Ty Pinkins, a longshot candidate seeking to defeat Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, says he stayed in the race to draw votes away from Democratic nominee Scott Colom after an April poll showed he had virtually no chance of winning. He claims his strategy mainly siphoned support from Republicans, as the partial results indicate: Colom led Hyde-Smith by 1,936 votes, or 0.2 percentage points, with 96.2% of the vote counted. Pinkins had secured 20,010 votes, about 2.1% of the total, mostly in areas with relatively small Black populations. He says he avoided campaigning in heavily Black areas to prevent splitting Colom’s vote, even though both men are Black. A former Democratic nominee for Mississippi secretary of state and a U.S. Army veteran, Pinkins lost the 2026 Senate race to Republican Roger Wicker with about 37% of the vote against nearly 63%, but he made another bid for the seat.
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