A week after Election Day, Mississippi still doesn't know who its next senator is. Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 2,500 votes, CNN reported on November 9, with thousands of provisional ballots still to be checked.

In that week, Colom has held at least eight public events — a senior center, a diner, a record store, local universities — and sat for multiple interviews.

Hyde-Smith, the senator who has represented Mississippi since 2018, "has not been seen publicly since she left her election night watch party just outside of Jackson after declaring that she would remain her state's junior senator," CNN reported. Her statements have come "solely on X," including a Bible verse about hope on Sunday.

What happened when reporters found her

On Monday the Senate came back from a six-week break, and reporters caught up with Hyde-Smith in the halls of the Capitol. According to CNN, she "repeatedly declined to answer questions from reporters in the Capitol hallways about her election."

When she finally spoke, she said: "We're still counting votes."

She didn't answer when she was asked whether she would go to court for a recount if she loses. Asked if the results surprised her, CNN reported, "the senator said she was surprised by the reporters following her."

That's the answer a sitting United States senator gave when asked about an election for the seat she holds — that the surprise was being asked.

Silent in public, busy in the counties

Hyde-Smith isn't doing nothing. She just isn't doing it in front of voters.

Her campaign manager told CNN that the senator and her team "are working around the clock across Mississippi to protect the integrity of this election and to ensure every legal vote is counted." On X on November 6 she wrote, "we are not backing down. This election is not over," and vowed to "see this through to the very end!"

What "working around the clock" looks like on the ground: the Mississippi Republican Party's chairman held a press conference last week to talk up the more than 50 volunteer lawyers and observers the party had sent across the state, CNN reported. And as we reported last week, Hyde-Smith's own lawyers demanded that all 82 Mississippi counties set affidavit ballots — the ones voters cast when there's a question at the polls — off in a separate pile, while she was trailing. Colom's lawyer says state law doesn't allow that and that it could tie a ballot to the voter who cast it.

So the senator had time to put demands to all 82 counties. She didn't have time for one question from a reporter about whether she'll take the result to court.

This is how she ran the whole race

None of this is new. It's the campaign she ran.

Hyde-Smith's campaign refused Colom's invitations to debate before Election Day and "did relatively few campaign events even as Colom was frequently on the trail," CNN reported. We wrote in August that she hadn't debated an opponent since 2018 — and that when Colom asked "Where's Cindy?", her campaign answered with a line about George Soros's apartment instead of agreeing to the one town hall he'd asked for.

Even her own voters noticed. A man from her hometown of Brookhaven, in a county she won nearly 2 to 1, told CNN: "I would like to personally have seen more campaigning from Cindy." A school-board colleague of hers said Republicans are "going to have to campaign better. They're going to have to have better candidates. They're going to have to work harder."

Colom's question on Friday was the same one he asked all fall: "Ultimately, at some point, the senator needs to speak out. Where is Cindy Hyde-Smith? We want to hear from her. She needs to answer questions."

Why it matters

A senator's job is to answer to the people of her state. A close count is exactly when that matters most — when voters want to know whether every ballot will be counted, whether she'll accept the result, and whether she'll drag it into court.

Hyde-Smith has given Mississippi a Bible verse, a "we are not backing down," and a team of lawyers. She hasn't given them an answer to any of those questions.

What we know

Since election night, Cindy Hyde-Smith has held no public event in Mississippi, while Scott Colom held at least eight events. In the Capitol on November 9 she repeatedly declined reporters' questions, said only "We're still counting votes," would not say whether she'd sue for a recount, and said what surprised her was the reporters. Meanwhile Mississippi Republicans sent more than 50 lawyers and observers into the count, and her lawyers asked all 82 counties to set affidavit ballots aside while she trailed.

Source

This post is based on reporting from CNN.