In October 2023, someone fired shots near the Brookhaven, Mississippi home of Cindy Hyde-Smith. Nobody was hurt.

Nearly three years later, on the campaign trail, Hyde-Smith brought that shooting up — and tied it to the man running against her.

On August 31, 2026, at a campaign stop at a Cracker Barrel in Brookhaven, she was recorded in a side conversation with two people. The audio was obtained by American Bridge 21st Century, a progressive super PAC that sends trackers to record politicians, and shared with the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, which published a transcript on September 13. Her own campaign confirmed she was talking about the 2023 shooting.

What she said

According to the Clarion Ledger's transcript, one of the guests brought up "that guy" who came by. Hyde-Smith answered:

"Oh yeah, the guy who shot at us."

Then:

"But he's in prison where he belongs. Yeah. It's just, a lot comes with this job people don't know about."

And then she turned to her Democratic opponent, district attorney Scott Colom:

"And with this campaign going on, my opponent, he has got his hands in so many different places. We have to be very careful."

One of the guests asked whether she meant Colom was "hiring people." Hyde-Smith replied:

"People are just crazy out there. Maybe not him doing it, they're just supporting him and they get caught up in it."

The problem with that

Here is the timeline.

• October 22, 2023: A person fired rounds from the road toward her house while Hyde-Smith and her family were home, her spokesperson told Roll Call at the time. The U.S. Capitol Police, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office investigated. The Clarion Ledger notes it was unclear then whether the shooting was even intentional, or whether she was the target.
• September 2025: Scott Colom announced he was running for the Senate — almost two years after the shooting.

There was no Colom Senate campaign in 2023 for anyone to be supporting.

And by Hyde-Smith's own account in the recording, the man who shot at them is already "in prison where he belongs." The Capitol Police did not answer the Clarion Ledger's questions about the status of the case.

So in one breath she said the shooter was in prison. In the next, she floated the idea that people backing the man now running against her could "get caught up in it."

Her campaign won't say what she meant

The Clarion Ledger asked Hyde-Smith's campaign two simple questions: What did the senator mean? And does she believe her opponent's supporters were involved in the 2023 shooting?

The campaign didn't answer either one.

Instead, campaign manager Jake Monssen attacked the group that made the recording. He said American Bridge had featured a Colom supporter in its TV ads who had "made violent threats against President Trump online," and complained that the group was now "surreptitiously recording private conversations. Clearly they will stop at nothing." As backup, his statement linked to an article by far-right activist Laura Loomer.

None of that addresses the shooting, or explains why Hyde-Smith connected it to Colom's supporters.

"I prosecute violence"

Colom is the elected district attorney for Mississippi's 16th judicial district. He told the Clarion Ledger the comments were offensive to him and to the "hardworking Mississippians from all walks of life" backing his campaign.

"I'm a district attorney. I don't condone violence; I prosecute violence. The only thing I 'got my hands in' is campaigning all across Mississippi."

He said Hyde-Smith was "trying to make excuses for the fact that she refuses to campaign": "She hasn't done a town hall in six years. She's deflecting from her record of cutting health care for Mississippians."

We've documented that absence ourselves — she hasn't debated an opponent since 2018, and when she was challenged to hold a single town hall anywhere in the state, her campaign manager answered with a line about George Soros.

It echoes 2018

Charles Taylor, executive director of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, told the Clarion Ledger the remarks seemed to carry a racial undertone. He pointed to the 2018 campaign event where Hyde-Smith said she would "be on the front row" of a public hanging if one of the attendees invited her. She apologized for that at a debate — nine days after the video surfaced.

"A U.S. Senator who wants to go to a public hanging potentially suggesting she's afraid of Black Mississippians by saying a lot of Scott Colom's supporters are targeting her is just appalling," Taylor said. "If anything, people should be afraid of her."

Not the first time she's gone after Colom this way

This race has a history. Hyde-Smith and Colom were at odds long before either was on a ballot:

• When President Biden nominated Colom to be a federal judge in 2022, Hyde-Smith killed the nomination by refusing to return her "blue slip" — even though fellow Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker backed him.
• Her campaign set up a website made to look like Colom's own, branding him the "transgender defender" who pushed sex-change surgeries for children — and the only document it links never uses the word "surgery."

Now, rather than face Colom in a debate or face voters at a town hall, she's telling people at a campaign stop that the ones backing him could "get caught up in" violence against her.

What the recording shows

Cindy Hyde-Smith was recorded on August 31, 2026, telling two people at a Brookhaven campaign stop that the man who shot near her home in October 2023 is "in prison where he belongs" — and then suggesting that supporters of her opponent, Scott Colom, could "get caught up in it." Colom didn't enter the Senate race until September 2025, almost two years after the shooting. Asked what she meant and whether she believes his supporters were involved, her campaign didn't answer.

Source

Bea Anhuci, Mississippi Clarion Ledger: "Hyde-Smith suggests Colom supporters may have had role in MS shooting" (September 13, 2026). Photo: Kylie Cooper/Reuters, via the Clarion Ledger.