Democrat Scott Colom defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested Senate race, according to projections from The Associated Press and CNN, becoming the first Democrat elected to represent the state in the Senate since 1982 and the first black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
The race remained unsettled for more than a week after Election Day as officials counted absentee and provisional ballots, known in Mississippi as affidavit ballots. Colom maintained a narrow lead throughout the process before the Associated Press and CNN called the contest Wednesday. A spokesman for Hyde-Smith confirmed to the AP that she called Colom to concede.
Colom’s victory marks a stunning upset in a state President Donald Trump carried by nearly 23 percentage points in 2024. It also ends a decades-long Republican hold on Mississippi’s Senate delegation and gives Democrats another major victory in a midterm election that saw the party reclaim control of Congress.
The 43-year-old district attorney will be the first black senator from Mississippi since Blanche K. Bruce, a Republican who was born into slavery and served from 1875 to 1881. Hiram Revels, also a Republican, became the first black U.S. senator in American history when Mississippi sent him to Washington in 1870.
Both Revels and Bruce were selected by the state legislature. Colom will be the first black senator from Mississippi elected directly by voters.
The last Democrat elected to the seat was Sen. John C. Stennis, who won his final term in 1982. Stennis, first elected in 1947, was a staunch segregationist who had opposed civil rights legislation.
Colom made health care costs, affordability, and Hyde-Smith’s support for the administration’s policies central themes of his campaign. He repeatedly criticized her vote for Trump’s major domestic policy package, arguing that its Medicaid cuts would hurt vulnerable Mississippians. He also attacked her support for tariffs and the war with Iran, which he said had driven up costs for farmers, truckers, and businesses.
Hyde-Smith faced a particularly damaging moment when she suggested that consumers struggling with high beef prices “pick another protein.” Colom turned the remark into a widely circulated campaign advertisement featuring voters saying they would rather “pick another senator.”
The Republican senator, who was appointed to the chamber in 2018 and won a full term in 2020, campaigned as a reliable conservative and emphasized her support for Trump. The president traveled to Mississippi in the final stretch of the campaign to rally for her, while former Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Bill Clinton campaigned for Colom.
Colom had argued throughout the campaign that Democrats were making a mistake by writing off Mississippi because of its Republican voting history. He pointed to the state’s large black population and the possibility of attracting white voters frustrated with the direction of the country.
“We were never a lost cause. We were [a] betrayed cause,” Colom told NBC News during the campaign, criticizing both Hyde-Smith and national Democrats for failing to compete seriously in the state.
Colom also enters the Senate with an unusual history with his defeated opponent. President Joe Biden nominated him to a federal judgeship in 2022, but Hyde-Smith blocked his confirmation under the Senate tradition that allows home-state senators to oppose judicial nominees. Colom later said he had forgiven her and that his Senate campaign was not about revenge.
He will take office in January along with the rest of the 120th Congress.
