It's Thursday, October 1st. I'm Achilles Heas.

And I'm Gideon Reznik and this is what the day where we are kicking off the month by making this entire episode pumpkin flavored.

Yeah, Gideon doesn't want to say this, but he wanted to be Candy Corn and we vetoed him.

Um, yeah, next time I'm winning out, come around here on Halloween and see what's up. It's gonna be Candy Corn all freaking day.

On Tuesday, show a conversation with Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Mike S.V. then some headlines.

But first the latest. He said that he believes that all black people think the same and he said, if you're not voting for him in a black, then you ain't black.

I'm not Chris watch. Thank you, Tim. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. President Trump refused to condemn them during the debate.

Okay. So that was CNN's Jake Tapper booting Trump's campaign communication director Tim Murtaugh from his show after he tried to spin Trump's lack of condemnation for white supremacy at that debate.

We're all trying to forget from earlier this week. It's pretty gangster. Yeah, it didn't do a great job being communications director there in my opinion, but nope. Well onto our topic today.

So a lot of the conversation specifically in recent days has naturally been about the presidential election. But as evidenced by President Trump's ability to ram through judges, potentially including a third Supreme Court nominee, the Senate is extremely important too.

And there are tons of winnable races for the Democrats this year, including in Maine, Colorado and North Carolina. But another race that might be flying a little bit under the radar is the Senate seat in Mississippi.

That's right. So the Democratic candidate in that race is Mike SB. He's a former congressman and was actually the first black congressman to represent Mississippi since reconstruction.

He also was secretary of agriculture under President Clinton. And now he's running against Republican incumbent Senator Cindy high Smith. In 2018, SB also ran against her in a special election where the runoff oddly took place at the end of November.

And while SB lost that race, he got over 46% of the vote, marking one of the closest Senate races in the state in years leading up to that election.

Democrats thought that it was a winnable race in part because hide Smith made a number of discussing remarks, including a joke about a quote public hanging in a state with a dark history of racist violence and lynchings.

Yeah, I wish that racism was less popular too. But historically, the South has been scapegoated as the most racist place in the country.

But things are obviously changing with a younger generation finally getting the chance to make their voices heard and vote.

So with SB's race, while the polling has been spotty, a recent poll showed him almost even with hide Smith. Also, his fundraising has shot way up since the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And he recently got endorsements from Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Congresswoman Ionipresli.

We spoke to him yesterday about how COVID-19 has impacted his state, which is currently seeing an uptick after a much bigger one this summer, as well as the Supreme Court and how he hopes to bring Mississippi together.

Here's our conversation. Secretary S.B., thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Let me be with you this morning. Thank you.

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