Democrat Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate race, breaking the GOPs grip on the state
Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen.Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, NBC News projects, capping off a string of Democratic victories by flipping the reddest seat yet in this year’s midterms.Mississippi last elected a Democrat to the Senate 44 years ago, just a few weeks before Colom was born in 1982.
Colom, a district attorney, will now become Mississippi’s first Black U.S.senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era.The historic win comes after days of uncertainty in the race, with Colom holding a razor-thin lead over Hyde-Smith as more votes continued to be counted.
Colom remained confident throughout the vote counting that he would prevail.Colom’s victory means Democrats will hold at least 55 Senate seats next year.
The only Senate race left to be called is in Alaska.In the next Congress, no Democratic senator will represent a redder state than Colom.
President Donald Trump carried Mississippi by 23 points in 2024.Colom’s victory also underscores the Trump administration’s broad unpopularity with voters just two years after that presidential election, even in parts of the ruby-red Deep South.A majority of Mississippi voters said they disapproved of Trump’s overall job performance, according to NBC News exit polling.
Majorities also said his policies, including tariffs, hurt the economy and that it was wrong for the U.S.to take military action in Iran.
Colom, the eighth Democrat to flip a Republican-held Senate seat so far this year, long believed Democrats had an opportunity to win Mississippi, given its sizable Black population and plenty of white voters in rural areas who he thought could back a Democrat.And he chided his party for writing off the state.“We were never a lost cause.
We were betrayed cause,” Colom recently told NBC News.“We were betrayed by Cindy Hyde-Smith because she allowed tariffs to hurt us.
She allowed people — hundreds of thousands of Mississippians — to lose health care.She gave away our voice in ...