Longshot Mississippi Senate candidate Ty Pinkins at first wanted to win — but says he stayed in to spoil.
Pinkins told a local TV station he remained in the race after an April poll showed he had no chance to boost Democratic nominee Scott Colom's chances of beating Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Pinkins' purported strategy might pay off.
Colom is narrowly leading Hyde-Smith in ongoing counting by just 1,936 votes, a margin of just 0.2 percentage points with 96.2% of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press. That margin is about one-tenth as large as Pinkins' 2.1-percentage-point share of the vote.
Pinkins has won just 20,010 votes so far out of the nearly 952,000 votes already counted.
"The only thing I did was stay in the race and let people shoot arrows at me," Pinkins said in an interview with WTVA in Mississippi on Thursday. "That is it. And that's a ... low price to pay to get someone in this race that I think can help people in the Delta and all across this state."
"The portion of the vote that I drew — and people were concerned about splitting the Black vote — what I actually did was split the Republican vote," he said.
Pinkins told the station in Tupelo that he intentionally avoided campaigning in areas with large Black populations to avoid cutting into the vote share of Colom, who, like Pinkins, is Black.
That tactic worked, he said, as the election results show he got most of his support from areas with relatively low Black populations.
"I'll be the boogeyman," he said. "But I'll tell you this: The independent in this race pulled most of his votes from a Republican, and for the first time since Reconstruction, a Democrat who is a Black man is leading."
Pinkins, a lawyer who previously ran for Mississippi secretary of state, was the Democratic nominee for Senate in 2024. He was crushed by Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who won nearly 63% of the vote, compared to about 37% for Pinkins.
Despite that showing, the U.S. Army veteran decided to take another crack at the Senate in 2026.
But in the spring, he saw the writing on the wall for his candidacy.
"I got in this race to win," Pinkins told WTVA. "In April, I knew I was going to lose, but I also knew that I was pulling 70% of the Republican vote based on the [SPLC Action Fund and Impact Research] poll."
SPLC Action Fund, when it released the poll, said, "Sagging favorability numbers for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith could open up a path to victory for Democrats.
"Independent Ty Pinkins has the potential to play spoiler for either candidate," SPLC Action Fund said in April.
In the WTVA interview, Pinkins said, "I probably attended maybe, maybe six events over the summer" as part of his campaign.
"Six events. I don't have to," Pinkins said. "Why? I'm not going to win. So why go to these Black communities that he's going to?"
"Some Republicans that say they're gonna that they're gonna vote for me," he said.
"They were literally calling me and sending me emails: 'We're gonna vote for you because we don't want to waste our vote on Cindy Hyde-Smith, we don't want to hold our nose and vote for her, so we're going to vote for you. Please stay in the race.'"
The campaigns of Colom and Hyde-Smith did not immediately respond to CNBC's requests for comment.
