By Daniel Trotta
Nov 11 (Reuters) – Democratic challenger Scott Colom defeated incumbent Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in the Mississippi election for the US Senate, media projected on Wednesday, making him the Southern state’s first Black senator since the Reconstruction era that followed the US Civil War.
The result was a stunning upset in the heavily Republican state and expanded on the national drubbing the Democrats delivered to President Donald Trump’s Republicans in the November 3 midterm elections. It was also a historic victory for African Americans in a former slave state that was a hotbed of repression during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
The Mississippi victory gives the Democrats a 55-44 advantage in the 100-member Senate, with the winner in one Senate race from last week’s election — in Alaska — yet to be determined. The Democrats have also gained 41 seats in the House of Representatives so far, holding an advantage of 254 to 168 with 13 races yet to be called.
Republicans lost control of both chambers, leaving Trump facing a Democratic-controlled Congress for the first time in either of his two terms and presenting the opposition party with a chance to block highly partisan legislation and investigate Trump’s administration.
The Mississippi Senate race was one of the final races to be called after the elections.
The latest media-tabulated results showed Colom ahead by 0.5 percentage point, or some 4,600 votes.
Addressing a gathering of supporters who celebrated his victory with “Senator-Elect Colom” signs, Colom said there were times his long-shot campaign felt defeated but “I had to have faith.”
“There were times that I couldn’t get donors to answer the phone,” Colom said. “They did not believe a moment like this was possible. But I kept the faith.”
“There were times when I was tired, and I felt like I couldn’t keep going, but I kept the faith, and that is another tradition of our state,” he said.
Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, became the first Democrat to win a Mississippi Senate seat since John Stennis in 1982.
He harnessed frustration over the cost of living with a breakout campaign ad in which voters ridiculed Hyde-Smith’s suggestion that consumers had multiple proteins to choose from instead of paying rising prices for beef. Colom’s ad rephrased Hyde-Smith’s comment with voters saying, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.”
Colom told Reuters in an October interview that Mississippi voters felt betrayed by Trump policies such as the war in Iran, which has driven up fuel prices.
His campaign received a boost from October rallies with two other Black Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey.
HYDE-SMITH CONCEDES
Hyde-Smith, 67, who was appointed to the Senate in 2018 and won a special election later that year, had consistently led opinion polls in a state that Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024. Trump campaigned in Mississippi for Hyde-Smith near the end of the race.
She congratulated Colom and wished him well in a video posted on social media.
The Democratic victory in Mississippi was a part of a national trend of Democrats finding success in states long dominated by Republicans, including Texas.
With a majority of white voters, Mississippi, deep in the once-segregated South, turned solidly Republican with the political realignment that followed the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Many of the movement’s defining battles took place in Mississippi, where Black people faced discrimination in voting, employment, education and public accommodations.
The last Black candidate elected to the Senate in Mississippi was former slave Blanche Bruce in 1874.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Additional reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado and Leah Douglas, Jasper Ward and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller, Michelle Nichols, Cynthia Osterman and Thomas Derpinghaus)
