CORINTH, Miss. (AP) — President Donald Trump heads Monday to Mississippi, as he continues a closing midterm campaign blitz that highlights Republicans' challenges ahead of an election that could drastically shift power in Washington and statehouses across the country.
While the president was set to appear alongside Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, her Democratic challenger was spotted at his rally site, too, creating the rare spectacle of Trump's staunchest supporters interacting directly with one of the very figures the president surely will denigrate onstage later. Scott Colom said earlier Monday that he planned to go listen to what was on Trump supporters' minds.
"They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they’re going through,” Colom said ahead of the president's arrival for the evening event.
Colom's spokesperson later posted a photo on X, saying he had “chatted with folks in line for the Trump rally because Scott is running to represent ALL Mississippians.”
Mississippi, among the nation's most reliably Republican states, is not where the GOP envisioned needing a late-October stop from the president. But Hyde-Smith faces a stiff challenge from Colom, one of many Democratic underdogs who have managed to expand the House and Senate battleground maps because of widespread voter discontent over inflation, the Iran war and other aspects of Trump’s second presidency.
Colom said the dynamics make it easy for him to make a case to Trump rallygoers that Hyde-Smith is “not gonna change one single thing” that's making voters' lives harder.
“If you want somebody who’s gonna fight for higher wages, lower costs, get us out this stupid war, fight for affordable and accessible healthcare, actually stop the corruption that’s ruining our country, actually represent our Mississippi values, vote for Scott Colom,” he said.
Trump's event with Hyde-Smith will kick off a week that will include more stops in states he won comfortably in 2024, including Texas, South Carolina and Iowa.
Democrats, including progressives, are expanding their efforts
Top nominees and surrogates were greeting voters — almost 30 million of whom have already cast ballots — as Democrats try to end Republicans' threadbare majority in the House, take over a Senate majority that was once thought secure for Republicans and end the GOP’s national advantage in state capitals.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats' 2024 presidential candidate, was to campaign in neighboring Wisconsin with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who faces Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Trump ally, for governor. Crowley would be the state’s first Black governor if elected to lead the battleground state.
Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms were getting an assist from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association and a likely 2028 presidential candidate, two days after Trump made his second October visit to the state.
In Minnesota, Democratic Senate nominee Peggy Flanagan, the current lieutenant governor, welcomed House Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., to advocate for a national health insurance plan to achieve universal coverage.
“Everywhere I go on this tour I meet Minnesotans who are working hard and doing everything right and still can’t afford to take care of themselves or the people they love,” said Flanagan, who is backed by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Flanagan is running against former sportscaster Michele Tafoya for the open seat.
Vance heads to Kansas to help a GOP senator
Vice President JD Vance was set to campaign in Kansas on behalf of Sen. Roger Marshall, who finds himself in a tight contest with Democratic nominee and pastor Adam Hamilton. Hundreds of people were gathered inside the warehouse of a steel-fabricating company in north Topeka in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race since 1932.
Jace Sullivan, a 50-year-old electrician from Topeka who describes himself as “85% Republican,” said Trump supporters need to “circle the wagons” and get out to vote.
Wearing a red “JD Vance for President 2028" shirt, he said he thinks Trump is rightly working to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
“Gas prices are high and it does suck, but it’s a means to an end,” Sullivan said.
Earlier, Vance was in Belgrade, Montana to campaign with Republican Aaron Flint, who is facing Democrat Sam Forstag in the race for the state’s 1st Congressional District, and Republican Senate candidate Kurt Alme.
Trump to rally in another reliably Republican state
But it's Trump's visit to Mississippi that perhaps brings the midterm landscape into the sharpest relief with just a week of campaigning left.
To be sure, Hyde-Smith, who is vying for her second full term, remains the favorite in a state Trump won three times by an average of nearly 20 percentage points.
But Colom, a local prosecutor who would make history as Mississippi's first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction, is looking to parlay inflation, Trump's lagging popularity and Hyde-Smith's mistakes into an upset.
Colom has outpaced Hyde-Smith in fundraising since he launched his campaign last year, and he caught national attention this month with an ad that played off Hyde-Smith dismissing beef prices — driven higher by Trump's tariffs and fuel spikes resulting from the Iran conflict. The ad features Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner, saying that consumers “have so many other proteins to choose from,” followed by several characters, and then Colom, saying Mississippi should “ pick another senator instead. ”
Senate Democrats’ super PAC has been a late entry in the contest, with a $1.2 million investment. Mississippians have not chosen a new Democratic senator since 1947, and Democrats last won a Senate race there when that senator, the onetime segregationist John Stennis, won his last reelection in 1982.
In New York, meanwhile, one of the party’s most vulnerable House members pulled from Trump’s campaign playbook. Rep. Mike Lawler, who is in a tight race with Democrat Cait Conley in New York City’s northern suburbs, manned a McDonald’s drive-thru — mimicking something Trump did two years ago, even as he has tried to emphasize his independence from the president.
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Barrow reported from Atlanta and Colvin from New York. Associated Press reporters John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; Laura Turbay in St. Paul, Minnesota; Seung Min Kim in Belgrade, Montana; and Anthony Izaguirre in New York contributed.
