(Photo from Cindy Hyde-Smith on Facebook)
- Potential challengers are struggling to find footing as the incumbent U.S. Senator doubles her campaign coffers.
The latest round of campaign finance filings show U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith is ramping up fundraising efforts ahead of what looks to be an active 2026 midterm election cycle while her potential challengers struggle to find footing.
Hyde-Smith, a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump, reported raising over $900,000 during the second quarter filing period, bringing her cash on hand total to nearly $1.5 million – more than double what it was just three months earlier.
The junior Senator from Mississippi has served in the chamber since 2018 after being appointed by former Governor Phil Bryant (R) to fill the unexpired term of retiring Senator Thad Cochran. She is the first woman to represent the Magnolia State at the federal level.
Hyde-Smith went on to win the 2018 special election by 8 points of Democrat nominee Mike Espy. Then in a rematch two years later, she bested Espy again by 10 points to earn her first full six-year term.
The state’s former Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce currently serves on a number of key Senate committees, including the Appropriations, Energy and Natural Resources, Rules and Administration, and Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Hyde-Smith will face at least one challenger in the Republican Primary next year – Dr. Sarah Adlakha, a political newcomer and resident of Ocean Springs. Adlakha, who moved to Mississippi 13 years ago, paused her psychiatric practice to help her husband establish his cardiology clinic and has run the business side of the practice for 11 years.
According to the latest FEC filing, Adlakha raised just $126 in contributions in addition to a loan of $201,000, boosting her reported fundraising total to $201,126 for the April to June reporting period. Her cash on hand is just over $200,000 due to that loan.
Notably, none of Hyde-Smith’s fundraising haul for the period came by way of a loan.
As for other candidates looking to unseat Hyde-Smith in the midterm election, Democrat-turned-Independent Ty Pinkins does not have an updated FEC campaign finance report showing for the second quarter. His end of March cash on hand total showed his Senate campaign with $4,000.
Pinkins announced earlier this month that he was leaving the Democratic Party after having run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2024 against Senator Roger Wicker (R) and losing as the Mississippi Democratic Party’s replacement candidate in the 2023 Secretary of State’s race to incumbent Michael Watson (R).
Pinkins, who raised just over $1 million for his prior Senate campaign, said he had had enough of the Democratic Party’s “culture that, far too often, devours its own” while noting his personal experiences with Democratic Party insiders was that they have prioritized fundraising over values and vision.
READ MORE: Gatekeepers, sabotage, political malpractice: Pinkins parts ways with the Democratic Party
Pinkins told Magnolia Tribune that he was urged – more than once – to “make room” for someone else and offered incentives to bow out.
For now, that someone else has not emerged, that is unless newcomer Albert Littell of Long Beach who has raised zero dollars and reports zero cash on hand is their answer.
Democratic Party leaders appear to be holding out hope that their preferred candidate, Lowndes County District Attorney Scott Colom, will jump in the race. Colom is a Biden-era judicial nominee for the U.S. District Court in North Mississippi whose nomination was blocked by Senator Hyde-Smith.
Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman and State Rep. Cheikh Taylor has said that U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants Colom to run in 2026. The District Attorney also has ties to large national Democrat donors, namely left-leaning financier George Soros who was the sole funder to the closely named “Mississippi Safety & Justice PAC.” That PAC donated nearly $1 million to support Colom’s bid for District Attorney in the 16th Judicial District in 2015 along with Robert Shuler-Smith’s re-election bid in Hinds County.
Democrats attempted to generate some buzz around their efforts to recruit a candidate this week, releasing a poll from the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund. The group’s release endeavors to paint a narrative that claims a path to turning the Senate blue could run through the Deep South, specifically Mississippi.
In a statement on the poll, Brandon Jones, a former State Representative who is now the Director of Political Campaigns for the SPLC Action Fund, said Democrats could close a “narrowing voting gap that we saw in the [2023] governor’s race” and focused on Black voter impact.
“If Democrats are looking to Black voters to power their win in the state, they need to more closely examine what has motivated this group of voters to show up at the polls and what is driving the small but important gender gap in support for the different political parties,” Jones wrote, adding, “For Democrats to have a real chance at victory, Black voters need to make up between 34% and 36% of the Mississippi electorate. However, they shouldn’t take for granted that Black voters will automatically choose the Democratic candidate. Although 82% of likely Black voters said they would vote for someone other than Hyde-Smith, 13% remain undecided.”
The left-leaning group’s polling claims only 38 percent of voters would vote to reelect Hyde-Smith, while 46 percent said that they would prefer to vote for someone else. Among independents, more than 60 percent indicated that they would vote for an alternative to the sitting senator.
Yet, as of Wednesday, Colom nor any Democrat – Black or White – other than Littell has filed organization papers with the FEC, leaving Hyde-Smith in the driver’s seat well out front of the pack.
