Former President Bill Clinton moved through a throng of people at the Link Centre in Tupelo, pausing to shake hands, take selfies and hug Mississippians after he spoke in support of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom at a rally.
“My friend George Bush once said, ‘Democracy is self-correcting.’ We’re about to find out in Mississippi because Scott is the correction,” Clinton said earlier in the rally, quoting former President George W. Bush, as the crowd erupted into cheers. “He’s had great preparation. As a prosecutor, he has to deal with evidence and its consequences. So, this fact-free politics is not for him. A prosecutor knows something Washington needs to learn all over again. Saying something that’s wrong louder every day than he did the day before doesn’t magically make it right.”
Clinton’s visit comes days after Trump campaigned in Corinth, Mississippi, on behalf of incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Democrats have boosted their intensity of supporting Hyde-Smith’s challenger, Colom, amidst an electoral environment that is growing increasingly sour for Republicans due to high gas prices and concerns about the economy. Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi since the 1980s, but the party sees hope in Colom’s campaign after a string of close Senate and state-level elections over the last eight years.
“People like President Clinton, they’re getting to see the real Mississippi,” Colom said. “They’re getting to see what we’re made of. Because I truly believe deep down in my heart, there is nothing wrong with Mississippi that can’t be fixed with what’s right about Mississippi. But, we got to do it together. It’s winning time, y’all.”
Colom is nearing the end of a heated, bitter campaign against Hyde-Smith that has featured allegations, insults and AI advertisements. Clinton’s visit continued a parade of high-profile Democratic politicians to visit Mississippi like former Vice President Kamala Harris, U.S. Sen Cory Booker from New Jersey and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock from Georgia have campaigned with Colom in recent weeks. Former President Barack Obama filmed a supportive ad for Colom and Senate Democrats also launched a $1.2 million ad buy to assist Colom.
Clinton said Congress needed people like Colom to be able to work on both sides of the political aisle and pass the best policies for the American people. He recalled a 1997 budget agreement that he signed into law that Republicans had sponsored to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which now insures almost 35 million children.
“What matters—are people better off when you quit or when you started? Do children have a bright future? Are we coming together instead of being torn apart? Think about the kind of place America would be today if everybody from right to left just showed up asking those questions,” Clinton said. “ … We need more of that, America. That’s really what Scott is asking for this job to do. Think what it could be if we had even one more person who could lead people in Washington to measure a good day by whether somebody else’s life got better.”
Mississippi has the highest number of Black residents in the U.S. at 38%, and most Black voters choose Democratic candidates. Yet Mississippi hasn’t had a Black statewide official since Reconstruction. Mississippi’s last Democratic U.S. senator was John C. Stennis, who served from 1947 to 1989. White voters in Mississippi have long elected Republicans, with few crossing the political aisle to elect Black candidates.
However, Democrats have seen glimmers of hope in recent years. Hyde-Smith defeated Espy by only seven points in the 2018 runoff election. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves defeated former Attorney General Jim Hood by only five points to win office in 2018 and defeated former Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley by only three points in Reeves’ 2023 reelection bid.
‘We Pay the Tariffs’
About 500 people filled the pews of the Link Centre, including 2023 Democratic candidate for Mississippi governor Brandon Presley and current Democratic candidate for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District, Cliff Johnson.
Each seat had a green and white political sign that said “Mississippi Forward” that attendees waved when they cheered or agreed with something Clinton or Colom said.
“The reason I want to bring President Clinton to Tupelo is because I understand what tariffs have done to the furniture industry,” Colom said at the Oct. 30 rally. “I understand what it’s done for small businesses, and we need to bring somebody who was president that actually knew how to run an economy. When I say, “Mississippi costs matter,’ what I mean is I’m going to take that power back that belongs to Mississippi when we go to war because Cindy High Prices, that’s not her voice, that’s our voice. And she’s giving it away to her MAGA daddy. We’re bringing it back.”
During the early 2000s, Clinton said he and Trump had a friendly relationship playing golf. Even back then, Trump was speaking fondly of tariffs, Clinton told the Tupelo crowd.
“He kept saying, ‘Who is the biggest, strongest country in the world? Why don’t we just put a bunch of tariffs on everybody else and stop paying taxes all together?’ I said, ‘Well, because these people don’t just eat the tariffs. They just charge the people who buy the stuff whatever it is. So we pay the tariffs.’ And he just didn’t want to hear what I had to say,” Clinton recalled at the rally.
When speaking about the war with Iran, Clinton called it an “endless war of us versus them” using a distraction to turn Americans’ focus away from “whatever the issue of today is and what we ought to do about it.”
“You don’t start killing people unless you know how you’re going to stop,” Clinton said as the crowd cheered.
Much of Clinton’s speech was about how Mississippians are paying the price at the gas pump due to Washington’s war with Iran, spending more money for household items because of Trump’s tariffs, buying other proteins while beef prices are skyrocketing and losing healthcare due to a bill that Trump calls “beautiful.”
Americans are spending more on gas while Trump’s war with Iran agitates the world’s flow of fuel. The national average price for a gallon of gas is $4.22 as of Oct. 29, down from $4.45 a month ago, and up from $3.03 in 2025, AAA motor club data show. The highest cost of gas was $5.01 in 2022 under former President Joe Biden, while the highest price of diesel was $6.50 on Sept. 22, 2026, under Trump.
The price of beef has increased by 2% within a month of Trump announcing the U.S. would import more beef to lower costs for Americans. American families have paid more than $1,700 due to tariffs from February 2025 to January 2026, at a total cost of $231 billion for all Americans, the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee – Minority calculated in February 2026.
The Center for American Progress estimates that more than 10 million Americans will be uninsured by 2034 as a result of the Big Beautiful Bill. It says Affordable Care Act plan selections have decreased by 1.2 million Americans and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participation dropped four million Americans as of June 2026. However, most Americans will not feel the effects of the bill until after the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
While all of this is consuming Americans’ minds, Clinton said Trump is only focused on himself and his vanity projects, like creating an 250-foot Triumphal Arch at Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C., renaming the Kennedy Center to include Trump’s name, adding gold decorations to the White House and constructing a ballroom in it. Clinton said the whole “Make America Great Again” movement is designed to keep one person—Trump—happy, regardless of how it affects everyday Americans.
“Public service has to be more than telling people to get used to less,” Clinton said.
And meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has not hosted a single town hall in her six-year tenure to hear from Mississippians about these issues and other concerns.
“And now, she’s asking for six more years,” Clinton said as the crowd booed and yelled, “No!” “Surely, the people of Mississippi are tired of being lied to. Most people who want the job show up for the interview.”
In February, Hyde-Smith said Americans who can’t afford beef “have so many proteins to choose from” during an interview with WLOX host Hugh Keeton. The host had asked what Republicans are doing to get both beef prices and the cost of living under control, pointing to a key 2024 campaign promise Trump made when he said he would “end inflation on day one.”
She defended her choice of words in a follow-up interview with WLOX, saying gas and food prices are the top two issues facing Mississippians.
“Gasoline, unless you want to ride the bicycle, that’s your only option,” Hyde-Smith told WLOX. “Thank goodness, when mothers want to feed their families, when you go out shopping there are proteins, you want to feed meat, there are some cheaper prices. And that’s what that statement was about because there’s nothing to replace that gasoline unless you want to ride a bicycle.”
Clinton said Colom would do the opposite if the Mississippi Democrat is elected to the U.S Senate. Colom would review policy decisions and bring the issues home to talk about them with Mississippians, the former president added.
“If he gets a hard case up there, there’s a major foreign-policy issue or something like that, it affects you or it could affect you adversely, whatever happens—first thing he’ll do is come home and host a town-hall meeting and talk to you about it,” Clinton said of Colom. “Every American knows that once in a while, you have to do something that hurts for a day or two because 10 years from now, your kids would be better off.”
‘Yearning to Breathe Free Again’
After Clinton spoke, Colom hosted two roundtable discussions with political candidates, elected officials, Clinton’s former political strategist James Carville, Cliff Johnson and Brandon Presley.
Tupelo City Council member Rose Jones works at a senior-citizen apartment building in Fulton, Mississippi, taking care of elderly people when she’s not attending to city business. Democratic candidate for U.S. House Cliff Johnson and Colom said they visited that facility recently and spoke with some people who said they do not eat for two days out of the month, that they had not bought meat in a couple years and that they did not have a ride to get from Fulton to Tupelo for medical treatment.
Johnson quoted Fannie Lou Hamer’s “I question America” speech when speaking to Mississippians at the rally.
“It causes you to ask a question: ‘Is this America, land of the free, home of the brave?’ Because it’s sad. But let me turn it and bring the glass half-full. It is America and it’s the best of America because Rosie buys those people some groceries out of her money. … And I want to say, that is America and that is Mississippi.”
Carville said that if Americans elect Democrats, including Colom, Congress needs to prioritize increasing the minimum wage and “get out of Iran yesterday to drop those prices. Then, you got to do the hard stuff.”
Healthcare and energy independence should be priorities for both Mississippi and Congress, Presley said. He noted that he and his wife Katelyn would return to their Water Valley house that night in Yalobusha County, which is one of several Mississippi counties without a hospital emergency room.
“We got 10,000 miles of natural gas pipelines in the state of Mississippi that we should be utilizing to become energy independent,” Presley said. “And the Big Beautiful Bill sucked the tax credits out of making America energy independent.”
Mitch Landrieu, the senior advisor to the president for Infrastructure Coordination who previously served as mayor of New Orleans and lieutenant governor for Louisiana, spoke on one of the panels.
Emmett Till’s 1955 lynching and Mamie Till Mobley’s decision to have her son’s casket open at his funeral to “let the world see” how Black people are treated in the U.S. “was actually faith that America could be better. And it could’ve been better if Emmett had lived,” Landrieu said.
He said Trump is doing four things to raise Americans’ cost of living: enacting tariffs, instigating the war with Iran, pushing the Big Beautiful Bill to cut healthcare and supporting the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Callais v. Louisiana.
“And even if people agree with (Trump) now, I’m telling you that this country is yearning to breathe free again,” Landrieu said at the rally. “And freedom is not free. Some people paid the ultimate sacrifice. What is being asked of you is to go vote.”
‘One Job Ought to be Enough’
Clinton’s visit concluded an intense October of campaigning for Colom. Just three days earlier, he and former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appeared in Biloxi to mobilize voters.
Buttigieg called U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom “somebody who appreciates the importance of infrastructure” when he campaigned with him at the Saint John Community Center on Oct. 27.
The former transportation secretary praised Colom’s understanding of healthcare as a necessity, the candidate’s support of public schools and his plans to fight to raise the minimum wage.
“You don’t have to be red or blue to believe that one job ought to be enough to live on in the United States,” Buttigieg said on Oct. 27.
When he urged Mississippians to get out to the polls and vote on Nov. 3, Buttigieg encouraged people to recognize that “the U.S. flag isn’t planted on one side or the other of the political aisle.”
“We can have nice things in Mississippi, in the United States of America. We just got to make sure we get better leaders,” Buttigieg said. “Now is our chance.”
MFP Gulf Coast Reporter Amy Schafer contributed to this report.
Mississippians will vote for candidates running for federal, regional and local offices in the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 3. Mississippians must have registered to vote by Oct. 5 to cast their ballot in the upcoming election. Check your voter registration by visiting sos.ms.gov or by calling your county circuit clerk’s office.
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