Mississippi elects Democrat Scott Colom as state’s first Black US senator since Reconstruction

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Democratic nominee Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.

Colom’s narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations, and it yielded immediate echoes around the country. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats’ argument that their future runs through the American South.

The Associated Press called the contest Wednesday in Colom’s favor after local elections officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots, called affidavit ballots in Mississippi.

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

A spokesman for the senator said she called Colom to congratulate him and concede before the video was shared publicly.

The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947, and the winner then was a staunch segregationist. Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, capitalized on the state’s large Black population, discontent with the economy and Hyde-Smith’s missteps as she sought a second full term.

“They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they’re going through,” Colom said in the campaign’s closing stretch.

Colom said during the campaign that he could represent all of Mississippi, a state where racial divisions have long defined its politics and society.

“It’s got to be about having a party that represents rural America again, suburban America, urban America — a party that makes sure we actually deliver for voters in ways that make their lives better,” he said.

National Democrats celebrate along with Colom

Party leaders hailed the senator-elect’s triumph, with nods to the South’s emerging battleground status after other upset victories from North Carolina to Texas.

“Scott Colom is the only person who could’ve gotten this done,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York posted online. “Along with his staff and volunteers, Scott ran the campaign of a lifetime and re-imagined what’s possible for Democrats in the South.”

Former President Bill Clinton, a native Arkansan who campaigned with Colom days before the election, addressed Colom on social media, saying he won “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.”

A race Washington once viewed as a long shot

Despite Schumer’s support, the contest was a latecomer to the national spotlight, drawing attention from Democrats who belatedly infused cash into Colom’s candidacy well after Black senators, including Georgia’s Raphael Warnock and Maryland’s Angela Alsobrooks, urged donors and party leaders to see the contest as winnable.

The son of a onetime Republican who worked for President Ronald Reagan, Colom garnered attention for his aggressive campaign as Democrats widened the Senate battleground map and Hyde-Smith’s vulnerabilities crystallized.

Colom attracted particular notice for some of the year’s most widely circulated ads. After Hyde-Smith, 67, seemed to brush off high beef prices by saying consumers could choose other proteins, Colom cut a 30-second spot depicting incredulous voters saying they’d “pick another senator instead.”

When Trump came to Corinth, Mississippi, in late October for a rally with Hyde-Smith, Colom walked the line of Trump supporters as they waited outside the gates. He introduced himself, asked about their concerns and explained his priorities.

Later that evening, when Trump called Hyde-Smith to the stage, she said nine words in six seconds: “Is this not the best president in our lifetime?”

Then she stepped away.

“I love that,” Trump replied when he continued his 80-plus minutes at the microphone. “Sometimes they get up and they talk for 10 minutes.”

The appearance tracked Colom’s tactic of criticizing Trump’s policies — especially the Iran war and tariffs that he said were especially hard on Mississippi farmers — without taking personal jabs at the president or people who voted for him. Instead, he consistently put the onus on Hyde-Smith, framing her as a nonentity in Washington — a critique that resonated in a state that has been accustomed to long-serving senators like Thad Cochran, Trent Lott and John Stennis, who all rose to powerful posts and routed federal money back to Mississippi.

There is some irony to Hyde-Smith finding herself flat-footed against Colom. In 2022, then-President Joe Biden nominated Colom to be a U.S. District Court judge in the Northern District of Mississippi. Mississippi’s senior Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and former Gov. Haley Barbour, who is also a former national Republican chairman, backed the nomination.

Hyde-Smith, however, blocked Colom’s confirmation under the Senate tradition that members can spike a president’s choices for federal judicial positions in their home state.

Colom said his Senate bid was never about getting even with Hyde-Smith.

Colom called on Mississippi’s history

The senator-elect concluded his campaign with an ad that featured him at the Jackson home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who, in 1963, was gunned down in his driveway by a white supremacist and died in front of his family.

“In Mississippi, no one is above the law, and no one should be outside its protection,” Colom said, telling the story of Evers’ military service at Normandy in World War II, his voter registration efforts in Mississippi, his assassination and the three decades it took to win a conviction.

“He was killed for helping Mississippians vote,” Colom said. “On Tuesday, use your vote and honor everyone who died for that right.”

Black Democrats, including Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, highlighted Colom’s bid early. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer helped Colom raise money, and he drew financial support from other outside players, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a billionaire and potential presidential candidate.

Former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned on Colom’s behalf in the campaign’s closing weeks.

Despite Republicans’ domination, the path was always there

With the largest share of Black voters of any state, Mississippi’s general elections have been closer for years than its immediate Southern neighbors. Trump won by double digits in each of his three presidential contests, but in 2023, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves managed to win reelection by a margin of just 3 percentage points.

Colom and other Black party leaders and strategists insisted throughout 2026 that he could narrow the gap with strong Black turnout, Republican voter discontent and an uptick in Democrats’ usual share of the white vote in Mississippi.

Results showed strong turnout in the Mississippi Delta and its concentration of majority Black counties. But nearly all of the state moved leftward from the 2024 election, when Trump carried Mississippi by nearly 23 points.

Then-Gov. Phil Bryant first appointed Hyde-Smith, who was state agriculture commissioner, to the Senate in 2018 when Cochran resigned. She won a special election runoff in 2018 and a full term in 2020. Both times she defeated Democrat Mike Espy, a former U.S. agriculture secretary who’d also been Mississippi’s first Black congressman since Reconstruction.

During the extended vote count, Colom acknowledged the historic nature of doing what Espy could not. But he said he sees his place more in terms of other Mississippians, especially its youngest residents, than his individual story.

“My job is to do well enough as the next United States senator that the next time some young black boy or girl has the work ethic, the vision, and the values,” he said, “and they want to be United States senator, that nobody says because of anything I’ve done that they shouldn’t get a chance.”

Bill Barrow And Sophie Bates, The Associated Press