Mississippi Senate race highlights shifting map as Democrats and Republicans battle for majority

The battle for control of the U.S. Senate isn’t supposed to run through Mississippi. Scott Colom is trying to convince people that it could.

“We can win here, and we’re going to,” said Colom, the Democratic nominee who’s trying to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith as she seeks her second full term.

That could be typical candidate bravado, and Republicans say he has little chance. But Colom is drawing attention for a potentially competitive campaign, a reflection of a wider Senate map than either party envisioned at the midpoint of Donald Trump’s second presidency.

Democrats must pick up at least four new seats to win the majority — and more than that if they lose any they currently hold. That includes Michigan, where Republicans are feeling more confident since progressive Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination this week.

“We can’t spare a single seat,” Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks said in an interview while she was in Mississippi on Colom’s behalf.

She said Democrats have an opportunity to be competitive in more places because of voter angst over an uneven, inflationary economy.

“They cannot afford their groceries,” she said. “They cannot afford the cost of gas. They cannot afford housing. It’s all over the country.”

Republicans remain confident they can hold power, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune even said in a recent fundraising email that an expanded map could backfire on Democrats.

“By scrambling the Democrats, we’ll spread their resources thin, making it nearly impossible for them to flip the seats they need to take the majority,” he wrote to donors.

Here’s a look at four wildcard contests that could make headlines in November.

Mississippi

Colom would be his state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction — the 12-year period after the U.S. Civil War when the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were adopted. He’d also be Mississippi’s first new Democratic senator since the 1940s. (Those lawmakers were Jim Crow segregationists who were first elected before white Southerners shifted to the Republican Party.)

Now a district attorney, Colom needs a fundraising uptick to introduce himself to voters and attack Hyde-Smith on the airwaves. Mississippi remains small enough that retail campaigning still matters, while television ads remain much less expensive than in places like Texas, where James Talarico is running against Ken Paxton.

The Mississippi governor’s 2023 race was decided by 3 percentage points. To close the gap, Colom would need to increase Mississippi’s usual Black turnout by a few percentage points and get a larger share of the white vote than Democrats typically do. He insists he can do both in part because of Hyde-Smith’s unfailing loyalty to Trump and policies that have saddled Mississippi farmers with tariffs, consumers with higher gas prices and made it harder for Mississippians to have health insurance.

Hyde-Smith, first appointed and then elected in 2018, is using a familiar playbook of portraying her Democratic opponent as too liberal for Mississippi.

Notably, Mississippi requires a majority to win a statewide election. With minor candidates on the ballot, there’s a scenario where Colom pulls an upset or at least forces a runoff.

Iowa

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst opted against a reelection bid, and it’s always easier to flip an open seat than defeat an incumbent.

Democrats nominated state lawmaker and wheelchair basketball star Josh Turek, 47, while Republicans opted for U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, 43, who has Trump’s endorsement.

Iowa has moved rightward in the Trump era, especially in small towns and rural areas. But it wasn’t that long ago that voters here sent Barack Obama on his way to the presidency and elected a bipartisan congressional delegation that included liberal stalwart Tom Harkin in the Senate. Even in the 2018 midterms, during Trump’s first presidency, Democrats won three out of four U.S. House seats.

They’ve since flipped to Republicans. But now the most conservative areas in Iowa — those centered around the agricultural economy — feel the pinch of the president’s tariff rollercoaster. Combined with Trump’s unpopularity with college-educated voters and the liberal tilt of urban places like Des Moines and Iowa City, the electoral math could look more like 2008 or 2018 than 2024.

And Obama, who’s been sparing in his endorsements so far this year, has endorsed Turek — on the basketball court.

Kansas

This is a famously Republican state in federal elections. It hasn’t had a Democratic senator since the New Deal era of the 1930s. But the state has elected a Democratic governor four times since 2002.

Democratic Senate nominee Adam Hamilton hopes that voters’ struggles during Trump’s presidency will be enough to help him unseat Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. Hamilton has a notable biography: He’s a high-profile United Methodist megachurch minister and author who has avoided partisan politics and is running for office for the first time.

“I didn’t plan to run for office. I’ve spent my life as a pastor, and I try to care for people,” the 62-year-old said in his primary victory speech.

Marshall has the state’s fundamentals on his side. But the 65-year-old also is seeking reelection for the first time after winning in 2020 with Trump at the top of the ticket.

Nebraska

There is no Democrat in this race, at least officially. But national Democrats back independent Dan Osborn, a former labor union chief, as their choice to unseat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

It’s the second time Osborn and Democrats have tried this approach. Osborn lost to Republican Sen. Deb Fischer by 7 points in 2024. She won all 89 Nebraska counties. But she also finished well short of Trump’s 21-point gap in the presidential contest.

The thinking is that voters have experienced enough of Trump and the Capitol Hill Republicans who’ve mostly facilitated his agenda. Osborn’s labor background also stands in stark contrast to that of the megamillionaire Ricketts, whose billionaire father founded TD Ameritrade and whose family owns Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs.

To be sure, Osborn has not said he’d caucus with Senate Democrats. But he could at least deny Republicans a seat. And like other middle America states that have moved rightward, plenty of Nebraskans remember electing moderate senators: Democrat Ben Nelson retired in 2013.