More than 30 million voters have cast ballots nationwide
Officials announced late Monday that President Donald Trump plans to hold a rally Saturday in Salina, Kansas, marking his second visit to the state in less than two weeks. Trump’s event in Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday kicked off a week of aggressive campaigning that will include more stops in states he won comfortably in 2024, including Texas, South Carolina and Iowa. Vice President JD Vance was also campaigning for Republican candidates in Kansas and Montana.
The Associated Press described Trump’s Mississippi appearance as part of a continuing closing midterm rally blitz that highlighted Republicans’ challenges ahead of an election that could drastically shift power in Washington and statehouses across the country. AP said Democratic underdogs had expanded the House and Senate battleground maps because of widespread voter discontent over inflation, the Iran war and other aspects of Trump’s second presidency. The same report said Republicans were spending millions and still might not win districts drawn to favor them. Separately, AP described Democrats, including progressives, as expanding their efforts.
Top Democratic candidates and their surrogates were also greeting voters as they sought to end Republicans’ threadbare House majority, reclaim control of the Senate and claw back power in state capitals. More than 30 million voters had already cast ballots, according to AP data collected from election administrators across the country. An expert said the early-voting surge was more than voter enthusiasm.
In Corinth, Trump campaigned Monday for Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was seeking a second full term against Democrat Scott Colom in a surprisingly stiff challenge. With his voice audibly hoarse, Trump told the crowd, “I’m here because Cindy’s doing great, but I just got to make sure. I can’t take a chance.”
Colom was also spotted at the rally site before Trump’s arrival, where Trump supporters interacted with him directly. Colom said he had planned to go to the rally site to listen to what was on Trump supporters’ minds. “They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they’re going through,” Colom said. Trump called Colom a “Marxist radical,” a “fake” and a “shameless phony who pretends to be a moderate.”
Mississippi was among the nation’s most reliably Republican states and was not where Republicans had envisioned needing a late-October stop from the president. Hyde-Smith remained the favorite in a state Trump won three times by an average of nearly 20 percentage points. Colom, a local prosecutor, would make history as Mississippi’s first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction if elected. AP reported that he was looking to parlay inflation, Trump’s lagging popularity and Hyde-Smith’s mistakes into an upset. The Associated Press wrote that the Mississippi visit perhaps brings the midterm landscape into the sharpest relief with just a week of campaigning left.
At the rally, Trump said he had expected gas prices to rise even higher than they had. “It worked out fine and it’ll be over soon,” he said of the war with Iran. The Senate Democrats’ super PAC entered the Mississippi contest late with a $1.2 million investment. Mississippians have not chosen a new Democratic senator since 1947, and Democrats last won a Senate race there when the onetime segregationist John Stennis won his last reelection in 1982.
Vance returned to Kansas to stump for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, who was in a tight contest with Democratic nominee and pastor Adam Hamilton. Hundreds of people gathered inside the warehouse of a steel-fabricating company in north Topeka, in a state where Democrats had not won a Senate race since 1932. Marshall, who had raised far less money than Hamilton, told the crowd that Trump was on the ballot even though his name did not appear because Democrats would thwart his agenda if they won control of Congress. “Democrats are coming out like it’s a presidential year,” Marshall said, calling on the GOP to match Democrats’ energy.
Jace Sullivan, a 50-year-old electrician from Topeka who described himself as “85% Republican,” said Trump supporters needed to “circle the wagons” and get out to vote. Wearing a red “JD Vance for President 2028” shirt, Sullivan said he thought Trump was rightly working to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons. “Gas prices are high and it does suck, but it’s a means to an end,” Sullivan said.
Earlier, Vance was in Belgrade, Montana, campaigning with Republican Aaron Flint, who faces Democrat Sam Forstag in the race for the state’s 1st Congressional District, and Republican Senate candidate Kurt Alme. Sen. Tim Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told The Associated Press on Monday that GOP candidates were “closing very strongly” in races across the country, including South Carolina. Trump was set to visit South Carolina for the second time in as many weeks to stump for GOP Sen. Darline Graham.
Scott said, “One of the reasons why we will be in the majority is because he has invested the time and the energy on the campaign trail.” He spoke on the sidelines of U.S. Rep. Russell Fry’s 3rd Annual Freedom Fry event.
In Michigan, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed distanced himself from an advertisement created by Rebellion PAC that blames high grocery prices on U.S. support for Israel. Roxie Richner, a spokesperson for the Abdul for Senate campaign, said, “This ad is not affiliated in any way with the Abdul for Senate campaign.” The advertisement showed a couple discussing U.S. support for Israel while shopping for groceries. The woman in the advertisement said, “Apparently it’s costing us a lot of money to drop bombs on Gaza.”
The advertisement had been condemned by U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, who narrowly lost to El-Sayed in the Democratic primary. Stevens wrote on X that the way to win Michigan “is not by blaming the high costs of our goods on the only Jewish homeland in the world.” El-Sayed, who would be the country’s first Muslim senator, has denounced antisemitism while fiercely criticizing Israel for its military operations in Gaza, a position frequently attacked by Republicans and supporters of Israel in his party.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ 2024 presidential candidate, campaigned in Wisconsin with Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who faces Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Trump ally, in the governor’s race. If elected, Crowley would be the first Black governor to lead the battleground state. “This is a tight race because the stakes are so high,” Harris said at an event billed as a “Women for Crowley” rally.
In New York, Rep. Mike Lawler, one of the party’s most vulnerable House members, pulled from Trump’s campaign playbook. Locked in a tight race with Democrat Cait Conley in New York City’s northern suburbs, Lawler manned a McDonald’s drive-thru, mimicking something Trump did two years ago, even as Lawler tried to emphasize his independence from the president.