Democrat Scott Colom and Mississippi voters make history, flip U.S. Senate seat

This story was originally published on Mississippi Today. 

Democrat Scott Colom has won a hard-fought U.S. Senate race in Mississippi, breaking Republicans’ dominance of statewide offices, ousting one of the state’s sitting senators for the first time since the 1940s and becoming the state’s first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Colom, a district attorney in north Mississippi, defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and independent Ty Pinkins. Colom on Wednesday secured a come-from-behind triumph that has stunned pollsters, pundits and forecasters across the nation. Hyde-Smith has held the Senate seat since 2018. Mississippi has elected only Republican senators for the last 40 years.

Colom supporters gathered Wednesday night for a victory celebration at Tougaloo College, a historically Black campus that was a safe haven for voting-rights activists during the Civil Rights Movement. The senator-elect invoked the names of movement leaders Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer and thanked two of his mentors, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson and the current NAACP president and CEO, Derrick Johnson.

Colom also pledged to work for all Mississippians, “the ones that voted for me, the ones that didn’t vote for me, the ones that didn’t vote.”

“My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that, first, I’m going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated,” he said. “I’m going to treat your parents the way I want my parents to be treated. I’m going to treat your future the way I want my future to be.”

The Democratic victory is an extraordinary upset in a state that President Donald Trump won by 23 points two years ago, and where Republicans have long maintained a stranglehold on state government and every statewide elected office.

A source close to the Colom campaign said Hyde-Smith had called him to concede on Wednesday evening. Shortly after that, she released a video conceding the race and thanking her supporters.

“While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” Hyde-Smith said. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”

Democratic leaders see Colom’s victory as a stinging rebuke of the Republican Party’s agenda under Trump, who visited the state in the election’s closing days and pleaded with voters to send Hyde-Smith back to the Senate to help advance his agenda.

The Associated Press called the race Wednesday, eight days after the election, with 99% of precincts reporting. Colom led 49.2% to Hyde-Smith’s 48.7%. He led Wednesday night by 4,645 votes. The AP called the race for Colom based on uncertified results.

Former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned for Colom in northeast Mississippi in late October, congratulated him Wednesday.

“We may have had to count One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, but Blue Mississippi sure has a nice ring to it,” Clinton posted on social media. “Scott, you put your heart and soul into this race because you believe in the promise of your state’s people. And they believed in you right back. I’m honored to have stood alongside you.”

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves posted his congratulations to the senator-elect, writing on X: “I hope to collaborate as we continue our very important work to support Mississippi families, grow jobs and wages for our people, and improve educational outcomes for our kids!”

Colom will now be the 55th Democratic senator to join the chamber, with Alaska’s Senate election still too close to call.

Colom’s long-awaited win caps more than a week of the nation waiting on Mississippi’s county election officials processing by hand thousands of affidavit ballots to determine the winner.

Colom, 43, will be the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi since John Stennis in 1982. He is also the first Black person elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction, when the state Legislature elected Hiram Revels in 1870 and Blanche Bruce in 1875. He is also the first Black person elected to any type of statewide office since Reconstruction.

When asked about possibly becoming the first Black man in more than a century to win a U.S. Senate race in the state, Colom said he only wants to make sure he won’t “be the last.”

“I don’t want anybody to say that I did anything to hurt the next person that has the talent, the work ethic, the ability to be able to reach for their dreams,” Colom said. “That’s my focus.”

Most forecasters rated the Mississippi Senate race as safe Republican. But on the issues defining the midterms, voters left little doubt the elections would be a referendum on soaring consumer prices exacerbated by tariffs and the president’s unpopular war in Iran.

Colom believed his strategy of tying Hyde-Smith to the high cost of gasoline and consumer prices would be enough to pierce the Republicans’ dominance in the Magnolia State. He began to pick up steam rapidly in the campaign’s closing weeks, receiving endorsements and resources from national Democrats.

Colom traversed the state from end to end and, in the election’s homestretch, engaged in a near-nonstop media blitz aimed at galvanizing any voters tuned into traditional cable news shows or following the race on social media.

In one viral ad, he mocked Hyde-Smith for suggesting voters upset over the rising price of beef should pick another protein. Colom supporters in the ad said they’d rather pick another senator. Another ad riffed off the Oscar-winning movie “Sinners,” which is set in Mississippi and his final ad before the election featured the home of slain civil rights hero Medgar Evers.

Colom mobilized the Democratic base through energetic rallies and appearances with high-profile national Democrats. He also tried to persuade skeptical Republicans. In one 24-hour span just over a week before Election Day, Colom roamed the line outside a Trump rally for Hyde-Smith in northeast Mississippi, spoke to some of the president’s supporters, then headed to the Gulf Coast for a rally with former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Dan Pffeifer, a political commentator and former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said Colom “has run a campaign that is a model for Dems trying to flip very red states.”

And his strategy worked. Colom managed to crack the GOP’s iron grip on the state by turning out large numbers of Black voters, flipping several crucial swing counties blue and convincing Republicans to cross over and vote for him.

The most surprising feat was Colom winning DeSoto County, a reliably Republican stronghold in a Memphis suburb, by seven percentage points, something Democrats would have viewed as unthinkable last year.

Colom also tempered his losses in Harrison County, a populous coastal area that has swamped statewide Democratic candidates over the last decade and become a red firewall for the state GOP.  He also flipped Lafayette and Madison counties, two majority-white, affluent areas that have flipped between Republican and Democrat in recent elections.

As Colom’s profile rose and Democratic enthusiasm spiked, Hyde-Smith struggled to keep up. She refused to debate Colom or hold open town-hall forums for constituents. She rarely spoke to reporters for longer than a few minutes, often with great hesitation. In the U.S. Capitol, Hyde-Smith avoids hallway interviews that are customary for most members of Congress, and that standoffishness produced awkward encounters that gave Colom ammunition.

Democratic-aligned super PACs, such as American Bridge 21st Century, saw an opportunity and injected millions of dollars into the race, claiming Hyde-Smith is “one of the most hated GOP senators in Congress.”

In a joint statement, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said Colom’s victory was historic and vowed to work with him “to fight for Mississippians’ health care, costs, and future in the 120th Congress.”

“Scott is a seventh-generation Mississippian, proud husband and father of two, and District Attorney who has dedicated his life to keeping communities safe,” Schumer and Gillibrand said. “He has never stopped fighting for his neighbors, because Mississippi Matters – and he’ll continue to be a champion for Mississippi in Washington.”

For many pioneering Black officials in Mississippi, Colom’s victory is the culmination of decades of organizing, campaigning and civil rights activism. It’s a moment that many never thought they would see in their lifetimes.

Mike Espy, the first Black person to represent Mississippi in the U.S. House since Reconstruction and the first Black person to become U.S. agriculture secretary, unsuccessfully ran against Hyde-Smith twice.

The former cabinet secretary served as an adviser to Colom, handed over his donor and voter lists to the campaign and hoped his losses “paved the road” for the soon-to-be senator, he told Mississippi Today in an interview.

“There is a time and place for everything,” Espy said. “This is Scott Colom’s time, and his place is in the U.S. Senate. I’m so pleased with the way he ran his campaign, and I was happy to support him.”

For Colom’s supporters, his victory brought a sense of poetic justice. Then-President Joe Biden in 2022 nominated Colom to a federal judgeship in northern Mississippi. A bipartisan coalition of Mississippi officials supported the nomination, but Hyde-Smith used her home-state “blue slip” privilege to oppose it.

Had Hyde-Smith not blocked Colom’s nomination, he likely would have served on the federal judiciary for the rest of his life and never run for the Senate.

But Colom decided to run and cast her as an out-of-touch politician who doesn’t represent Mississippi’s values. Hyde-Smith’s campaign called him a puppet of far-left national Democrats, with a spokesman calling Colom a stooge of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and to billionaire donor George Soros.

Hyde-Smith, a Brookhaven cattle farmer, was first appointed to the Senate in early 2018 by then-Gov. Phil Bryant to succeed longtime Republican Sen. Thad Cochran, who retired about halfway into the six-year term. She won two races against Espy, a special election in late 2018 to fill the end of the term Cochran started and a regular election in 2020, and hoped she would gain a third victory against Colom.

Hyde-Smith left little doubt that she hoped to stymie Colom’s future as a judge. But in the end, her decision to block him from the federal judiciary cost her a seat in the Senate.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.