Pinkins claims role in narrow Senate race
A third-party candidate says his small vote share prevented the incumbent from winning by a wider margin in Mississippi.
By Fernando Rojas ·
A third-party candidate in the Mississippi Senate race received 20,010 votes as of Thursday.
Ty Pinkins, an independent lawyer, secured 2.1 percentage points of the total vote in a contest that remains extremely close. According to the Associated Press, Democrat Scott Colom leads Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith by 1,936 votes. That margin represents a 0.2 percentage point difference, with 96.2% of the nearly 952,000 counted ballots processed.
Pinkins told WTVA in Tupelo that he intended to win the election initially. However, an April poll conducted by SPLC Action Fund and Impact Research showed he had little chance of victory. The survey indicated Pinkins was pulling 70% of the Republican vote. He decided to remain on the ballot to act as a spoiler.
The independent candidate said he specifically avoided campaigning in areas with large Black populations. He did this to prevent splitting the Democratic base, which supports Colom, a fellow Black man. Pinkins said he focused his limited campaign efforts on counties with lower Black populations where Republicans were unhappy with Hyde-Smith.
"I probably attended maybe, maybe six events over the summer," Pinkins said. He noted that many voters in those areas contacted him directly. They told him they preferred voting for Pinkins to their incumbent senator because they did not want to support Hyde-Smith.
Pinkins argued that his presence split the Republican vote rather than the Black vote. He stated that for the first time since Reconstruction, a Black Democrat is leading in the Senate race. In the 2024 election for secretary of state, Pinkins lost to Roger Wicker, who won 63% of the vote to Pinkins' 37%.
The SPLC Action Fund predicted in April that Hyde-Smith's low favorability could open a path for Democrats. The group noted that Pinkins had the potential to play spoiler for either candidate. Neither the Colom nor Hyde-Smith campaigns immediately responded to requests for comment regarding the narrow margin.
The race outcome hangs on the remaining uncounted ballots. The current lead is smaller than Pinkins' total vote share. Colom and Hyde-Smith are the only major candidates remaining in the count as of Thursday.
