Democrat Scott Colom defeated Cindy Hyde-Smith, the incumbent Republican senator, to become the first Black senator in Mississippi elected since reconstruction, in a stunning upset 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.
Across the south, voters were further motivated by the president’s attempt to drastically redraw Black majority districts, attempting to dilute the largely Democratic voting blocs. Colom has a track record of success in the state. In 2015, Colom unseated a nearly 30-year incumbent when he was elected the first Black district attorney for the 16th circuit.
As district attorney, he had a 94% success rate for convictions. He’s a seventh-generation Mississippian, whose father was a longtime Republican who campaigned for Ronald Reagan and was friendly with Thad Cochran, a longtime state politician who resigned from his US Senate seat in 2018 due to declining health. A string of Democratic stars visited the state late in the race as the polls showed a tightening race – Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris and Bill Clinton all made appearances for Colom.
Trump rallied for Hyde-Smith last month. Joe Biden nominated Colom to be a federal judge in the northern district of Mississippi. With support from both Republicans and Democrats, he appeared to be on track to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench, when Hyde-Smith blocked him from having a confirmation hearing.
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