Raphael Warnock knows something about winning a Senate seat in the Deep South, and he says Mississippi’s race looks awfully familiar to his Georgia election five years ago.
That’s what he said at a meeting with faith leaders and to an electrified crowd in Jackson on Wednesday, urging voters to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and replicate his successful Georgia election that sent a Black Democrat to the Senate from a Southern state and delivered a Democratic majority to the U.S. Senate.
“I’m here because I’m tired of the South being overlooked or diminished in terms of its electoral importance,” Warnock told reporters. “We ignore the South at our own peril. Democrats are investing here. I would like to see more, for the sake of the country.”
Warnock shares similarities with Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Mississippi. Both faced steep electoral odds and several national Democratic figures believed victory in a reliably red state impossible.
U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., speaks with members of the media alongside Scott Colom, Mississippi’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, in Jackson on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi TodayMississippi has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the 1980s, and the electorate has consistently aligned itself with the national Republican Party.
But Warnock said Mississippi, the state with the highest concentration of Black voters in the nation, is ripe for the Democratic Party to flip the Senate seat if only they’ll consistently spend money in the Deep South state and keep working to register voters.
“We lose elections by the margins of our disengagement,” Warnock said. “Mississippi is a blue state. It just doesn’t know it yet.”
Warnock said he spent years working to register and mobilize voters across his state alongside Stacey Abrams, who was raised in Gulfport before moving to Georgia, where she would later run for governor.
Abrams lost both of her gubernatorial bids, but many leading Democrats believe she built the organizing infrastructure that Warnock and fellow Georgia U.S. Senator Sen. Jon Ossoff ultimately used to flip what had been a deep-red state.
He said Colom is capable of replicating his success in Mississippi, which will require amping up Democratic voter turnout. In Mississippi and across the Deep South, churches have long been an engine of political organizing for Black voters and the Democratic Party.
Warnock, who was elected to the Senate after serving as the senior pastor of Atlanta’s famed Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Colom met with faith leaders for a discussion about how pastors can use their pulpits to connect their congregations to the polls.
The Rev. Jerry Young, senior pastor at New Hope Baptist Church in Jackson and former president of the National Baptist Convention, spoke about how he believes America is currently at a moral crossroads because the government is allowing the affluent to become richer while cutting benefits for the poor.
“There is an attitude in this country, I think, that is antithetical to everything that the barefoot boy from Nazareth preached and talked about,” Young said. “And I just think it’s not Black or white or Republican or Democratic. It’s what is right versus wrong.”
Pastor Stephen Cook of Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson said his congregants were coming for guidance on how to deal with everyday struggles such as the rising cost of healthcare and groceries.
“Every pastor, every faith leader in this room knows someone who is struggling to afford medication, worried about losing a hospital or working hard and still falling behind,” Cook said. “How do we help our congregation connect those everyday struggles to the decisions being made in Washington?”
Colom said Hyde-Smith’s failure to address those issues puts her at odds with Christian teachings.
Supporters cheer during a rally for Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Mississippi, at his campaign headquarters in Jackson on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today“She has forgotten about the working people of Mississippi,” Colom said. “She’s forgotten about the teachings of Jesus Christ. And she’s not living the values that actually make our country great.”
Warnock’s visit is the latest in a string of appearances by national Democrats as the race enters its homestretch. Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland and Cory Booker of New Jersey have already campaigned in Mississippi for Colom, the Democratic nominee.
Former President Barack Obama recorded an ad for Colom that began running this week. “Mississippi, it’s time for a change,” Obama says in the ad.
More are coming. Former Vice President Kamala Harris will campaign with Colom in Columbus on Oct. 22, and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit cities along the Gulf Coast on Oct. 27 before the Nov. 3 election.
Hyde-Smith has criticized Colom for his ties to the national party and for using national Democratic surrogates.
Her campaign manager, Jake Monssen, said in a statement that Colom “will suffer the same fate as the last two candidates President Obama endorsed in Mississippi,” referring to Obama’s endorsements of Mike Espy in the 2020 Senate race against Hyde-Smith and Jim Hood in the 2019 governor’s race.
President Donald Trump has again endorsed Hyde-Smith.
Colom has countered that Hyde-Smith is out of touch with average Mississippians and afraid to face voters in town halls or debate him. He has said he is focused on lowering costs for Mississippi families, raising the minimum wage and protecting health care and rural hospitals.
Colom and Hyde-Smith are also competing against independent candidate Ty Pinkins.
Earlier on Wednesday, Warnock said he visited the Jackson home of the late Medgar Evers, the civil rights legend who was assassinated in his driveway after he spent years registering Black voters.
The Democratic senator spoke about the central role that Mississippi civil rights heroes such as James Meredith and Fannie Lou Hamer played in reshaping American politics by fighting for the right to vote.
Warnock said the political stakes are always higher in the South, where “bloodstained ballots” mark the sacrifices made by legends such as Evers, James Meredith and Fannie Lou Hamer.
“This is our moment,” Warnock said. “It is a moral moment. Don’t count out the South because as goes the South, so goes the rest of the nation.”
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