Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom holds his phone as he sits at a wooden table, telling viewers in a Sept. 3 social-media video that he is about to call incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith to “wish her a good night.”
He taps on his phone and places it on the table as it rings. “Hello?” a female voice says.
“I can’t believe she answered,” Colom quickly whispers to the camera. He greets the voice coming from his phone.
“Excuse me?” the voice responds in a confused tone.
Colom, who is a Lowndes County defense attorney, talks to the woman, saying he is running against the senator because she “keeps voting against” the interests of Mississippians, but says he wants to call and wish her a good night’s rest anyway.
The woman’s voice in the video, however, was not Mississippi’s junior senator. Colom, who had just announced his campaign to oust her, was joining in on a social-media trend in which people call and wish their friends a good night, his communications team told the Mississippi Free Press. The team shared a Barstool Sports TikTok video as an example.
The Mississippi Republican Party, however, was not impressed with the candidate’s social media savvy. In a Sept. 4 letter, the Mississippi Republican Party called upon the U.S. Department of Justice and Clay Joyner, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi, to investigate the video.
Mississippi GOP Chairman Mike Hurst alleged that Colom “falsely impersonate(d)” the U.S. senator as a way to “trick” voters into “supporting” Colom, citing U.S. Code Title 18, Section 912.
The law Hurst cited says: “Whoever falsely assumes or pretends to be an officer or employee acting under the authority of the United States or any department, agency or officer thereof, and acts as such, or in such pretended character demands or obtains any money, paper, document, or thing of value, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
Hurst claimed that Colom’s video impersonated Hyde-Smith in order to get people to vote for him.
“While some may simply chalk this up to ‘dirty politics’ or expect a politician like Colom to lie, cheat and steal his way into office, without regard to the collateral damage to whomever gets in his way, impersonating the voice of a sitting United States Senator is not politics as usual and is not something to be taken lightly,” the chairman wrote in the letter.
“Rather, Colom appears to be attempting to falsely impersonate Senator Hyde-Smith and fraudulently use Senator Hyde-Smith’s voice to trick people into supporting him, donating to him, and voting for him, that is, to ‘obtain any money, paper, document, or thing of value,’” Hurst continued.
The chairman said Colom’s actions are made “worse” due to his role as 16th Circuit Court district attorney, “the highest law enforcement official in his respective judicial circuit.” Colom posted the video on his Facebook pages, Scott Colom and Scott Colom for Senate, as well as his TikTok profile
Colom: ‘The Video Is an Obvious Parody’
Scott Colom told the Mississippi Free Press that parodying a public figure is protected by the First Amendment, as shown by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1988 decision in Hustler Mag., Inc. v. Falwell.
“The video is an obvious parody. And the voice is clearly not Cindy Hyde-Smith and the voice never says that she’s Senator Hyde-Smith,” Colom said in a Sept. 11 statement to the Mississippi Free Press.
A U.S. Department of Justice Media Affairs spokesperson said, “No comment,” when the Mississippi Free Press reached out to the agency for this story.
Hyde-Smith Draws Broad Array of Challengers
In the call in Scott Colom’s video, the woman expresses incredulity that he is calling to wish her good night.
“Yeah, that’s the type of Christian I am, Senator Hyde-Smith,” he says. “Like I keep telling you, it’s not personal. You just need to learn how to put Mississippi first,” Colom says. “You know, when I’m senator, you can kind of watch my example of how to put our state first—”
“When you’re a senator?” the voice interjects.
“Yeah, I’m running to replace you because we need a senator that’s going to put us first, not D.C. politics,” Colom says.
Colom made the video the same day he announced his campaign against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Sept. 3, years after she blocked his nomination to a U.S. district court seat under former President Joe Biden.
The Lowndes County prosecutor is one of several candidates challenging Hyde-Smith. Priscilla Williams-Till, a relative of 1955 lynching victim Emmett Till, is also running for the Democratic nomination alongside Albert Littell. Hyde-Smith currently has two Republican challengers: Sarah Adlakha and Andrew S. Smith.
In July, Ty Pinkins, who ran as a Democrat against Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker in 2024, announced that he was leaving the Democratic Party and would run against Hyde-Smith as an independent.
