Democrat Scott Colom has won the Mississippi’s Senate race on Wednesday after days of counting to defeat Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Colom becomes the first Democrat senator since John Stennis in 1982 and first black to win a Mississippi Senate seat since since the Reconstruction era that followed the US Civil War.
The last Black candidate elected to the Senate in Mississippi was former slave Blanche Bruce in 1874.
The tight race was one of the two outstanding races to be called since Tuesday’s elections, in which Democrats overtook both the Senate and the House to gain control of the US Congress.
Mississippi officials took days to count ballots in a race that was so tight that Colom at times led by only a few dozen votes.
Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office provided daily updates and today explained that the count could be finalised on November 13. The US media however called the race for Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney.
In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked Colom’s nomination by former President Joe Biden to serve as a federal district judge in northern Mississippi, citing his position on transgender issues. Mississippi’s other US senator, Republican Roger Wicker, supported his nomination.
Hyde-Smith, 67, who was first elected in 2018, had consistently led in opinion polls in a state that President Donald Trump won by nearly 23 points in 2024. Trump campaigned in Mississippi for Hyde-Smith near the end of the race.
Colom told Reuters in an October interview that Mississippi voters felt “betrayed” by Trump policies like the war in Iran, which has driven up fuel prices.
On the campaign trail, he focused on reaching voters through town halls as well as visits to public housing, festivals and food trucks, Colom said. “We did it the hard way, the grassroots way,” he said.
October rallies with Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey boosted Colom’s campaign.
