Supporters cheering at Mr. Colom’s election victory celebration at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss., on Wednesday.
Ellen Schmidt/Associated PressScott Colom, a Democrat, Wins Mississippi Senate Seat in Historic Upset
Reporting from Jackson, Miss.
The last Black man to represent Mississippi in the Senate was born into slavery and left office in 1881.
Nearly a century and a half later, Scott Colom, a Democrat, defeated Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, according to The Associated Press, delivering a remarkable upset on Wednesday and becoming the first Black person to be elected to the Senate in his state since the Reconstruction era.
Mr. Colom’s victory, which came by a slim margin after more than a week of ballot tallying following the Nov. 3 election, puts an exclamation point on the sweeping Democratic victories across the country during this year’s midterms. For Republicans, the outcome was a jarring rebuke in a reliably conservative stronghold.
“God didn’t want us to get it the easy way,” Mr. Colom told the crowd gathered outside the historic chapel at Tougaloo College, a Black college that served as a haven for civil rights organizers. “He wanted us to get it the Mississippi way.”
Hours before he took the stage, Ms. Hyde-Smith conceded in a video posted to social media. “While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” she said in the video. Ms. Hyde-Smith congratulated Mr. Colom and said her campaign “worked tirelessly to ensure every legally cast vote was counted, and that the people of Mississippi received a fair and transparent election.”
Mr. Colom’s victory was powered by a diverse coalition that included Black voters angered by policies that targeted their communities and their voting power; white voters frustrated with high prices and the Trump administration’s agenda; and some Republicans dissatisfied by Ms. Hyde-Smith’s loyalty to the president and his policies.
For much of this year, Ms. Hyde-Smith had been heavily favored to defeat Mr. Colom, a district attorney, and win a second term. President Trump carried Mississippi by 23 percentage points in 2024, and Republicans have long dominated statewide elections.
But the race appeared to tighten toward the end. Mr. Colom, who barreled across the state to homecoming celebrations, city halls and college campuses, worked to introduce himself and capitalize on frustration with Mr. Trump and his Republican allies.
The contest attracted national attention in its final stretch. Mr. Trump campaigned for Ms. Hyde-Smith in the state days before the election, while former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris stumped for Mr. Colom.
As Democrats racked up win after win, taking back control of the House and Senate, the contest in Mississippi remained unsettled. Mr. Colom held a razor-thin lead as lawyers from both parties scrutinized the counting of mail votes as well as affidavit ballots, which are similar to provisional ballots in other states, cast by voters who were listed as inactive or did not bring proper identification.
As the cohort of newly elected senators headed to Washington for orientation, Mr. Colom waited in Mississippi for the results. It was fitting, he said, to spend time in the state as his supporters grew hopeful that he would emerge the winner.
“I had the courage to believe in Mississippi,” Mr. Colom said at the Tougaloo College chapel, where Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers once spoke. Before his speech, his supporters danced and embraced. One of them declared, “Thank the Lord, we did it.”
Mike Hurst, the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party, said, “Scott Colom ran a good campaign here in Mississippi, and I congratulate him on his victory.”
He continued: “While elections may determine who holds public office, they do not define who we are as a people nor diminish the principles we hold dear. Tomorrow, the sun will rise over the same Mississippi we loved yesterday.”
During the campaign, Mr. Colom emphasized improving health care and lowering costs, among other issues. He did not often dwell on the historic implications of his candidacy, but took time on Wednesday to talk about the legacy he would now continue in Washington.
Mississippi was the first state to send a Black person to Congress, Hiram Revels, who joined the Senate in 1870. He was followed by Blanche Bruce in 1875, who was born in slavery in 1841. Mr. Bruce was replaced by a white former Confederate soldier who disavowed the ideals of racial equality and ushered in segregationist policies.
Mr. Colom will be sworn into office in January, 146 years after Mr. Bruce left office. And because both Mr. Revels and Mr. Bruce were chosen by state lawmakers, Mr. Colom is the first Black senator in the state’s history to be chosen by voters.
At a bar in downtown Jackson, Robert Morris, 37, sat on the patio and said the Senate election made history he never expected to witness as a lifelong resident of the Deep South. “I never thought I’d see a Black president, never thought I’d see a Black senator, especially a Black senator from Mississippi,” Morris said.
Mr. Colom’s victory came three years after Ms. Hyde-Smith denied him a chance at a seat on the federal judicial bench by blocking his nomination by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
He announced his campaign to challenge her in September 2025, criticizing her reluctance to hold public town halls, as well as her unwavering support for Mr. Trump.
“Scott may have wanted to be a judge, but God saw fit for him to be someone who appoints judges,” said Jabari O. Edwards, a longtime friend of Mr. Colom.
His record as a prosecutor in northern Mississippi helped insulate him from attacks that he was too liberal for the state. Mr. Colom also hammered Ms. Hyde-Smith on her votes to cut health care and nutritional benefits, a potent message in one of the nation’s poorest states. And he created a viral campaign ad around her suggestion that voters contending with rising beef prices should “pick another protein,” encouraging Mississippi to “pick another senator instead.”
After the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this year to weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he tapped into backlash among Black voters angered by attempts to dilute their voting power.
In the final weeks of the campaign, some Democratic-aligned groups injected money into the race, hoping to increase turnout. Even then, some were skeptical that a Democrat could break through in Mississippi.
“For the last couple days, I’ve been holding my breath,” said Ashley McKay, 38, who owns a Jackson restaurant and attended Mr. Colom’s victory speech. And on Wednesday, she said, she was feeling the “joy they talk about in the Bible — unspeakable joy.”
Michael Goldberg, politics reporter for Mississippi Today, contributed reporting from Jackson.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 12, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Colom Attains A Major Upset In Mississippi.
Scott Colom and Black Mississippians stand on the cusp of Senate history as vote count stretches on
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Democrat Scott Colom hasn't won Mississippi's U.S. Senate race, but the local prosecutor was welcomed as a historic figure Friday as he strolled through the Farish Street business district where civil rights leaders once organized.
"It's so wonderful! It's so wonderful to have Scott Colom as our representative," said Maati Jone Primm, who owns Marshall's Music & Bookstore in Jackson.
The state is still tallying ballots that could make Colom the first Black senator from this Deep South state since post-Civil War Reconstruction. The possibility of Colom defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith puts many Black voters somewhere between cautious optimism and outright celebration in a state where nearly 40% of the population is Black but the top representation for generations has been white.
"I'm so glad we are at the point where we are," said Sorie Tarawally, a 76-year-old attorney who has long known Colom's father. He called the 43-year-old candidate "the man, our messiah, our savior."
The contest remains too early for The Associated Press to call, and Colom's historic bid will hinge on a tedious process playing out in elections offices across Mississippi's 82 counties. Local officials are receiving and examining absentee and provisional ballots, called affidavit ballots, before deadlines next week. Volunteers and lawyers representing each campaign look on in anticipation of potential litigation.
Live Results: Mississippi Senate midterm election
"We're going to make sure everything is followed according to the law, and I have confidence in those local officials," Colom said. "They're doing their jobs. Got to be patient with them."
Colom said ballots tallied since Tuesday's election lean in his favor, and he chided Hyde-Smith for not explaining her strategy going forward.
"She's still our senator. Where is she? Why is she not doing any interviews?" Colom asked. "Why can't she explain what her pathway to success is?"
Hyde-Smith has not appeared publicly since election night, when she essentially declared victory despite a razor-thin margin with ballots still uncounted.
"We are not backing down," she posted Friday on social media. "This election is not over. Our team is working across Mississippi to monitor the remaining ballots and protect the integrity of the process. We will see this through to the very end!"
Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, the first Democratic senator to campaign with Colom this year, said in an interview that she came away from her trip knowing that voters "would be really energized by a candidate like Scott." But Alsobrooks, who is her state's first Black senator, added that "the takeaway I had when I visited Mississippi was that there was a belief problem" after years of defeats.
"They now know that their vote matters," she said.
The precise number of outstanding ballots is not known
The pool of outstanding ballots includes absentee ballots, which can be counted in Mississippi as long as they are received by Tuesday, five business days after the election. The rest are affidavit ballots, which are cast at the polls when there's a glitch: Perhaps the person's name was not on the rolls or the person did not have proper identification, or a poll worker determined the person's identification did not precisely match the name on the list.
Citizens who had identification issues have until Tuesday to address those matters in person at their local elections office. For people who were not on a precinct's rolls, local officials can verify a person's status using previous records and information on the affidavit that person filed when filling out a ballot. That person typically has no responsibility to come to a local elections office; ballot status can be found on the Mississippi secretary of state's office website.
Counties have until Friday to certify complete results to the secretary of state.
Mississippi law has no provision for a statewide recount. Campaigns could seek court orders, usually county by county, seeking to examine ballots.
The seismic effect would be in Mississippi, not Washington
Democrats already have won control of the Senate, so the result in Mississippi would not change the balance of power in Washington.
But it would mark a seismic shift in the state, where white conservatives have dominated the Statehouse and congressional delegation for nearly 150 years. Through Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights era, those leaders were nearly all Democrats. After the Civil Rights Movement, they overwhelmingly shifted to Republicans. For Black Mississippians, the result was the same: a lack of proportional representation at the top levels of state government and in Washington.
Colom was initially viewed as a long shot, and it wasn't until late October that Senate Democrats' top campaign group started spending on advertising to support him. But the midterms revealed a broad backlash against redistricting efforts in the South that were aimed at boosting Republicans and, by extension, reducing Black representation.
Primm's bookstore, where Colom visited on Friday, opened in the 1930s and is recognized as the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the U.S.
She said the Farish Street neighborhood still represents Black Mississippians' "first migration, from the plantation to the city." Having Colom there as a potential senator "makes us so proud, and it gives us someone to aspire to. Our youth need to see the possibilities for their lives, and we do when we see our next senator from Mississippi."
As he campaigned, Colom emphasized that he can represent all Mississippians, and he said President Donald Trump's policies — the war with Iran and tariffs, especially — cut across all demographic lines. He even celebrated the extended ballot counting process as a benefit to the state's 2.95 million residents.
"I'm so glad the national press is getting to see the beauty of our state," he said.
But Colom and his Black supporters also have never ignored the significance of his candidacy as a Black man.
"We are motivated by the gross inequalities we have seen in society and how only one side seems to benefit," said Tarawally, who was born in Sierra Leone and arrived in the Deep South to attend law school at the University of Mississippi. "So, we want a person who speaks to our benefit."
Colom ended his campaign with an ad set at the Jackson home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was gunned down in 1963 in his own driveway, dying in front of his wife and children.
"It's a powerful reminder of the sacrifice to gain the ballot, and nobody sacrificed more than Medgar Evers and his family," Colom said Friday.
"What was important to me about that ad is we didn't ask people to vote for me. We just talked about the sacrifice, talked about the story," he continued. "We just wanted that to be the closing ad because I wanted that to be the last message that the people of Mississippi heard."
