George Soros's top political advisor, a Massachusetts senator, and a former Kennedy-dynasty congressman recently joined forces on a fundraising call to map out a Democratic path to victory in one of the most Republican states in the country. Their target: Mississippi's U.S. Senate seat held by Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.
The call, first reported by Fox News Digital, featured Michael Vachon, described as Soros's top advisor, alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and former Rep. Joe Kennedy, also of Massachusetts. The trio laid out the case for Democratic challenger Scott Colom, a district attorney who is trying to do something Mississippi Democrats haven't managed in nearly four decades: win a U.S. Senate seat.
Federal Election Commission filings show that members of the Soros family have donated nearly $30,000 to Colom's campaign this cycle. That figure alone tells a story about where the national progressive donor class sees opportunity, and how far outside a state's borders the money trail can run.
Vachon was blunt about Colom's prospects and his vulnerabilities on the call. He told participants that the conditions for a Democratic upset had never been better, both nationally and locally.
"Scott can win in Mississippi. The conditions are right in a way that they've never been before at the national level and at the local level. He's a great candidate running against a very weak candidate, and people across the country are angry about the state of the nation."
But Vachon also conceded the most basic problem facing any challenger in a deep-red state: nobody knows who he is. He said that once voters learn about Colom, they want to support him, but that the barrier to name recognition is cash.
"Not enough people know who he is and that he's running. Once people know who he is and know his story and know he's running, then they want to vote for him. And, you know, what stands in the way of that name recognition, honestly, is money, right?"
That candid admission frames the entire effort. The Soros network and its allies aren't betting on Mississippi's political culture shifting on its own. They're betting they can buy enough airtime and ground-game infrastructure to manufacture a competitive race in a state that hasn't sent a Democrat to the Senate in roughly four decades.
It's a familiar playbook. Left-wing outside money has increasingly targeted red-state races, flooding campaigns with dollars from donors who couldn't find the state on a map.
Sen. Warren used the call to lay out the legislative stakes she sees riding on a Democratic Senate majority. Her priorities had nothing to do with Mississippi's farmers, its infrastructure, or its economy. Instead, she rattled off a progressive wish list aimed at restructuring American elections.
"I know you've already talked about other things we can do here, but we need to deliver by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, guarantee the right to get your vote counted, ending gerrymandering anywhere in the United States, and, my own personal favorite, it's time for D.C. statehood."
D.C. statehood. Ending gerrymandering nationwide. A federal voting-rights overhaul. These are not kitchen-table issues for Mississippians. They are the priorities of a progressive senator from Massachusetts who sees a flipped Senate seat as a vehicle for a national power grab.
That Warren said the quiet part out loud, on a call organized by Soros's advisor, no less, tells Mississippi voters everything they need to know about whose agenda this campaign is designed to serve. The progressive movement's reach into traditionally conservative territory is no longer a theory. It's a line item on a fundraising call.
Nathan Calvert, Hyde-Smith's communications director, wasted no time responding. He framed the Soros-Warren involvement as confirmation of what Republicans have long suspected about Colom's candidacy.
"This comes as no surprise. Scott Colom has always relied on the backing of out-of-state liberal elites, and now George Soros' political network and Elizabeth Warren are openly treating Mississippi as the next stepping stone to enacting their radical national agenda."
The "out-of-state liberal elites" line is standard campaign rhetoric, but the underlying facts give it teeth. The call's three most prominent participants, Vachon, Warren, and Kennedy, are all based in the Northeast. The nearly $30,000 in Soros-family donations documented in FEC filings came from one of the most prominent progressive donor families in America. And the legislative agenda Warren outlined on the call had nothing to do with the state these donors are trying to influence.
The pattern is not unique to Mississippi. Soros-linked funding has surfaced in Democratic campaigns across the country, often in races where the national donor class sees a chance to reshape the political map.
Colom, for his part, tried to reframe the donor question. He insisted his campaign is grassroots and powered by Mississippians, and he took a shot at Hyde-Smith's own fundraising record.
"I'm running a grassroots campaign powered by Mississippians, and the only voices I will ever listen to are theirs, not those of donors or special interests. That's the difference between me and Cindy Hyde-Smith, who answers to whoever cuts her the biggest check, while Mississippians pay the price."
He pointed specifically to Hyde-Smith's fertilizer industry donors. Fox News Digital reported that Hyde-Smith has received $14,000 in donations from fertilizer industry donors since 2018, $11,000 from Koch Industries and $3,000 from Nutrien. Colom alleged both companies are under federal investigation for inflating fertilizer prices, though the specific investigating agency and the current status of any such probe were not detailed.
"Just ask the fertilizer companies under federal investigation, who gave to her campaign while Mississippi farmers are paying more for fertilizer."
The pivot is politically convenient, but the math doesn't quite add up as an equivalence. Nearly $30,000 from the Soros family in a single cycle dwarfs $14,000 from fertilizer companies over seven years. And while Colom calls his campaign grassroots, the fundraising call that surfaced featured a billionaire's advisor, a U.S. senator, and a former congressman, all from Massachusetts.
The race carries a personal edge. Before launching his Senate bid, Colom was nominated by the Biden administration to serve as a district court judge in Mississippi. Hyde-Smith blocked that nomination using the blue slip, the longstanding Senate tradition that gives each home-state senator veto power over judicial nominees from their state.
That veto kept Colom off the bench and, arguably, helped set the stage for his Senate run. President Trump has since pushed to eliminate the blue-slip tradition to prevent Democrats from blocking his own judicial nominees. The irony is layered: the same procedural tool Republicans used to block a Democratic nominee in Mississippi is now one Trump wants scrapped when it works against him.
Colom cited his record as district attorney as evidence of his independence from donors, calling it "proof of how I make decisions: based on the evidence and the law, not based on who's writing the checks." Whether Mississippi voters buy that framing, while his campaign collects Soros-family money and takes strategy calls from Elizabeth Warren, remains an open question.
The broader pattern of outside money flooding into state-level political fights is now a fixture of American campaigns. Mississippi is simply the latest battleground where national progressive donors believe they can reshape the electorate with enough cash.
The fundamental question for Mississippi voters this November is straightforward: Who is Scott Colom running for? His own answer is Mississippians. The fundraising call tells a different story, one in which a billionaire's advisor diagnoses a money problem, a Massachusetts senator lays out a D.C. statehood agenda, and a former Massachusetts congressman lends his name to the effort.
None of that is illegal. Campaigns take money from out of state every cycle, on both sides. But voters have a right to know whose phone calls a candidate is on before they decide whose interests he'll serve in Washington. The Soros donor network's influence in American politics is well documented, and its latest target is a state that hasn't elected a Democratic senator in a generation.
Mississippi didn't ask for Elizabeth Warren's help. That she showed up anyway, with a wish list that reads like a faculty-lounge manifesto, tells voters more about this campaign than any yard sign ever could.
