A cattle rancher and former state agriculture commissioner told Mississippians struggling with beef prices that they had "so many other proteins to choose from." On Wednesday, the Associated Press called the Senate race for Democrat Scott Colom, who took the hint and gave voters another senator to choose from.
A Few Thousand Votes in the Reddest Corner of America
Democrat Scott Colom has won election to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, narrowly defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, according to NPR's reporting on the AP race call. It took more than a week of counting absentee and provisional ballots to get there. The final margin was a few thousand votes, making this the closest Senate race in the country.
Let that sink in. Donald Trump won Mississippi by 23 points in 2024. The Cook Political Report had this race rated Likely Republican going into election night. Likely. As in, go home, nothing to see here.
Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in more than 40 years. It also has not sent a Black senator to Washington since Reconstruction. So when you hear someone say this was a big night, understand that the phrase is doing about as much work as a phrase can do.
The Beef Quote That Ended a Career
Here is the thing about political gaffes. The good ones are never complicated. Earlier this year, someone asked Hyde-Smith about high beef prices. She is a cattle rancher. She is a onetime state agriculture commissioner. This is, to put it mildly, her home turf.
Her answer: "You have so many other proteins to choose from."
That is a woman who has never once stood in a grocery store doing arithmetic in her head. Colom's campaign turned it into a viral ad featuring several people reacting with open disbelief at the suggestion to pick another protein. The tagline wrote itself: time to "pick another senator." Campaign consultants spend millions trying to manufacture a moment like that. Hyde-Smith handed it over for free.
Cindy High-Prices Has Left the Chat
Colom, a district attorney, made cost of living the centerpiece of his campaign and branded his opponent "Cindy High-Prices." Crude? Maybe. Effective? Evidently.
Mississippi's rural, agriculture-heavy economy got hammered by rising prices, and it showed. Voters who were told for years that the economy was great, actually, kept running into the reality of their own receipts. The incumbent's response to that reality was to suggest they eat something else.
The contrast in style did not help her either. Hyde-Smith rarely spoke to reporters in Washington and had minimal presence in the state. Colom, meanwhile, was out there showing up. It turns out that when you skip the part of the job where you talk to the people you work for, they notice.
The Black Voters Who Did the Work
Mississippi has the highest share of Black voters in the country, close to 40 percent. The surge in Black turnout is what drove this win, and it is part of a broader shift across the South in a midterm that was full of stunning upsets for Democrats.
Sit with the history here. A state with a population that Black has gone more than a century and a half without sending a Black person to the Senate. That is not an accident of demographics. That is a deliberate, long-running system of suppression and indifference, and on this particular Tuesday, enough people beat it.
So credit where it is due. The voters did this. They turned out, they waited through a week of ballot counting, and they delivered. Nobody handed it to them.
Betrayed, Not Lost
The most interesting part of this story might be what Colom said about his own party. He told NPR earlier this month that Mississippi "has never been a lost cause, we've been a betrayed cause." His line on the national Democrats was blunter: "They spent hundreds of millions of dollars in other states. They spent almost nothing in Mississippi."
He is right, and that is the uncomfortable part. National money and attention did not arrive until the closing days. Then came a Trump rally in the final week, plus visits from Kamala Harris, Raphael Warnock, and other Democrats. Both parties poured in millions at the very end, which tells you everyone suddenly realized the race was live.
Democrats won this thing despite their own party's neglect. Imagine what a real investment might have looked like. Imagine how many other places have been written off by a strategist with a spreadsheet and a short memory.
The Dingo Take
"You have so many other proteins to choose from." Cindy Hyde-Smith said that out loud, as a sitting senator, to a state where people were watching grocery prices climb. Then the voters took her advice, scanned the menu, and chose something else. Poetic justice rarely comes with this little subtlety.
But do not let the beef joke bury the real story. This was a seat Republicans considered safe, in a state Trump won by 23 points, and it flipped because Black voters showed up in force and because an incumbent decided her own constituents' cost of living was a punchline. Both of those things are true. Neither one is a fluke.
The lesson for Democrats is the one Colom handed them for free: stop treating the South like a place to visit during election season. Mississippi was never a lost cause. It was a neglected one. The party that wrote it off still got the win anyway, which should embarrass the people who made that call. A seat that was supposed to be impossible just went blue, and the only thing standing between Democrats and a lot more of them is whether anyone in the party is willing to actually show up.
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