district attorney for the 16th Circuit, which contains his native Columbus; he has served in the role since he ousted the longtime Democratic incumbent in 2015. He was reelected twice after that and has a 94% conviction rate, according to his campaign website.
He has held a number of legal jobs. Before taking office as a district attorney, he was the part-time city prosecutor for Columbus and held judge positions in Aberdeen and Lowndes County. Colom also worked a stint in private practice.
It was that legal career that caught the eye of Rep. Bennie Thompson, who recommended Colom to then-President Joe Biden for a federal judgeship in 2021. Biden took him up on that recommendation a year later.
His nomination received bipartisan support from Thompson, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and two former Mississippi governors. Hyde-Smith was the holdout; she refused to endorse him because of his position on gender-affirming health care, she said at the time, and the nomination stalled.
Who is Independent Senate candidate Ty Pinkins?
Democrat-turned-Independent Pinkins is an attorney and Army veteran who has centered his campaign on the Mississippi Delta that raised him.
Some of his platform points include a high school apprenticeship program, which would connect teens with summer jobs in local businesses to learn career skills, and sweeping tax cuts for the middle class. He also supports the Medicare for All bill that has floundered in Congress for years.
The veteran has stressed his eagerness for bipartisanship work and the fact that, unlike Colom and Hyde-Smith, he says, he is not beholden to a national party.
"Too often, when one party puts forward a real fix, the other side blocks it—not because it's wrong, but because they don't want to give the other team a win," he wrote on his website. "That's exactly why I'm running as an Independent."
Pinkins pulled in around 6% of the vote in an Oct. 22 poll , a significant amount when coupled with the fact that Democrat Colom sits around 3% behind Hyde-Smith. He ran for Senate two years ago against Sen. Roger Wicker and for Mississippi Secretary of State the year before that, appearing on both ballots as a Democrat.
Pinkins does free legal work for underserved communities across Mississippi. The first in his family to graduate high school, according to his website, he attended Tougaloo College before joining the U.S. Army.
He left the military after 21 years of service and earned both a juris doctor and master of laws degree from Georgetown University. He moved back to the Magnolia State shortly afterward.
Bea Anhuci is the state government reporter for the Clarion Ledger. She has covered Mississippi politics and elections since the start of 2026. Email her at banhuci@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: Who's running for U.S. Senate in Mississippi? Meet the candidates
