Scott Colom On Why Democrats Need To Rethink The South

TUPELO, Mississippi — The Friday before the election, I flew to Memphis and then drove to Tupelo, Mississippi, for an end-of-campaign rally. Bill Clinton, James Carville and Mitch Landrieu were all headed there in a show of neighboring state solidarity on behalf of Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom. There were a handful of local reporters perched in the balcony of an old church sanctuary turned event space, but I was the only person present from the national press corps.

Everyone there was acutely aware of how hard it would be to topple a Republican senator and elect a Black man in Mississippi. This was, yes, the state with the highest percentage of Black voters in the country. But it’s also a state with profound racial polarization in its voting patterns — whites mostly vote for Republicans and Blacks for Democrats.

There hadn’t been a Black senator here since Reconstruction. And Mississippi had not elected a Democratic senator since 1982, when an 81-year-old John Stennis defeated 34-year-old upstart Haley Barbour.

Until now.

Colom’s upset win, which was called just over a week after the election, marks perhaps the most unimaginable victory in a midterm that exceeded even the most optimistic Democratic expectations.

Colom, however, may have been the least surprised.

After Clinton and his Louisiana posse along with the rest of what had been a full house left that Friday night, I sat down with the 43-year-old local prosecutor in the old church pews. We spoke about convincing people to believe in his candidacy, why it’s so vital for Democrats to compete in the South and how he, much like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, was relying on the attention economy to win.

Oh, and we briefly stopped our interview when his two young daughters came over to tease their dad, pretending not to know if he was “daddy or uncle” because Colom’s identical twin brother looks even more like him after a recent hair cut.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

This is a fun way to end the campaign, isn’t it? You got Louisiana and Arkansas, folks.

I’m not even done yet! We got the momentum to win.

So tell me what’s happening out there?

It’s exactly what I expected, to be honest with you. I knew that I had one of the most vulnerable senators in the country. But nobody was talking about it, because she doesn’t campaign, she doesn’t do media.

People are conditioned not to think Mississippi as competitive. But the reality is that outside presidential years, our elections are a lot closer than people realize. And I knew that she can’t get [voters] out.

And then President Trump started violating all the commitments he made — lowering grocery prices on day one, no more endless wars, release the Epstein files, health care cuts. It’s going be hard for her to motivate the voters to get out, because he’s not on the ballot and she’s got nothing to run on.

Part of the challenge for folks in Mississippi in your party is that you can always get a good floor, but you hit the ceiling, right? It’s a high floor, low ceiling state. Is that different this year because your folks are energized and the Republicans are not?

100%. I mean, the Callais decision helped me, right? We’ve got African American voters understanding that voting rights are on the line.

What did that do, do you think?

Well, because they start attacking Bennie Thompson right away. I mean, it didn’t get much national attention but, in the state of Mississippi, people were like: “Holy moly, why are y’all saying he can’t be our congressman? Why don’t you just beat him? Why you got to draw the lines up to say that we don’t get to pick our person?”

That caught their attention?

That caught their attention. Even if they don’t understand the case, they understand that you’re trying to get rid of Bennie Thompson. And they understand that you want to pick the person that represents us — and nobody ever likes that.

And the other thing is — I knew from watching other campaigns that there were some things I needed to do different.

For example, the traditional approach in Mississippi has always been don’t bring in national people, because you nationalize the race — you risk upsetting people.

I think that’s an old, outdated way of thinking. Because for me, I said, listen, If I do a press conference outside of the Clarksdale hospital, a rural hospital, to talk about eight rural hospitals closing because of the healthcare cuts, no reporter even shows up. You know how I know that? Because I did that!

But if I bring Vice President [Kamala] Harris down, and she does it, every reporter’s talking about it. And same thing with Pete Buttigieg. I’m talking about transportation.

I’m getting attention to the race because we are in an attention economy. If you don’t get voters going, knowing that you’re running, and here’s what’s at stake, it’s gonna be hard to get over the finish line. So I was strategic in thinking, I got to bring Bill Clinton down to Tupelo to talk about tariffs.

And sadly there’s not much local press left, so you’ve got to get anything and everything you can to win the attention economy fight.

So you feel pretty confident that you’ll have a strong Black turnout here?

Absolutely. We already do with absentees.

And the other thing is, she’s doing nothing to get her voters. She had her event today. I think in Tupelo, inside of a red area of the state. She had hardly anybody there.

I got President Clinton, I got way more people here. We could have filled this place even more, but you know, he wanted a more intimate place and I get that.

But, you know, the reality is, she gave me an eight- to nine-month head start. She did absolutely nothing for nine months.

She thought she was going to outspend me at the end. That’s what they’re used to in Mississippi. “I’ll outspend Scott four-to-one on TV, I’m going to drown him with negative ads, he’s not going to be able to define himself.“

But I grinded as I campaigned, doing the fundraising. [James] Carville helped me. Other people helped me.

You’re outspending her now?

Absolutely, 100%. Because I work hard!

And you raised more than she did in the third quarter, too?

Three out of four quarters, I out-raised her. And how hard is it for her to raise money? “Listen, I cut your taxes in New York, please give me a contribution.”

She’s totally dependent on the national party to bail her out?

100%.

So you have a big turnout with Black folks, which means you can do a little worse with white folks, but you still got to hit a certain number with white people?

Here’s the thing, I got elected district attorney when I was 32 years old. And what I learned from that campaign, I had to get a lot of white voters. There’s a lot of white people who are Republicans that will vote for me because at the end of the day, if you have a really, truly just bad representative and [Republicans] feel like they can trust your values, your vision, … and I do so much media that they can watch for themselves.

So she’s doing all these ads lying about me. But they see me on CNN saying, “I agree with President Trump, we need a secure border, I agree we need to have Second Amendment rights. I agree that, for the working class, no tax on overtime, no tax on tips, I agree with all that.”

So I’m trying to break through, and that’s how you do it. It’s with working-class people. It’s not the people who are 65-plus watching Fox News. It’s that waitress, that trucker, that one who’s feeling the pain of his policies. And I don’t need as much of [the white vote] as some other people do.

Have you been satisfied with the help you’ve gotten from your national party?

People always want folks to come in early, right? But they’re conditioned [to not believe a Democrat in Mississippi].

People just have to understand, If you can’t compete in Mississippi, boy, what does that say about your national party?

Why?

People always say, “Well, we got a high ceiling.” But we have not spent a lot of money trying to break that ceiling.

Let me give you one example that people don’t think about. 2020, Jaime Harrison in South Carolina raised over $100 million, right? Mike Espy in Mississippi raised like maybe $18, 20 million. Mike Espy outperformed Jaime Harrison.

Oh, I know.

Why would you think South Carolina is more competitive than Mississippi?

Because your party’s donors are giving to the guy running against Lindsey Graham, because that’s the culture of the party. But there’s no excuse for the national party leaders, who should be more tactical and strategic, because they know better, right?

Yes, 100%, 100%.

I just spent some time with Sen. [Raphael] Warnock in Atlanta a couple days ago, and he’s very passionate about this race. And he’s more passionate about the importance of Democrats competing in the South. He doesn’t think the party’s ever going to have a viable and enduring Senate majority if you can’t win seats in the South.

Look at the math. You could win every blue state, both senators, every swing state, both senators. It would only get you 52. You mean in this moment, where gas is through the roof, groceries through the roof, people are losing healthcare and you say you can’t compete everywhere? Kansas, South Carolina, Mississippi — we’re starting to realize, but we also got a new breed of candidates, too. You know, there’s some fresh blood in the air and we needed that, we needed that.

There they are!

[Colom’s daughters walk over to the pews, sprawl out on their father, and one teasingly asks him a question]

I have a question, are you Daddy or Uncle?

I got a twin brother, he just cut his hair so we look even more alike.

But, no, it’s hard to see the party ever being able to ever get anything near 55 or 60 seats in the Senate if you can’t win in the South.

It’s possible. We can break the ceiling. We just got to talk to working class voters. We got to be a party of working class people. We got to be listening to them, showing up. We can’t try to run 30-second commercials, and that’s all we do. We got to actually show up.

And it’s just a matter of: Are folks going to show? And if your folks show and there’s don’t, well, it’s not a red state if Republicans don’t show up. Same in Louisiana, too.

And I wonder in the long term, you know, if they don’t start actually delivering for some of these voters, you know, it’s going to be interesting how it plays out in the long term, too.