Former President Barack Obama rolled out a new ad backing Democrat Scott Colom in Mississippi’s Senate race, a climb Democrats have not made since 1982.
The Hill reported that Obama released the video advertisement this week, urging voters in the Magnolia State to unseat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and send Colom to Washington.
Hyde-Smith is running for a second full term. Colom, the district attorney in Mississippi’s 16th District, is the Democratic challenger. Decision Desk HQ polling gives her a 93 percent chance of holding the seat.
Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982, a stretch cited through 270ToWin. Obama’s pitch still frames the race as a moment for change.
In the ad, Obama speaks directly to the state and elevates Colom’s biography, faith, and local record before turning to wages, costs, and health care.
"Mississippi, it’s time for a change. That’s why you need to send Scott Colom to the U.S. Senate."
The former president presents Colom as rooted in Mississippi life and driven by faith, then ties that profile to public safety work and a Senate agenda built around prices and hospitals.
"Scott is a devoted husband and dad, a seventh-generation Mississippian, guided by his Christian faith."
Obama continues with Colom’s tenure as a prosecutor and the campaign themes Democrats want on the table in a red state.
"Scott made his community safer, prosecuting violent crimes as district attorney, fighting corruption in Columbus. Now he’s running for Senate to raise wages, lower costs, and save your healthcare and hospitals. Mississippi, your vote matters. Let’s get this done."
That message lands against hard numbers on the ground. As of Monday afternoon, AAA put Mississippi’s average price for regular gas at $3.93 a gallon, up $1.27 from a year earlier. Diesel averaged $5.87 a gallon, up $2.62 over the same span.
Reporting on the race ties those spikes, and higher fertilizer costs, in part to the Iran war and says the hit has been especially sharp in Mississippi. Colom’s ad answer is the familiar Democratic package: wages, lower costs, and protecting health care and hospitals.
Colom’s path to this race runs through two failed judicial bids. Former President Biden nominated him twice to serve as a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Hyde-Smith and fellow Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker blocked those nominations through the Senate’s “blue slip” tradition, the long-standing custom that effectively lets home-state senators halt a judicial pick from their state.
Obama’s ad now asks the same voters to elevate the blocked nominee to the Senate itself. The contrast is plain: local Republican senators stopped Colom on the bench; national Democrats want him as their vehicle in a state that has rejected their Senate candidates for more than four decades.
Recent coverage of Obama’s family life keeps him in the public eye between political turns like this one.
National Democrats still see a path to Senate control even if Mississippi stays out of reach. Decision Desk HQ, a partner of The Hill, gives Democrats a 56 percent chance of reclaiming the chamber in the 2026 midterms.
That math depends on other states. Hyde-Smith’s 93 percent hold rating shows how little of the map Mississippi is expected to supply.
President Trump has been on a midterm blitz through red and purple states, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Ohio, to strengthen Republican chances of keeping Congress.
That ground game sits beside Democratic reliance on a former president’s star power in a race the numbers still treat as a heavy Republican hold. Voters get a clear choice in method: a sitting president working the map for his party, and a predecessor cutting ads for a long-shot challenger.
Past fights still shape how some readers weigh Trump’s posture toward Obama when both men stay active in midterm politics.
Obama’s appearance in the Colom ad fits a broader pattern of ex-presidents returning as validators when their party needs name recognition in difficult terrain. Mississippi’s Senate history makes the terrain as difficult as it gets for Democrats.
Allies still rank his brand high. That includes public praise tracked when Harris rated top presidents and placed Obama in the top tier.
Hyde-Smith enters the cycle as the incumbent with a dominant polling average in her own state. Colom enters as a local prosecutor with a Democratic label, a twice-blocked judicial file, and now a high-profile commercial from Obama.
The ad’s core claims are straightforward. Colom prosecuted violent crime. He fought corruption in Columbus. He wants higher wages, lower costs, and protected hospitals. Obama tells Mississippi the vote matters and presses for a change election.
The state’s recent electoral record points the other way. No Democratic senator since 1982. A 93 percent forecast for the Republican incumbent. National odds that still leave this seat outside the main path to a Democratic majority.
Obama has mixed political returns with public events in other settings, including when he met WNBA All-Stars at his Presidential Center, keeping his profile warm between campaign interventions.
Older policy fights still trail him as well, including the long echo of Obama’s JASTA veto fight that 9/11 families continue to raise in public appeals.
For Mississippi voters, the immediate choice is narrower. A Republican senator seeking another full term. A Democratic district attorney packaged by Obama as the answer to wages, prices, and hospitals. Gas and diesel already up sharply from a year ago. A blue-slip fight in the rearview. And a state that has not crossed party lines in Senate races for more than forty years.
Celebrity surrogates can fill a airtime. They cannot revise a state’s habits, or turn a 93 percent race into a toss-up by declaring it time for a change.