Former President Bill Clinton will campaign in Tupelo on Friday for Democratic Senate nominee Scott Colom, the Colom campaign told Mississippi Today.
The Democratic former president’s trip to Mississippi will be the latest in a string of appearances by national figures hoping to turn out voters in the state’s heated Senate race between Colom and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. President Donald Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris have each come to Mississippi over the past week to campaign for Hyde-Smith and Colom, respectively.
In a statement, Colom said Clinton would discuss issues important to Mississippi voters.
“I am honored President Clinton is coming to Tupelo to highlight the issues that matter most for Mississippians, from the rising cost of gas and groceries to the negative impact tariffs are having on our farmers and small businesses,” Colom said. “Those are the same issues Trump voters talked to me about when I walked the line of the Trump rally on Monday, and it’s why I know Mississippians are ready to fire Cindy High Prices on November 3rd.”
Clinton last came to Tupelo for a campaign event in 2008, when he spoke at a fish fry to support his wife, then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, during her 2008 presidential primary campaign. He also traveled to Jackson in 2016 to support his wife’s next primary campaign.
Colom’s campaign also told Mississippi Today that South Carolina U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn would campaign for Colom in Mississippi on Thursday. Clyburn, the former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, is set to make stops in Olive Branch, Ruleville and Jackson.
Clyburn will focus on voting rights and Hyde-Smith’s opposition to the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and Freedom to Vote Act, Colom’s campaign said. Mississippi remains embroiled in a fight over an expected push by the Republican-controlled state Legislature to redraw electoral maps, and Colom has highlighted the threat of redistricting on the campaign trail.
The South Carolina congressman also came to Mississippi in 2023 to campaign for Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor that year.
The Senate race has attracted a last-minute barrage of spending as Democrats see an opening and Republicans worry that reliably conservative Mississippi could become a casualty of Trump’s sinking popularity nationwide.
Former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg campaigned for Colom in Gulfport and Biloxi on Tuesday, pleading for Mississippi voters to “send shockwaves” by voting for Colom. He was preceded by a cavalcade of Democratic senators who have come to Mississippi in the election’s homestretch for the Democratic nominee.
Democrats hope to flip the U.S. Senate and have begun looking at Mississippi as a dark-horse pickup opportunity. At his rally in the rural northeast Mississippi town of Corinth on Monday, Trump said he came to Mississippi because he couldn’t “take a chance” that Republicans might lose what has been a reliably safe seat.
In a statement, Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager, said Clinton is “synonymous with higher taxes, low morals, sex crimes, and Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Americans and Mississippians are tired of being pandered to by the hypocritical elite like the Clinton family,” Monssen said. “It’s a shame Scott couldn’t get Hillary to join him on the campaign trail.”
The election is on Nov. 3.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
