It took more than a week of counting absentee and provisional ballots, but the result that few people expected is now official. Scott Colom, a Democratic district attorney, has unseated Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, a state Donald Trump carried by 23 points only two years ago. With nearly all votes in, Colom leads by roughly 49.2 to 48.7 percent, a margin of a few thousand ballots that made it the tightest Senate contest in the country.
The win breaks two long streaks at once. Mississippi had not sent a Democrat to the Senate in 44 years, and Colom becomes the first Black senator from the state since Reconstruction. That last fact stands out in a place where close to 40 percent of voters are Black, the highest share anywhere in the United States.
Colom ran on prices. He branded his opponent “Cindy High-Prices” and attacked her support for tariffs and for cuts to Medicaid. His most shared ad seized on her remark that shoppers facing costly beef had other proteins to pick from; the ad’s reply was to pick a different senator instead.
Hyde-Smith conceded in a video and wished him well. Celebrating at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Colom told supporters the victory belonged to all of them, and he did not spare his own party. National Democrats, he argued, had poured money into other states while ignoring his. In his words, Mississippi was never “a lost cause”, only “a betrayed cause”.
Outside help did arrive late. Trump held a rally in the state in the final week, while Kamala Harris and senator Raphael Warnock came to campaign for Colom. The seat lifts the Democrats’ incoming Senate majority to at least 55, with only Alaska still to be called.
