Mississippi elects Democrat Scott Colom as state's first Black US
senator since Reconstruction
[November 12, 2026]
By BILL BARROW and SOPHIE BATES
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Democratic nominee Scott Colom defeated Republican
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith on Wednesday in Mississippi's closely contested
U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the
state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Colom's narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been
controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations despite having
the largest share of Black residents of any U.S. state. The outcome adds
to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party
suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will
bolster some Democrats' argument that their future runs through the
American South.
“All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this,” Colom
told a crowd of hundreds who gathered at Tougaloo College for his
victory party. “I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the
courage to understand that we can show the country that Mississippi
matters.”
The Associated Press called the race in Colom's favor after local
officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional
ballots, called affidavit ballots in Mississippi.
The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947; the
winner was a staunch segregationist. Colom, a 43-year-old local
prosecutor, capitalized on the state's large Black population,
discontent with the economy and Hyde-Smith’s missteps as she sought a
second full term.
“They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually
cares about what they think, actually cares about what they’re going
through,” Colom said in the campaign's closing stretch.
Hyde-Smith, 67, called Colom late Wednesday afternoon to concede and
released a concession speech online shortly afterward.
“While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the
decision of Mississippi voters,” Hyde-Smith said. “I want to
congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous
responsibility of representing our great state.”
Colom said during the campaign that he could represent all of
Mississippi, a state where racial divisions have long defined its
politics and society, and he repeated that pledge after his victory.
“My commitment to you, each and every one of you, is that first I’m
going to treat your children like I want my children to be treated,”
Colom said. “I’m going to treat your parents the way I want my parents
to be treated. I’m gonna treat your future the way I want my future to
be” and “work to make every Mississippian’s life better.”
National Democrats, activists and Mississippians celebrate
Party leaders hailed the senator-elect's triumph, with nods to the
South's emerging status as a political battleground after other
victories from North Carolina and South Carolina to Georgia and Texas.
“Scott ran the campaign of a lifetime and re-imagined what’s possible
for Democrats in the South,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of
New York posted online.
Former President Bill Clinton, a native Arkansan who campaigned with
Colom days before the election, addressed the senator-elect on social
media, saying he won “because you believe in the promise of your state’s
people. And they believed in you right back.”
Vera Finley was among those supporters.
“I am here to celebrate my parents and my grandparents. I am not one
generation out of the cotton fields,” Finley said ahead of Colom's
victory speech. “Both of my parents picked cotton. And my
great-grandmother was sold here as a slave from Virginia to here. So I
am so excited to be on this side of history.”
Another Mississippian, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, issued a
statement saying the state’s voters, most notably Black voters, “made
history because they refused to be intimidated, discouraged, or counted
out” in a state that has seen “some of the nation’s most difficult
battles for voting rights.”
A race Washington once viewed as a long shot
The contest was a latecomer to the national spotlight, finally drawing
attention and money months after Black senators, including Georgia's
Raphael Warnock and Maryland's Angela Alsobrooks, first urged donors and
party leaders to see it as winnable.
The son of a onetime Republican who worked for President Ronald Reagan,
Colom produced one of the year’s most widely circulated ads. After
Hyde-Smith seemed to brush off high beef prices by saying consumers
could choose other proteins, Colom cut a 30-second spot depicting
incredulous voters saying they’d “pick another senator instead.”
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Mississippi Democratic Senate candidate Scott Colom gestures at an
election event in Jackson, Miss., Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2026. (AP
Photo/Ellen Schmidt)
When Trump came to Corinth, Mississippi, in late October to rally
with Hyde-Smith, Colom walked the line of Trump supporters as they
waited to enter. He introduced himself and asked about their
concerns.
Later, when Trump called Hyde-Smith to the stage, she said only nine
words in six seconds before stepping away: “Is this not the best
president in our lifetime?”
Colom's appearance outside the rally tracked his strategy of
criticizing Trump’s policies — especially the Iran war that drove up
gas prices and tariffs that caused headaches for Mississippi farmers
— without taking personal jabs at the president or people who voted
for him. Instead, he consistently put the onus on Hyde-Smith,
framing her as a nonentity in Washington — a critique that resonated
in a state accustomed to long-serving, powerful senators.
There is some irony in Hyde-Smith losing to Colom. In 2022,
President Joe Biden nominated Colom to be a U.S. District Court
judge. Mississippi’s senior Republican Sen. Roger Wicker and former
Gov. Haley Barbour, who is also a former national Republican
chairman, backed the nomination.
Hyde-Smith, however, blocked Colom’s confirmation. Colom said his
campaign was never about getting even with Hyde-Smith.
Colom called on Mississippi's history
The senator-elect concluded his campaign with an ad that featured
him at the Jackson home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader
who, in 1963, was gunned down in his driveway by a white
supremacist.
Colom told the story of Evers' military service at Normandy in World
War II, his voter registration efforts in Mississippi, his
assassination and the three decades it took to win a conviction. “He
was killed for helping Mississippians vote,” Colom said. “On
Tuesday, use your vote and honor everyone who died for that right.”
At the lectern Wednesday night, Colom said it was appropriate that
the race be called on Veterans Day, as he again paid tribute to
Evers.
“He served his country, came home to Mississippi, and they wouldn’t
let him vote,” Colom said. “But he had faith that Mississippi could
make progress."
Despite Republicans' domination, the path was always there
Because of the Black population and its alignment with Democrats,
Mississippi’s general elections have been closer for years than its
Southern neighbors. Trump won by double digits in each of his three
presidential contests, but in 2023, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves
managed to win reelection by a margin of just 3 percentage points.
Colom and other Black party leaders and strategists insisted
throughout 2026 that he could narrow the gap with strong Black
turnout, Republican discontent and an uptick in Democrats' usual
share of the white vote in Mississippi.
Results showed strong turnout in the Mississippi Delta and its
concentration of majority Black counties. But nearly all of the
state moved leftward from the 2024 election, when Trump carried
Mississippi by nearly 23 points.
Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate in 2018. She won a special
election runoff in 2018 and a full term in 2020. Both times she
defeated Democrat Mike Espy, a former U.S. agriculture secretary
who'd also been Mississippi's first Black congressman since
Reconstruction.
During the extended vote count, Colom acknowledged the historic
nature of his candidacy but said he cares more about what it means
for others.
“My job is to do well enough as the next United States senator that
the next time some young Black boy or girl has the work ethic, the
vision and the values,” he said, “and they want to be United States
senator, that nobody says because of anything I’ve done that they
shouldn’t get a chance.”
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Barrow reported from Atlanta and Washington.
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