Scott Colom

I come at this as a prosecutor. What already crosses my desk is AI used to steal from people — scam calls, fabricated images of real people, including children. Using AI to defraud someone, or to make sexual images of a child, is already a crime — but I’ll tell you plainly, many local prosecutors don’t have the tools or the training to keep up. I also believe in basic honesty. If a machine is handling something that affects your money, your health care, or your benefits, you have a right to know it, and a person has to be accountable for the decision. And if Washington wants one national rulebook, it ought to write a real one rather than simply stripping states of the ability to protect people.

I start where Mississippians start, which is the power bill. Alongside the traditional sources we’re already used to and that help keep energy costs low, I support anything that works for our state — that includes natural gas, the nuclear we already run at Grand Gulf, and more solar than we’ve built. Utilities here have said plainly that diversifying is how you protect customers from one bad year in the gas market. And if it saves Mississippi families money, I support it. It also helps create jobs — line workers, electricians, pipefitters — and they ought to be Mississippi jobs at a fair wage. One rule I’ll hold to: whoever creates new demand pays for the new generation. Mississippi families shouldn’t be financing somebody else’s expansion on their monthly bill.

I prosecute cases for a living, so my instinct is to follow the money and make people show their work. Too much of this is being decided behind closed doors. Data center buildout is already adding costs to residential power bills. Too many of the agreements that bring these data centers to our communities are shielded from public review. And these facilities draw a lot of water in a state that has had hard dry years. So here’s my standard. Any companies that want to put data centers in Mississippi should pay for their own power and water, so it never lands on your bill. The people building and running these centers need to commit in writing to hiring and paying Mississippians a fair wage. And our communities need to see the full deal before the concrete is poured. A project that clears that bar can be welcomed. One that can’t is a transfer from your power bill to a very large company.

Agriculture is a big part of who we are in Mississippi, and our farmers are in trouble right now. Washington’s tariffs took customers that aren’t coming back, and rising fertilizer and diesel costs did the rest. The Constitution gives Congress authority over tariffs, and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith gave Mississippi’s voice away. I’ll take our voice back, and pass a farm bill our producers can plan around. Mississippi has a senator on the agriculture appropriations subcommittee right now, and our farmers are still going under. I’ll protect what works. Mississippi State’s Extension Service keeps an agent in all 82 counties — they’re who our poultry growers, timber owners and row crop farmers actually call. Alcorn State’s land-grant program reaches the small and limited-resource farmers easiest to overlook, and I’ll back it. I’ll keep Gulf restoration dollars working on the reefs and marsh that shield our Coast, and keep conservation funded. And fish farmed overseas shouldn’t be sold as Mississippi catfish — that’s fraud, and I’ve spent ten years prosecuting it. None of it holds if the hospital closes. I’ll work with anybody, in either party, to reverse the Medicaid cuts that have our rural hospitals at risk.

Our schools aren’t just part of the pipeline, they are the pipeline. I have two kids in Mississippi public schools, and I taught kindergarten through sixth grade overseas when I was 19, so this is personal. The reading gains people call the Mississippi Miracle were produced by teachers, and we ought to pay them like it. That’s why I’ve called for eliminating the federal income tax for teachers and law enforcement making under $75,000, to help keep these qualified professionals here in our state. Regarding community colleges, I’ll back steady federal support for career and technical programs, working lab equipment, and dual enrollment — so a student can start college chemistry in high school and walk into a good job here at home.

Yes. For ten years my job has been taking complicated evidence — forensics, DNA, digital records — and explaining it to twelve Mississippians on a jury well enough that they’ll stake a verdict on it. People here are not against evidence. They’re against being talked down to. A jury will go a long way with you if you show your work, say who paid for it, and admit what you don’t know yet. So I’ll keep doing what I already do — get in a room with people across this state, and bring researchers from our universities with me so folks can ask them questions directly instead of reading about it in a press release. I’ll also keep a standing line open to our Extension agents. They’re the ones people already call when they need a real answer, and they’re already in every county.