Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely watched Senate election, making him the state’s first Black U.S. senator in more than 150 years. Political analysts have described the victory as “sweet revenge,” given that Hyde-Smith previously blocked Colom’s nomination for a federal judgeship.
The Associated Press declared Colom the winner on Wednesday, Nov. 11, after several days of counting provisional ballots and updating results. He secured 49.18% of the vote against Hyde-Smith’s 48.72%, winning by approximately 4,669 votes out of more than 962,000 ballots counted.
At 42, Colom will become the state’s first Black senator since Blanche K. Bruce, who served from 1875 to 1881. His victory also ends a 44-year gap in Democratic representation from Mississippi in the Senate. The state last elected a Democrat to the chamber in 1982.
The result is particularly significant because Mississippi has long been considered one of the country’s most reliably Republican states. Donald Trump won the state by more than 23 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election.
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From blocked judgeship to unseating the senator
Colom’s victory carries an unusual political backstory involving his rival, Hyde-Smith. In 2022, former President Joe Biden nominated Colom for a federal district judgeship in the Northern District of Mississippi. The nomination appeared to have bipartisan support, including backing from Republican Sen. Roger Wicker. However, Hyde-Smith blocked the appointment in 2023 by withholding her so-called blue slip, a Senate Judiciary Committee procedure that allows home-state senators to object to judicial nominees.
Hyde-Smith cited Colom’s support for transgender rights and his alleged ties to billionaire Democratic donor George Soros as reasons for her opposition. She also raised objections to a statement Colom had signed opposing attacks on transgender people and gender-affirming health care.
“I blocked Scott Colom from being a federal judge, and you blocked him from being a U.S. senator,” Hyde-Smith said on Election Day.
Three years later, the roles have been reversed. Colom has defeated Hyde-Smith and is preparing to take the Senate seat she previously held.
From underdog campaign to historic victory
Colom has served as district attorney for Mississippi’s 16th Circuit Court District. He built his campaign around economic concerns, including grocery prices, fuel costs, tariffs and rural health care. His campaign slogan was “Lower costs, higher wages, save our health care, save our hospitals.”
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Within three months of launching his campaign, Colom raised nearly $594,000, while Hyde-Smith had raised approximately $1.1 million during the same period. A significant portion of Hyde-Smith’s contributions came from the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. By the final stretch of the campaign, Colom had raised $3.6 million, compared with Hyde-Smith’s $5.3 million.
Despite Sen. Raphael Warnock urging national Democrats to support Colom as early as April, the campaign gained wider traction only about a month before the midterm elections, when Colom’s “Pick Another Protein” campaign went viral. His campaign subsequently gathered momentum, with prominent Democrats, including former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, endorsing him.
A week before Election Day, Colom also attended Trump’s rally in Mississippi in an effort to appeal to voters beyond the Democratic base and win over Republican supporters.
“For months and months, I’ve been telling everybody, everywhere I go, that we’re going to win this election. Because it’s not something that I did, y’all. It’s something that we did. All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this,” Colom said in his victory speech.
Democrats have flipped approximately eight Republican-held Senate seats, with results in a few races still being counted.