Ty Pinkins is an independent candidate for U.S. Senate from Mississippi in the 2026 midterm elections.
Rogelio V. Solis | AP
Ty Pinkins, a highly-anticipated Mississippi Senate candidate, said he initially wanted to win, but he stayed on to mess things up.
Pinkins told a local television station that she stayed in the race to improve Democratic candidate Scott Colom’s chances of defeating incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith after polls in April showed he had no chance of winning.
The strategy advocated by Pinkins may work.
According to the Associated Press, Mr. Colom narrowly leads Mr. Hyde-Smith with just 1,936 votes, or just 0.2 points, with 96.2% of votes counted, according to the Associated Press. That difference is about one-tenth of Pinkins’ 2.1 percentage points.
Of the approximately 952,000 votes already counted, Pinkins has received only 20,010 votes so far.
“The only thing I did was stay in the race and let people shoot arrows at me,” Pinkins said Thursday in an interview with WTVA in Mississippi. “That’s it. And I think that’s a … low price to pay to get someone in this race that can help people in Delta and across this state.”
“Some of the votes that I drew, and people were worried about splitting the black vote, what I actually did was split the Republican vote,” he said.
Mr. Pinkins told a Tupelo station that he intentionally avoided campaigning in areas with large black populations to avoid cutting into the vote share of Mr. Colom, who is also black.
That tactic worked, he said, because as election results showed, he received most of his support from areas with relatively small black populations.
“I’ll be the boogeyman,” he said. “But let me tell you this: Independents in this race took the lion’s share of votes from Republicans, but for the first time since Reconstruction, black male Democrats are in the lead.”
Pinkins is an attorney who previously ran for Mississippi Secretary of State and was a 2024 Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. He won a landslide victory over Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who received about 63% of the vote, compared to 37% for Pinkins.
Despite this demonstration, the U.S. Army veteran is determined to run again for the Senate in 2026.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi) and District Attorney Scott Colom, Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate for the 2026 midterm elections.
Rogelio V. Solis | Getty Images
But in the spring, he saw the writing on the wall for his candidacy.
“I came into this race to win,” Pinkins told WTVA. “We knew in April that we were going to lose, but we also knew that we were getting 70% of the Republican vote based on (SPLC Action Fund and Impact Research) polling.”
“Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s decline in approval ratings could pave the way for Democratic victory,” the SPLC Action Fund said in announcing the poll.
“Independent Ty Pinkins could be a spoiler for either candidate,” SPLC Action Fund said in April.
In an interview with WTVA, Pinkins said he attended “probably six events over the summer” as part of the campaign.
“Six events. There’s no need for that,” Pinkins said. “Why? I’m not going to win. So why go to the black community that he’s going to?”
Pinkins said all he had to do was visit counties with relatively small black populations and “talk to some of the Republicans who said they would vote for me.”
“They literally called me and sent me emails saying, ‘We don’t want to waste our vote on Cindy Hyde-Smith, we don’t want to hold our noses and vote for her, so we’re voting for you. Stay in the race,'” he said.
Colom and Hyde-Smith’s campaigns did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
