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By Khaleda Rahman and Hannah Parry
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A viral campaign ad helped Democrat Scott Colom turn what was expected to be a comfortable Republican victory into an unexpectedly competitive Senate race in Mississippi.
Tuesday's elections saw Democrats win control of both the House and Senate, as voters sent a stinging rebuke of President Donald Trump and his party. Democrats defeated Republicans across the map, flipping states that have been reliably red for decades and ones the president handily won in 2024 amid voters' frustration over high prices and the Iran war.
But deep red Mississippi, which Trump carried by about 23 points in 2024, emerged as one of the most surprising Senate battlegrounds. While forecasters and polls had favored incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the race between her and Colom remains too close to call. The outcome may not be known for several days as election officials continue counting votes.
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Regardless of the eventual result, Colom's performance represents a remarkable achievement for a Democrat in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. If elected, he would become the first Black U.S. Senator elected in the state since Reconstruction.
At least in part, Colom's unexpectedly strong performance can be attributed to a 28-second ad that brought national attention to his campaign in the weeks leading up to the election, homing in on an issue that has hurt Republicans across the country: affordability.
Colom credited Patrick Gaspard, a former U.S. Ambassador and a key external adviser for the campaign, for the idea to take his Republican rival's "inexcusable gaffe and do something edgy with it that could get attention."
In the same post on X, Colom also praised ad director Ryan Sayles, who he said did "GAME CHANGING work with SO little."
Following the ad, "pick another senator" became a slogan for Colom's campaign. And voters in Mississippi appear to have taken the message seriously enough to make the race far more competitive than many had anticipated.
Experts told Newsweek that while it's difficult to assess the impact any particular ad may have had on a race, Colom's video picked up on the concerns of voters across the political spectrum in a clever and humorous way. In a contest this close, even a relatively small shift in voter sentiment could prove consequential.
"No doubt it's virality helped move the needle with some voters, and in a race this close, it only takes a little movement to make a difference," Marvin King, an associate professor at the University of Mississippi who focuses on African American politics, told Newsweek.
Newsweek has reached out to Colom and Sayles for comment.
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‘Pick Another Senator’
Colom made affordability central to his campaign, repeatedly criticizing Hyde-Smith on grocery, gas and health care costs.
But his campaign gained national attention only after releasing the video in October that revived the comments Hyde-Smith, an ally of Trump, made earlier this year.
The ad begins with a snippet of the senator saying that if consumers are upset over high beef prices, "you know, you have so many proteins to choose from."
The ad then cuts to a man grilling burgers, who says: "Pick another protein? S***, I'd rather pick another senator instead."
A woman in a diner says: "Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind! I'd rather pick another senator."
"Pick another protein? What the f—," a woman in a grocery store says.
The ad ends with Colom at a dining table. He laughs, then tells voters, "Pick another senator instead."
The video went viral with Mississippi's Clarion Ledger reporting that it garnered 2.8 million views on social media in 36 hours. As of Friday, the video had more than 15 million views on Colom's X account and almost 100,000 likes.
‘Game Changing’ Moment
Even with the race still too close to call, some have credited Colom's unexpectedly strong performance to the viral ad.
"If he wins, this has to go down as one of the best political ads of all time," political forecaster Nate Silver wrote on X.
Colom himself called the viral ad a "game changing" moment for his campaign.
On Wednesday, Colom wrote on X that Democratic strategist Patrick Gaspard had given him the idea of taking Hyde-Smith's "inexcusable gaffe" and doing something "edgy with it that could get attention."
He also praised his content creator, Ryan Sayles, who directed and edited the ad, saying he should be "considered the breakout-star of this cycle."
"He did GAME CHANGING work with SO little," Colom wrote.
Garnering ‘Above Average Attention’
Alex Coppock, an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University who has researched the impact of digital advertising on voter turnout, said the ad likely reached more voters than others.
"The ad is funny, uses profanity in an authentic way, has memorable alliteration and wordplay, so I bet that it garnered above average attention," Coppock told Newsweek.
Coppock said his work shows ads generally have little impact on races, but that Colom's could have made a difference in a contest that has proved unexpectedly close.
"Our experimental work on ads shows that ads generally have small effects, something like 0.75 percentage points immediately after seeing an ad once," he said.
"Really great ads are something like 1.5 points, weak ads close to 0 points. Those numbers don't account for dosage or for decay, but they just mean: Most ads work a small amount, supposing you can get people to watch them," Coppock continued.
He added: "This ad might have made a difference in such an extremely tight race, especially if it reached many people and stuck in their minds because it was so clever. Then again, with a race this close, every single action by either campaign that moved a few hundred votes this way or that 'decided' the election."
Brian Shoup, a professor of political science at Mississippi State University, told Newsweek that Colom's ad highlighted the affordability issue in a way "that transcended strong party affiliations."
"While we can't yet reliably say that this ad on its own increased turnout for Colom, it is definitely the case that the structure of turnout in this midterm is the inverse of a lot of past Mississippi races, where Republican turnout is far higher per capita than Democratic turnout," he said.
"I think that, just as we saw in some other places around the country, the cost-of-living problem is driving voters to turn out for Democrats in 2026 and potentially depressing GOP turnout," Shoup added.
He also argued that the ad "helped nationalize this race in a way that brought significant viral attention to Colom's campaign."
"Prior to the fall, Colom's campaign wasn't receiving as much support from Democratic-aligned PACs and organizations, something that Mississippi Democratic leaders have long complained about," Shoup said. "The ad, by going viral, definitely helped his campaign attract more financial support."
Shortly after the ad debuted, Senate Majority PAC, the super political action committee aimed at boosting Democratic Senate candidates, invested $1.2 million in the race. The super PAC later invested another $1 million.
King agreed that the ad had picked up on the concerns of both Republican and Democrat voters.
"First, it demonstrated the indifference many voters feel that politicians show toward them and their everyday concerns," he said.
"Second, as a former state agriculture commissioner, Cindy Hyde-Smith should know how important the agricultural economy is to Mississippi. Voters held her accountable for not doing enough to protect American producers and American consumers," King continued.
Travis N. Ridout, a professor and the director of the School of Politics, Philosophy and Public Affairs at Washington State University whose work focuses on political advertising, cautioned that many factors contribute to election victories.
"The video certainly is catchy and probably helped with name recognition while reinforcing a central message that many Democrats ran on: Prices are too high," Ridout told Newsweek.
He added, "But election outcomes are determined by so many things that to say that one video was responsible strikes me as going too far."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Rebecca Flood, Shakeema Edwards, Gray R Thomas.
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