TUPELO — Former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom on Friday, casting Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith as out of touch with Mississippians struggling with surging consumer prices and lack of healthcare.

Clinton, joined by longtime adviser James Carville, argued that Colom, a district attorney in northern Mississippi, would work across party lines and put “Mississippi first,” while accusing Hyde-Smith of putting President Donald Trump first and rubber-stamping his agenda.

“I’m supporting Scott because he will honestly give you his opinion, and if you disagree, he’ll have a conversation with you. And if you can change his mind, he’ll change his mind,” Clinton said. “You can’t put MAGA first. You have to put Mississippi first.”

The crowd of roughly 400 people broke out with chants of “We want Scott” and “If we vote, we win,” mirroring other Colom rallies in Columbus and Biloxi. 

Colom’s campaign has drawn national attention to Mississippi, prompting pundits to ask whether a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982 could flip to blue. 

If elected, Colom would be the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction and the first elected by popular vote, in a state with a history of some of the nation’s most brutal racial violence.

The former president panned a Hyde-Smith interview on WLOX, where she said “you know, you have so many proteins to choose from” when asked about high beef prices. 

Clinton said that was “a shopping tip, not a policy.” 

“I don’t believe we need a senator to explain the existence of chicken,” Clinton said. 

Colom has repeatedly hammered Hyde-Smith for supporting Trump’s tariffs because he believes they’ve hurt farmers in Mississippi, a state where agriculture is the top industry. Clinton also criticized tariffs and gave a nod to how much they’ve impacted the furniture manufacturing industry in Tupelo. 

“Because you make so much furniture, you not only pay more for the food, you pay more to sit down at the table and eat it,” Clinton said. 

Clinton said Mississippians are smart enough to decide what the government should spend money on, contrasting affordable health care with Trump’s Rose Garden renovation at the White House, which he said looks like ‘the entrance to Liberace’s bedroom.” 

Hyde-Smith’s campaign has tried to use the steady string of national politicians such as Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stumping for Colom as a liability, and label him as part of the far-left faction of the Democratic Party. 

If Colom were to pull off an upset in ruby-red Mississippi, it would be a stunning defeat for President Donald Trump in the Deep South and make the incumbent Republican a casualty of the president’s sinking popularity. 

Colom’s campaign has homed in on issues of affordability, access to health care and a rejection of Trump’s tariffs in the home stretch of his campaign. He has pledged to tackle the cuts to Medicaid that the Republican-majority Congress passed as part of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. 

At a Thursday night Jackson rally alongside U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, Colom said his pitch to Republicans who may be on the fence about his campaign is to deliver what Trump originally promised to deliver for them in 2024. 

“They were promised lower grocery prices. That’s what I’m going to fight for,” Colom said. “That’s my message to them. I’m going to give you what you were promised in 2024. You were promised no more endless wars. I’m going to give you no more endless wars.”

Colom told reporters he wants to end partisan gerrymandering by largely taking redistricting out of state lawmakers’ hands. He also said he would advocate for the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore federal oversight of voting changes in states with a history of discrimination.

“We cannot allow people like Gov. Reeves to draw lines in ways where they get to pick the voters that matter. We have to make sure that independent commissions draw lines that empower the voters to pick the leaders.” 

Clyburn told a crowd of roughly 100 people they should elect Colom because he is interested in being a public servant and “not interested in being a partisan.”

Clyburn said he has encountered people who have grown dissatisfied with politics and don’t plan to vote because they believe one vote won’t make enough of a difference. He pushed back on that idea.

“The most critical things that happened to fairness in this country were each decided by one vote,” Clyburn said.

He pointed to the 1876 presidential election, when no candidate won a majority of Electoral College votes amid disputed results in several states. Congress formed a 15-member commission to settle it, and the commission voted 8-7 to award the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes. Hayes later withdrew federal troops from the South, effectively ending Reconstruction. 

Like Clyburn, Colom has urged the crowd to “write a new chapter” in Mississippi’s history that lifts the state as a whole and depart from the chapters stained with divisive history. 

“There is nothing wrong with Mississippi that can’t be fixed with what’s right about Mississippi,” Colom said.