Democrat Scott Colom wins closely watched US Senate race in Mississippi

BREAKING,

The historic victory delivers an eighth US Senate seat to Democrats after last week’s pivotal midterm election.

Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi’s closely watched United States Senate race, giving his party a rare, historic victory in a Republican stronghold that has eluded them for decades.

Colom, a prosecutor who will become the state’s first Black senator in more than 140 years, garnered a narrow victory on Wednesday over incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in one of the US midterms’ biggest upsets.

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The win builds on Democrats’ success after the party delivered an electoral drubbing last Tuesday, winning at least eight US Senate seats that are currently held by Republicans. A US Senate race in Alaska remains uncalled.

For more than a week, the Mississippi contest has remained too close to call as election officials worked to count more than 100,000 mail-in ballots. Thousands of other residents, who could not confirm their registration at voting sites, cast provisional ballots that required confirmation of their eligibility.

Colom and Hyde-Smith took markedly different approaches as remaining ballots were counted.

Hyde-Smith, who was not seen publicly until she returned to Washington this week as the Senate returned to session, had expressed confidence she would win after “every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted”. But after the election, Colom continued to hold a series of public events where he castigated his opponent.

“Ultimately, at some point, the senator needs to speak out. Where is Cindy Hyde-Smith?” Colom told reporters on Friday in Jackson, Mississippi. “We want to hear from her. She needs to answer questions. What is her path to victory? She doesn’t have one”.

The US Senate race also was not the first time the two had crossed political paths.

Hyde-Smith, citing concerns about Colom’s position on transgender athletes, previously blocked him from serving as a federal judge in 2023 after he was nominated by former US President Joe Biden. The position had required Senate approval.

Colom’s win defies political gravity in a state that US President Donald Trump won by just over 22 points in the 2024 presidential election.

The last Democrat to win a US Senate race in Mississippi was 1982, when John Stennis claimed victory over Republican challenger Haley Barbour, who later became governor of the state.

Colom, who has been a proponent of raising the minimum wage, increasing protections for rural hospitals and ending the US war in Iran, will be sworn in next January. He will be the chamber’s seventh Black lawmaker.