Colom takes victory by razor-thin margin in state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982
Democrat Scott Colom pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the midterm elections when he defeated Cindy Hyde-Smith, the incumbent Republican senator, to become the first Black senator in Mississippi elected since 1875, after more than a week of vote counting in one of the country’s most reliably red states.
Colom opened up a narrow lead over Hyde-Smith late on election night. His lead widened as election officials counted provisional ballots. Hyde-Smith was not able to close the gap.
Mississippi has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982. It’s been much longer – not since 1875 – that the state sent a Black senator to Washington. With Colom’s election, Mississippi, the first state to send Black lawmakers to Congress, has sent more Black people to the Senate than any other state besides Illinois. Blanche K Bruce, the last Black man elected to the Senate from Mississippi, was born into slavery; John C Stennis, the last Democrat to be sent from Mississippi, was, for most of his career, a staunch segregationist.
Colom’s election capped a national wave of anger at Donald Trump’s administration, sweeping away Republicans in places where Democrats hadn’t been competitive in decades.
