The Guardian reports:

The ad is simple, less than half a minute long, but many say it was the moment the nation took notice of Mississippi’s US Senate race.

In it, the incumbent Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a cattle farmer, answers a reporter’s question about the rising price of beef: “You know, you have so many proteins to choose from,” she says.

The ad then cuts to a man flipping burgers on a grill. “Pick another protein?” he says. “Shhiiiiii – I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

The viral ad was for Hyde-Smith’s Democratic challenger, Scott Colom, who won the Senate seat on Wednesday, becoming the first Democratic senator in Mississippi since 1982 and its first Black senator since the Reconstruction era. His ads were relevant to Mississippians and created memorable slogans – an early ad highlighted the history and progress of the state, while a more recent one spoofed the hit film Sinners, filmed in Mississippi. But his efforts to engage Mississippians didn’t start there.

Colom spent the past year reaching Mississippi residents where they were. From driving a “pick another protein” truck that offered free tacos, to talking to students and alums at college homecomings, to chatting with voters queued to see Donald Trump, Colom campaigned on an idea that’s not novel to Mississippians, but one that the rest of the country is only starting to fully realize: “Mississippi Matters.”

And he did it with little help from the Democratic party. [Continue reading…]