Scott Colom Wins Mississippi Senate Seat, Becoming The State’s first Black Senator Elected By Voters
The district attorney beat a sitting Republican in a state Trump won by nearly 23 points. He told supporters his campaign began with a prayer.
JACKSON, Mississippi, Nov 12 – Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi’s seat in the United States Senate, defeating Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in one of the last races of last week’s midterm elections to be decided. The Associated Press has called the race.
It is a stunning upset in a state that has long voted Republican. It is also a historic one.
Colom is the first Black senator ever directly elected by Mississippi voters. He will be the first Black senator from the state to serve since 1881. He is also the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Mississippi since John Stennis in 1982.
The race was very close. The latest results tallied by the media showed Colom ahead by about half a percentage point, or some 4,600 votes, Reuters reported.
Colom, 43, is a district attorney. On Wednesday night, he took the stage at a victory party at Tougaloo College in Jackson.
He was introduced first by his wife, Nadia Colom, who played a major role in his campaign and appeared in several of his advertisements about his life. She was followed by Congressman Bennie Thompson, the state’s only Democrat in Congress.
“From my perspective, I now have a partner in Washington,” Thompson said.
Colom spoke from behind a sign that read “Picked Another Senator.” It was a nod to the ad that helped make his name.
“For me, this journey started with a prayer, y’all,” Colom said.
He said that in Mississippi, prayers have often changed the course of history. He then told the story of Hiram Revels, a minister from Natchez who became the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. Colom said Revels was picked for the Senate after he gave an opening prayer so powerful that people at a state meeting decided he had the voice for the job.
Colom said there were times when his long-shot campaign felt beaten. He said donors would not answer the phone, and did not believe a night like this was possible. But he said he kept the faith.
Hyde-Smith, 67, has conceded. She congratulated Colom and wished him well in a video posted on social media.
She was appointed to the Senate in 2018 and won a special election later that year. She had led in the polls for most of the race, in a state that Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024. Trump went to Mississippi to campaign for her near the end.
Colom tapped into anger over the cost of living. His best-known advertisement mocked Hyde-Smith’s suggestion that shoppers could choose alternatives to beef rather than pay its high prices.
In the ad, voters turned her words against her. “I’d rather pick another senator instead,” voters said in the ad.
Colom told Reuters in October that voters in Mississippi felt let down by Trump’s policies, including the war with Iran, which has pushed up fuel prices.
Two other Black Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey, held rallies with him in October.
His win adds to the Democrats’ major gains in last week’s elections. Their majority in the new Senate, which meets in January, now stands at 55 seats or more, with the Alaska race still undecided.
Mississippi’s history gives the result extra weight. Many of the key battles of the civil rights movement in the 1960s took place in the state, where Black people faced discrimination in voting, jobs, schools and public places. The state, which has a white majority, swung firmly to the Republicans after the civil rights era.
Before Colom, the last Black senator from Mississippi was Blanche Bruce, a former slave. He was chosen in 1874 and served until 1881.
At that time, senators were picked by state lawmakers, not by voters.
