JACKSON, Mississippi — Raphael Warnock is racing to get Democrat Scott Colom elected in deep-red Mississippi. It’s part of his bigger bet on the South.
Colom, a charismatic local prosecutor, is within striking distance in the polls of unseating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. And in the absence of more dedicated resources, Warnock himself is trying to fill the gap by directing money and donors to the race.
He has raised over $500,000 directly into Colom’s campaign committee, according to a person with direct knowledge of his efforts, granted anonymity to share private details. And, over the course of four separate fundraisers, has tried to steer Senate Democrats’ top donors to the race.
In April, he told attendees at a Democratic donor breakfast that he thinks the party is “sleeping on” the Mississippi contest, prompting surprised laughter from the crowd, according to a recording of the event obtained by POLITICO.
“I’m going to ask you to resist the Democratic tendency to ignore the South,” he told the assembled donors. “And for our own sake, for the sake of us having a possibility of winning over time, I think we can win in Mississippi if the conditions are just right.”
Warnock, who is also widely seen as a potential presidential contender, is trying to capitalize on an incredibly unfavorable midterm environment for the GOP that has put more and more traditionally red states into play. He has been criss-crossing not just Mississippi, but the broader South, to convince Democrats to expand into the region and shore up their support with Black voters ahead of 2028.
The time is ripe, he said, for a “new kind of Southern strategy” — a play off of former President Richard Nixon’s plan for Republicans to best Democrats in the region in the late 1960s that capitalized on white backlash to the civil rights movement.
It’s been a hard sell so far, particularly in Mississippi: Republicans control all levers of state government, and Trump handily won by 24 points in 2024. The last time Mississippians sent a Democrat to the Senate was 1982.
Even though national Democrats speak highly of Colom’s candidacy, their resources to compete on an expanded Senate battleground map are already strained, and money has been prioritized in more expensive, high-profile contests like Iowa, Alaska and Maine. The half-million Warnock has raised for Colom is 15% of the $3.5 million he’s managed to raise over the cycle.
It’s still a strategic move on Warnock’s part: An upset win by Colom would boost the Senator’s own profile as he continues to leave the door open to running for president. And even if Colom loses, the South is a treasure trove of delegates for 2028 — and Black voters dominate the region in Democratic primaries.
Pressed whether he’s interested in the White House himself, Warnock evaded, saying he’s “trying to think and pray about the highest and best use of my skills.”
“I’ve been at crossroads many times, and in the moment, I’ve always known what to do,” he added.
Other Democrats see the work as helpful regardless of what Warnock does in 2028.
“The ’28 chatter is something he will listen to, but I don’t think it’s something that’s part of a checklist he’s marching towards,” said Georgia Democratic strategist Andrew Heaton, who has worked on Warnock’s Senate campaigns. “Regardless of what happens on that front, ’28 is going to be a very busy year because — especially if he decides not to run — I think there’s no question he’s planning on running for the Senate again.”
Free from the constraints of reelection this year, Warnock has traveled across the Carolinas, Mississippi and his Georgia home to support local candidates and pitch a vision of his party’s future that runs through the region that launched his political career.
In interviews with POLITICO on the campaign trail, Warnock drew parallels between Democrats’ 2020 wins in Georgia — his own, Sen. Jon Ossoff’s and former President Joe Biden’s — and the conditions he sees emerging in the Magnolia State for Democratic growth. Those kinds of wins will disappear from the horizon if Democrats fail to invest now and in the Black voters who are core to the party’s coalition, he argued.
Mississippi, where over 35% of the population is Black, would be key to the Democratic Party’s efforts to win back voters of color, as many shifted toward Trump and Republicans in 2024. Strong Democratic candidates have reached around 45% of the vote in the state in recent years, but none have been able to punch through for a victory in Mississippi, which has a long history of extremely polarized voting along racial lines.
But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut the Voting Rights Act, there are signs Black voters are surging to the polls in higher numbers — and some Democrats hope that could remake the state’s politics.
“It is in the interest of the party to invest in the base and have the base understand that the party understands that these are loyal Democratic voters, and Black voters want what other voters want,” said Warnock. “They want the same kind of prosperity and opportunity that all families want.”
Colom was more blunt. Asked if he equates ignoring Mississippi and its Senate race to the party ignoring Black voters, he said: “Yeah, of course, 100 percent.”
Democrats have not been averse to flooding money into traditionally red states in the final stretch of the campaign, but Mississippi has not yet made it high on that list, where Colom still faces an uphill battle to close the gap with Hyde-Smith. Building out the statewide grassroots infrastructure that has proved effective in places like Georgia takes time and resources, which have yet to land in Mississippi at a significant scale this cycle.
“Democrats are investing in Mississippi, but not enough. And, I think, certainly not as much as I think we should, and not as much as we could,” Warnock said in an interview between campaign stops in the state. He was in somewhat of a rush: between a fundraiser for Colom and an event with local faith leaders, Warnock wanted to visit the home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights era titan who was shot and killed in the car port of his Jackson home in 1963.
“We’re playing enough here to force the other side to compete in Mississippi, and that is an improvement, but it’s not enough,” he said.
Colom himself has begged national Democrats to focus on his race.
“Mississippi has really always been competitive. It just hasn’t got the attention, the resources it deserves,” Colom said in an interview at his campaign headquarters.
Some has come: American Bridge, a Democrat-aligned super PAC, pumped over $2 million into the race earlier this month, and earlier this week the New York Times reported that a single megadonor is set to split $7 million of his personal wealth between Colom’s race and others.
Several top Democrats have made an effort to signal their support.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg plan to visit the state before Election Day. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and his Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair, Kirsten Gillibrand, have each hosted separate fundraisers for Colom, according to a source familiar with the events, granted anonymity to share private details. And Delaware Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a DSCC vice-chair, campaigned with Colom in Mississippi.
Colom’s campaign committee outraised Hyde-Smith’s over the summer, posting $1.3 million to her just over $640,000. But it pales in comparison to the tens of millions that have flooded into other states.
In separate statements, spokespeople for the DSCC and Senate Majority PAC lauded Colom as a strong candidate, but said they were constrained by how much they could spend. Both groups said they were monitoring the race “closely.”
Republicans are still publicly maintaining their confidence in their hold on the seat. Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, tied Colom to Washington Democrats in a statement and said the campaign “planned for Colom to have plenty of resources. We are executing our own campaign plan with that in mind.”
One day after his sojourn in Mississippi, Warnock was presented with a stark contrast in what Democrats are capable of when they devote resources to a Southern state. He was in North Carolina on Thursday, where Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper is dominating his Republican opponent, Michael Whatley, in fundraising and polling. As one of Democrats’ top candidate recruits of the cycle, Cooper has attracted significant resources and national attention from the outset of the race.
But Mississippi and North Carolina are two enormously different states, in population, income, and demographics — and that change didn’t happen overnight. Democrats began significantly investing in the state ever since President Barack Obama’s 2008 victory there and ramped up their efforts after the GOP-led state government redrew the state’s congressional maps in 2013.
“It’s taken a lot over the last 13 years,” Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-N.C.) said on the sidelines of a party canvass kickoff in Durham. “Our eye has never been taken off the ball, and because we believe that we could make that change, that we needed to be the change that we wanted to see, we have put that in action now, and we’re going to win because of it.”