Three years ago, Scott Colom, a state prosecutor in Mississippi, was on a bipartisan glide path to a lifetime appointment to a federal judgeship when his nomination was blocked by a single Republican senator. Now Mr. Colom, a Democrat, is seeking to unseat that senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, in a long-shot challenge to the incumbent in a deeply conservative state.
The race is far from the center stage in the developing battle for control of the Senate, considering that Mississippi has not elected a Democratic senator since 1982, as the era of Southern segregationist Democrats came to a close. But the history between the two candidates adds a unique twist to a contest that would not even be taking place had Ms. Hyde-Smith not upended Mr. Colom’s nomination by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to a district court seat.
“It is fair to say that I would not have resigned from the federal bench to run for Senate,” Mr. Colom, who is Black and who has been elected three times as the prosecutor for a four-county district in northeast Mississippi, said in an interview.
The MAGA hotbed of Mississippi is an acknowledged reach for Democrats. But they have begun to pay attention to it given Mr. Colom’s appeal and credentials, and as the national political environment improves for their party. Democrats are hoping the momentum they have shown in elections around the country this year can translate into competitive races outside the top tier and deliver an unexpected win or two.
Senator Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat and minority leader who plays a central role in mapping his party’s Senate campaign strategy, has long been intrigued by the prospect of competing in Mississippi. He met with Mr. Colom multiple times in recent years in an effort to recruit him.
“This is a good year to expand the map, and Mississippi is a long shot,” Mr. Schumer said. “Still, if its ever going to be doable, this is the year.”
He and other Democrats point to a close contest for governor in Mississippi three years ago that suggested Democrats could still compete there given the right conditions. And they see Democratic success in Georgia, another Southern state with a significant Black population that has elected two Democratic senators, as a template for Mississippi. Plus, they say, President Trump is not on the ballot to draw out his base and Ms. Hyde-Smith, a low-profile lawmaker and former state agriculture commissioner, is vulnerable.
Republican strategists in Washington and Mississippi dismiss Democratic designs on the state as a pipe dream, saying Ms. Hyde-Smith is well positioned to win a second full term after being appointed to fill a vacancy in 2018. They say Mr. Colom is waging a campaign of retribution because she cost him the judgeship.
“Colom should save himself the embarrassment of being denied a job twice by Hyde-Smith,” said Bernadette Breslin, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
The Hyde-Smith campaign is hitting Mr. Colom with the same criticism the senator raised when she killed his nomination: he was backed in his races by contributions from the far left and supported transgender rights. The transgender issue played well nationally for Republicans in 2024.
“Colom’s extremist views have no place in Mississippi, which is exactly why Senator Hyde-Smith blocked him from the federal bench and will defeat him in November,” Jake Monssen, who is managing the Hyde-Smith campaign, said in a statement that called the prosecutor the “transgender defender.”
Mr. Colom, who in 2021 signed a letter with other prosecutors opposing the criminalization of transgender care, said her claim that he would not protect female athletes was wrong and noted that he coaches his two soccer-playing daughters.
“I am not for biological boys playing girl’s sports,” Mr. Colom said.
The prosecutor said he didn’t envision his candidacy as payback for the senator torpedoing his nomination and that he had forgiven her after witnessing some of the forgiveness expressed by victims of serious crimes he had prosecuted.
But he said Ms. Hyde-Smith’s opposition had led him to play closer attention to her record and that he did not like what he saw, including her votes against an infrastructure bill and for the major Republican policy law enacted last year that cut funding for safety net programs like Medicaid — a major source of health care in the state — to help pay for large tax cuts.
“We are already in a situation where our rural hospitals are in terrible shape,” he said. “We are already in a crisis, and she made it worse. We can’t afford this type of leadership in D.C.”
Despite Ms. Hyde-Smith’s objection, Mr. Colom’s judicial nomination had significant support from other Mississippi Republicans, including the senior G.O.P. senator, Roger Wicker, as well as two former Republican governors, Haley Barbour and Phil Bryant. The Colom family has long ties to Republican leaders in the state.
So far, the Democratic Senate campaign committee and the political action committee aligned with Mr. Schumer have not devoted resources to the race. But party strategists have seen signs that give them glimmers of hope, including a surge in primary turnout in the state in March that saw nearly as many people vote in the Senate Democratic contest as the Republican one — a notable difference from previous years. They also point to ongoing voter registration campaigns they believe could aid the Democrat.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York and the chair of the Democratic Senate campaign arm, called the possibility of Mr. Colom knocking off the senator who bounced him from the bench “poetic justice.”
The clash is not the first time rejection for a federal judgeship has prompted an ex-nominee’s interest in Washington. Jeff Sessions, the former Republican senator from Alabama and attorney general, had his nomination shot down by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1986. A decade later, Mr. Sessions won election to the Senate, where he would eventually sit on that very panel.
