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Tag: Scott Colom

  • Mississippi Senate: Colom flips seat in historic upset

    Mississippi Senate: Colom flips seat in historic upset

    Democrat Scott Colom has won the United States Senate race in Mississippi, defeating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in a result called on Wednesday after more than a week of counting, according to projections by the Associated Press, CNN and NBC News.

    Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, becomes the first Black senator from Mississippi since the Reconstruction era that followed the US Civil War, and the first Democrat to win one of the state’s Senate seats since John Stennis in 1982. With about 99 percent of the vote counted, he led Hyde-Smith by 49.2 percent to 48.7 percent, a margin of roughly 4,585 votes out of more than 950,000 cast.

    Hyde-Smith, 67, who had held the seat since 2018, conceded in a video message posted on social media, congratulating Colom and saying she respected the decision of Mississippi voters. Colom’s campaign said she had also telephoned him to concede earlier in the day.

    The result gives Democrats an eighth Senate seat flipped from Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, taking their tally in the 100-member chamber to 55 seats, made up of 53 Democrats plus two independents who caucus with them, against 44 for Republicans, with the race in Alaska still to be called.

    The outcome was one of the last to be decided from the November 3 midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress, according to Reuters. The count in Mississippi dragged on for eight days as election workers tallied absentee and provisional ballots, with Colom’s lead growing steadily as the count went on.

    The upset stunned political observers. Hyde-Smith had consistently led in opinion polls, and President Donald Trump had carried Mississippi by nearly 23 points in the 2024 election. Colom, a seventh-generation Mississippian, campaigned on the cost of living and health care for residents of the state. It was the closest Senate race in the country, according to the Associated Press, decided by just a few thousand votes after days of counting.

    Colom celebrated the win on Wednesday night at Tougaloo College, a historically Black university, opening his victory address with a tribute to Hiram Revels, the first Black US senator, who also represented Mississippi. The state is due to certify the results on December 3.

  • Mississippi Democrat eyes historic upset in Senate race

    Mississippi Democrat eyes historic upset in Senate race

    Scott Colom, a 43-year-old prosecutor, is on the verge of becoming an unlikely new Democratic star as he eyes a stunning upset victory in deeply conservative Mississippi’s race for the United States Senate.

    Colom, a Democrat, is leading Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by just over 1,000 ballots with 96 percent of votes counted. Hyde-Smith has been a senator since 2018, and Mississippi has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1982, before Colom was even born.

    A Colom victory would make him the first Black senator from Mississippi in more than 150 years. The last African American senator from the state was Blanche Bruce, a former slave, who was elected in 1874. Black residents make up about 40 percent of Mississippi’s population.

    His possible win would underline a Democratic blue wave that has swept Democrats to majorities in both houses of the United States Congress, including seven Senate seats taken from Republicans, among them Texas, South Carolina and Kansas. Wins in Mississippi and Alaska, where results are still pending, would boost that margin to nine.

    Colom traces his roots in Mississippi back six generations. His mother broke racial barriers as a judge, and his father was a Republican lawyer who worked for Ronald Reagan. He was elected as a local prosecutor in 2015 and has built his campaign around the cost of living.

    His campaign drew backing from former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris and former transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, and donations surged after a viral campaign advertisement mocked Hyde-Smith’s remark about beef prices, in which she said shoppers had so many proteins to choose from.

    In the advertisement, a voice asks, “Pick another protein?” and Colom answers, “I would rather pick another senator instead.” The exchange became one of the most shared moments of the campaign.

    Colom said he was confident of victory once the remaining ballots were counted. “I am confident that once the process lays out, where we are, where the outstanding ballots are, we are going to win,” he said, adding that the bottom line was that this was the beginning of a new direction for our state.

    Hyde-Smith, for her part, has dismissed Colom’s rise, saying of him, “He thought he was going to be a federal judge and I blocked him.” She has held the seat since 2018 and was counting on Mississippi’s long Republican tradition to carry her through.

    Colom has also spoken about the responsibility he feels as a possible trailblazer, saying, “My point of view is I don’t want to be the last,” and that he did not want anyone to say he had done anything to hurt the next person with the talent, the work ethic and the ability to reach for their dream.

    The race is not yet decided, and the remaining ballots will determine whether Mississippi delivers one of the biggest upsets of the election. But whatever the final count, Colom’s campaign has already redrawn the political map of a state long written off as unwinnable for Democrats.