Sid Salter
- Columnist Sid Salter says Hyde-Smith is the clear favorite in this race but expect Colom to continue to wage a bare-knuckle campaign.
After the March 10 primaries, Mississippi now enters the home stretch of the 2026 mid-term elections, amid renewed fighting in the Middle East, new global and domestic economic challenges influenced by that conflict, and American partisan differences that have not been deeper or more pronounced since the late 1960s.
But one question was emphatically answered in the primaries: Mississippi’s incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith easily withstood a nearly “coordinated” attack from both GOP primary challenger and Gulf Coast psychiatrist Sarah Adlakha and Democratic nominee Scott Colom – the current 16th Judicial District Attorney from Columbus – in winning her primary bid with over 80% of the vote.
The word “coordinated” is in quotes because that’s a specific legal term defined by the Federal Election Commission and federal elections law. Here’s the FEC definition: “When a committee, group, or individual pays for a communication that is coordinated with a campaign or a candidate, the communication is either an in-kind contribution or, in some limited cases, a coordinated party expenditure by a party committee.
“Coordinated means made in cooperation, consultation, or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, or their agents, or a political party committee or its agents.”
So, while the combined attack narratives from Adlakha and Colom don’t fit the formal or legal FEC definition of “coordination,” it’s impossible to ignore the similarities in both the paid advertising and social media attacks on Sen. Hyde-Smith from the pair of challengers.
Both campaigns used identical social media graphics attacking Hyde-Smith. The Mississippi conservative online news site Magnolia Tribune raised questions of Adlakha’s GOP loyalties, citing her lack of prior Republican political involvement, prior support for non-GOP candidates, social media praise of Kamala Harris, and the identical “synchronized messaging” with Colom in connection with using the same social media graphics at the same time.
After securing the GOP nomination Tuesday, Hyde-Smith – with seats on both the powerful Senate Appropriations and Agriculture committees – will face Colom and independent candidates Ty Pinkins in the November General Election.
Republicans have dominated Mississippi’s congressional politics at the federal level for over a decade. The GOP has held both of the state’s U.S. Senate seats and three of the state’s four U.S. House seats with relative ease.
Indeed, like Hyde-Smith, Mississippi’s congressional incumbents all retained their party nominations heading into November and are all favorites to win reelection.
Hyde-Smith seeks reelection for a second full term. The first-term senator from Brookhaven, appointed to fill the seat vacated by Thad Cochran in 2018 and winning a subsequent special election, has, in many ways, been the model of a traditional Mississippi Republican. Her fierce loyalty to former President Donald Trump and her position on hot-button conservative issues have earned her favor with Mississippi’s conservative electorate.
Her campaign is well-funded, well-connected, and she is a recognized name in both Washington and this state’s political circles. Hyde-Smith is the clear favorite in this race. But expect Colom to continue to wage a bare-knuckle campaign against Hyde-Smith as part of an orchestrated Democratic Party effort to break the GOP’s narrow control of Congress in the mid-term elections.
From Colom and Adlakha, the united attack theme questioned Hyde-Smith’s effectiveness in Washington, her allegiance to Mississippi, raised vague corruption issues, and questioned her attention to kitchen-table issues. Republican voters rejected that line of attack by 80%.
The fact that Hyde-Smith blocked Colom’s prior nomination by former President Biden to a federal judgeship should not be discounted as this race develops. There’s no love lost between the nominees, which may produce a slugfest of a campaign between now and November.
As one who watched Sen. Hyde-Smith’s 27-year journey from the Mississippi State Senate to her election as Mississippi’s agriculture commissioner to the U.S. Senate, a common theme has been that, for some reason, her opponents underestimate her. So far, they have done so to their detriment.
