Harrison: Hyde-Smith hopes ‘26 will be first easy Senate campaign in Mississippi

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2 days ago

The recent announcement that state Agriculture and Commerce Commissioner Andy Gipson plans to run for governor has fueled speculation about who will be running for what office in a wide open 2027 Mississippi election cycle.
Will all or any of the combination of Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, Auditor Shad White, Attorney General Lynn Fitch enter the gubernatorial donnybrook? Who will be the Democratic Party standard bearer, and will Democrats field competitive candidates for any of the other down-ticket statewide offices that could be vacant based on who is running for governor?
Perhaps, most importantly, will billionaire businessman Thomas Duff of Hattiesburg enter the gubernatorial race after showing numerous signals that he intends to?
But before the 2027 elections roll around there will be another consequential statewide race in Mississippi: for the U.S. Senate in 2026.
Incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith will be running in her third U.S. Senate race, and she surely hopes it will be her first easy one. Her first race, a special election in 2018 after longtime Sen. Thad Cochran retired, was the closest non-party primary U.S. Senate race in modern Mississippi history. Hyde-Smith, running then as the interim appointment of former Gov. Phil Bryant, captured 53.6% of the vote compared to 46.4% for Espy in the special election held to fill out Cochran's term.
Trent Lott's first race for the U.S. Senate was almost as close in 1988, when he won 53.9% to 46.1% against 4th District U.S. Rep. Wayne Dowdy. And in a 2008 special election, Republican Roger Wicker, appointed by Gov. Haley Barbour to fill a vacancy left when Lott retired, garnered 55% to 45% by former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove.
But after those relatively close elections, both Lott in 1994 and Wicker in 2012 had easier second elections.
Lott captured 69% of the vote against former state Sen. Ken Harper of Vicksburg. Wicker, on the other hand, had a little tougher race against Albert Gore, winning 57% to 40.6%. Gore was little known and underfunded, but was in many ways an attractive candidate with a noteworthy resume. Interestingly, Gore, like Wicker, was a Pontotoc County native.
In Hyde-Smith's second race, she again faced Espy in a rare Mississippi campaign when the Democrat raised more money than the Republican. It is practically unheard of in the South — and assuredly in Mississippi — for a Democrat to raise more campaign funds than an incumbent Republican senator. Espy did.
Still, Hyde-Smith, who remains Mississippi's only woman elected to a federal office, won 54.1% to 44.1%, but the campaign was far from easy for her.
The trend for decades has been that once a U.S. Senate seat is won in Mississippi, the incumbent holds the post for a long time with minimal opposition.
Hyde-Smith is still looking for that minimal opposition race. Will 2026 be when Hyde-Smith finally has an easy path to victory like other incumbent Mississippi senators normally have in their reelection efforts?
Perhaps hoping to ensure that easier path, President Donald Trump already has endorsed Hyde-Smith for her 2026 campaign.
But Trump also endorsed her in 2018 and 2020. Those endorsements did not result in easy campaigns for Hyde-Smith. In both of those campaigns, Hyde-Smith underperformed Trump's Mississippi results.
Democrats Ty Pinkins and Albert Littell, both of whom have military backgrounds, already have announced their candidacy for 2026. Speculation is that District Attorney Scott Colom of Columbus also will challenge Hyde-Smith. And on the Republican side, author Sarah Adlakha, a Gulf Coast resident who works in health care, also has announced her campaign.
Whether other candidates emerge remains to be seen. And whether Hyde-Smith can experience a less stressful 2026 also remains to be seen.
So far the campaigns have not been as easy for her as for other incumbent U.S. senators from Mississippi.
This column was produced by Mississippi Today, a nonprofit news organization that covers state government, public policy, politics and culture. Bobby Harrison is the editor of Mississippi Today Ideas.