Morning Digest: New spending shows Senate battlefield expanding into the Deep South

Republicans want "insurance" in South Carolina while Democrats are on offense in Mississippi

Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom (third from left) (credit: Scott Colom campaign site)

Leading Off

SC-Sen, MS-Sen

Two Southern states that haven’t elected Democrats to the Senate since the last century are suddenly drawing late spending as Democrats hope the political environment will allow them to pull off major upsets.

In South Carolina, the Senate Leadership Fund plans to spend $5 million to protect Republican Sen. Darline Graham, Axios reported Tuesday.

An unnamed GOP source described the move as an “insurance policy” to help the new senator, the sister and successor to the late Lindsey Graham, fend off pediatrician Annie Andrews. SLF’s opening commercial isn’t available yet, but the same source said the ad campaign will “remind voters that Andrews is a Democrat.”

Meanwhile, in Mississippi, American Bridge PAC informs the National Journal that it will spend just over $2 million to help Scott Colom, a Democrat who serves as district attorney for four counties in the eastern part of the state, against Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

American Bridge, a prominent opposition research group that has expanded its operations in recent years to include advertising, begins its opening ad with a woman who identifies herself as Susan. “Because my daughter has autism, she’s on Medicaid for her health care,” she explains. “People like Hyde-Smith, they just don’t see us, they don’t understand my life at all.”

“She voted for that ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’” Susan continues. “And that cut Medicaid coverage. It’s already costing us, and we’re terrified about what might happen next.”

Both SLF and American Bridge’s new activities mark notable escalations in states Donald Trump easily carried in all three of his campaigns.

With Trump’s ardent support, Graham narrowly held off Rep. Ralph Norman in an expensive special Republican primary runoff. But that bruising contest—which Graham almost lost after she admitted in a debate, “I’m not that informed on national security”—left the new incumbent without much money to counteract Andrews’ well-funded effort.

The Democrat has made full use of her financial advantage in a state that Trump won 58-40. NBC, citing data from AdImpact, reports that Andrews has spent over $6 million on ads since the start of September, while GOP groups have deployed just under $700,000. Graham’s own campaign “has not spent any significant funds” since she defeated Norman, the network says.

Things have been quieter in Mississippi, where Hyde-Smith and Colom easily won their respective primaries back in March. Republican groups, though, haven’t overlooked the race. FEC data shows that Hyde-Smith’s backers have spent about $1.6 million since the start of September through Tuesday, compared to $500,000 from Colom’s allies.

But despite the state’s heavily Republican lean—Trump carried it by a 61-38 spread—prominent progressives have taken an interest in the Democratic nominee. The Wall Street Journal wrote late last month that a super PAC funded by the Soros family has spent nearly $1 million to aid Colom, who would be his state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction, while other major donors have contributed directly to him.

“We’re not going to pretend it suddenly became an easy state to win,” Democracy Alliance head Pamela Shifman, whose group advises big Democrats where to invest their resources, told the paper. “It’s that the political potential has been chronically undervalued.”

Colom also argued in a recent interview with the Washington Post that, while national Democrats have become “conditioned not to care about Mississippi,” he can score a historic breakthrough for his party.

Mississippi, like South Carolina and every other state in the vanquished Confederacy, was dominated by segregationist Democrats from the end of Reconstruction in the 1870s until the Civil Rights Movement nearly a century later.

But after President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964—a year that saw South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond defect to the GOP—Republicans began making major inroads with white voters. However, it would take many more years for the region’s shift to the Republican Party to reach its end-point.

In South Carolina, Democrats held on to the state’s other Senate seat in 1966 when former Gov. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings, who began his career as an ardent segregationist but went on to help peacefully integrate the state’s public schools, won a special election.

Republicans were never able to unseat Hollings, who convincingly won his final term in 1998, but GOP Rep. Jim DeMint won the race to succeed him in 2004 after the longtime incumbent opted to retire. Republicans have since had little trouble holding both of the state’s Senate seats, with one notable exception.

Lindsey Graham, who was elected in 2002 when the 100-year-old Thurmond finally stepped aside, went through an intensely watched contest in 2020 against Jaime Harrison, the former chair of the state Democratic Party. Polls showed Harrison, who raised more than $130 million, with a real opening. Graham, though, defied the polls and won 54-44.

Democrats, though, hope that Darline Graham, who lacks her brother’s experience on the campaign trail and in Congress, will face a tougher time against Andrews. If she does, the presence of two minor right-wing candidates, Constitutional Party nominee Mark Hackett and Libertarian Kasie Whitener, could make the difference this time.

Mississippi Republicans, meanwhile, got their foothold in the Senate in 1978 when Thad Cochran won the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. James Eastland, a notorious segregationist.

The state’s other Senate seat, though, remained in Democratic hands for a good while longer. Sen. John Stennis, another segregationist who had ardently opposed civil rights, won a final term in 1982, in part by appealing to Black voters by supporting the extension of the Voting Rights Act.

But while Stennis crushed Republican Haley Barbour, a future governor, he was hardly a transformed man. The next year, he voted against designating Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday, with a spokesman explaining that “we already had more than enough holidays.”

Stennis finally retired ahead of the 1988 election, and Republican Trent Lott was elected to replace him. Lott resigned in 2007 to begin his lobbying career, and Republican Roger Wicker, whom Barbour picked to replace him, still holds the seat.

Hyde-Smith arrived in the Senate the same way a decade later after Cochran, who was in poor health, resigned in 2018 and then-Gov. Phil Bryant chose her as his replacement. (Cochran would die the next year.)

Democrats hoped that a backlash against Trump during his first midterm cycle would give former Rep. Mike Espy an opening in a special election that, thanks to the state’s unusual laws, was decided in a runoff that took place just after Thanksgiving. Hyde-Smith, though, prevailed 54-46, and she won a 2020 rematch for a full term by a larger 54-44 spread.

Hyde-Smith will now go up against Colom, whom she blocked from being confirmed to a federal judgeship during the Biden administration, in a race that also includes independent Ty Pinkins, who unsuccessfully ran for the state’s other Senate seat under the Democratic banner in 2024.

Because Mississippi does not hold runoffs for regularly scheduled Senate races, however, Pinkins’ presence on the ballot could end up costing Colom Democratic-leaning voters in a state where he has essentially no room for error.

But Colom, who was born the month after Stennis won his final term, thinks he can give Democrats their first Senate victory in his lifetime.

“The wave doesn’t have to be humongous for us to capture Mississippi,” he told the Post. “To me, you can’t be a party that cares about working people if you don’t care about working rural people in Mississippi who are struggling.”

Republicans are looking sooo rusty

3Q Fundraising

• AL-Gov: (September fundraising)

  • Tommy Tuberville (R): $1.13 million raised, $6.5 million cash on hand

  • Doug Jones (D): $1.12 million raised, $2.2 million cash on hand

• NE-Gov: Lynne Walz (D): $2.1 million raised (from June 17 to Sept. 29)

• MI-01: Callie Barr (D): $700,000 raised

• VA-07: Eugene Vindman (D-inc): $3.4 million raised, $5.7 million cash on hand

Judges

NC Supreme Court

Republican Sarah Stevens appears to be barely campaigning for the North Carolina Supreme Court, The Assembly reports, even though early voting begins next week.

Stevens has yet to run any ads against Justice Anita Earls, the Democrat she’s trying to unseat, nor has she made many public appearances, the site explains. When The Assembly asked her spokesperson how many fundraisers and public appearances she’s done, he vaguely responded, “Several.”

Earls’ team, meanwhile, says she’s held approximately 200 events in the last two years. She’s also had little trouble advertising, as Earls had about 13 times as much money at the end of the last reporting deadline in June as she seeks a second eight-year term.

Republicans hold a 5-2 majority on the state’s highest court, which the GOP has controlled since the 2022 elections, so the balance of power won’t change next month no matter who wins next month. The contest, however, still has implications going into 2028, when Democrats will have the chance to complete their long-term drive to retake the court.

If Earls wins reelection, her party would next need to win races for two of the three GOP-held seats that will be on the ballot in two years’ time. A Stevens upset, conversely, would require Democrats to sweep all three.

Poll Pile

All polls must comply with The Downballot’s requirements.

• FL-Sen: YouGov:

  • Ashley Moody (R-inc): 49, Angie Nixon (D): 44.

• FL-Sen: Mason-Dixon for Telemundo/WTVJ:

  • Moody (R-inc): 50, Nixon (D): 40.

• IA-Sen: Suffolk University:

  • Josh Turek (D): 48, Ashley Hinson (R): 44, Thomas Laehn (L): 2.

  • Aug.: 45-41 Hinson.

• IL-Sen: Public Policy Polling for Chicago News Weekly:

  • Juliana Stratton (D): 49, Don Tracy (R): 36.

• KS-Sen: YouGov:

  • Adam Hamilton (D): 48, Roger Marshall (R-inc): 45.

• MI-Sen: YouGov:

  • Abdul El-Sayed (D): 49, Mike Rogers (R): 48.

• NE-Sen: YouGov:

  • Dan Osborn (I): 48, Pete Ricketts (R-inc): 47.

• NH-Sen: Saint Anselm College for the AAPR:

  • Chris Pappas (D): 51, John Sununu (R): 44.

• NH-Sen: YouGov:

  • Pappas (D): 51, Sununu (R): 43.

• OH-Sen: YouGov:

  • Sherrod Brown (D): 49, Jon Husted (R-inc): 45.

• TX-Sen: YouGov:

  • James Talarico (D): 50, Ken Paxton (R): 44.

• FL-Gov: YouGov:

  • Byron Donalds (R): 47, David Jolly (D): 45.

• FL-Gov: Mason-Dixon:

  • Donalds (R): 48, Jolly (D): 41.

• IA-Gov: Suffolk:

  • Rob Sand (D): 55, Zach Lahn (R): 43.

  • Aug.: 48-44 Sand.

• IL-Gov: PPP for Chicago News Weekly:

  • JB Pritzker (D-inc): 54, Darren Bailey (R): 34.

• KS-Gov: YouGov:

  • Ty Masterson (R): 47, Cindy Holscher (D): 44.

• MD-Gov: University of Maryland, Baltimore County:

  • Wes Moore (D-inc): 51, Dan Cox (R): 24.

• MI-Gov: YouGov:

  • Jocelyn Benson (D-inc): 48, John James (R): 45.

• MI-Gov: Mitchell Research & Communications:

  • Benson (D): 46, James (R): 39, all others 2% or less.

  • July: 46-44 Benson.

• NE-Gov: YouGov:

  • Jim Pillen (R-inc): 44, Lynne Walz (D): 43.

  • The poll did not include Brett Lindstrom, the America First Party nominee, as an option.

• NH-Gov: Saint Anselm:

  • Kelly Ayotte (R-inc): 52, Cinde Warmington (D): 45.

• NH-Gov: YouGov:

  • Ayotte (R-inc): 49, Warmington (D): 40.

• NV-Gov: Noble Predictive Insights:

  • Joe Lombardo (R-inc): 42, Aaron Ford (D): 40, Danielle Ford (I): 7.

• NY-Gov: co/efficient for Coalition to Protect Nassau Taxpayers:

  • Kathy Hochul (D-inc): 48, Bruce Blakeman (R): 41.

  • July: 47-41 Hochul.

  • The Coalition to Protect Nassau Taxpayers is a conservative organization.

• NY-Gov: Marist University:

  • Hochul (D-inc): 53, Blakeman (R): 42.

• OH-Gov: YouGov:

  • Amy Acton (D): 48, Vivek Ramaswamy (R): 44.

• SC-Gov: Resonance Media Services:

  • Alan Wilson (R): 45, Jermaine Johnson (D): 35.

  • Resonance, a Republican firm, did not say whether it conducted this poll on behalf of a client.

• TX-Gov: YouGov:

  • Gina Hinojosa (D): 48, Greg Abbott (R-inc): 47.

• NV-AG: NPI:

  • Nicole Cannizzaro (D): 45, Adriana Guzman Fralick (R): 37.

• NV-SoS: NPI:

  • Cisco Aguilar (D-inc): 44, Jim Marchant (R): 37.

• FL Ballot - Amendment 3 (cut property taxes for homeowners): Mason-Dixon:

  • Yes: 55, No: 26.

  • The amendment needs 60% of the vote to pass.

• IA Ballot - Amendment 1 (require a two-thirds legislative vote to raise income or corporate taxes): Suffolk:

  • Yes: 40, No: 36.

  • Aug.: 36-33 “no.”

• NV-LG: NPI:

  • Sandra Jauregui (D): 41, Stavros Anthony (R-inc): 38.

• NV Treasurer: NPI:

  • Tya Mathis-Coleman (D): 40, Drew Johnson (R): 39.

• NV Controller: NPI:

  • Michael MacDougall (D): 42, Andy Matthews (R-inc): 37.

Correction: This Digest incorrectly stated that Scott Colom would be Mississippi’s first Black senator. He would be the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.