🗳️ Scott Colom becomes Mississippi's first black senator in 150 years
Democrat Scott Colom narrowly beat Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith in a state Donald Trump carried by more than 22 points in 2024.
The mystery
Mississippi has sent Republicans to the US Senate for decades, and few people thought this seat was even competitive until the last weeks of the race. Now a local prosecutor has flipped it by a tiny margin. What does an upset like this say about the national mood?
The answer
Scott Colom, a 43-year-old Democrat and local prosecutor, has won Mississippi's US Senate election, unseating Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. He took 49.2% of the vote to her 48.7%, a gap of fewer than 5,000 votes out of almost a million cast. Colom is the first black senator from Mississippi since Blanche Bruce, who served from 1875 to 1881 and was picked by the state legislature rather than by voters. Hyde-Smith accepted the result in a video and wished him well. Colom campaigned in all 82 of the state's counties, reached out to Republican voters and attacked rising prices, nicknaming his rival "Cindy High Prices". According to exit polls cited by the BBC, anger over the economy, tariffs and the war with Iran hurt Republicans nationwide. With the win, Democrats will hold 55 of the 100 Senate seats, while the race in Alaska has not yet been called.
Now think about this
Do you think local, county-by-county campaigning can still beat big national trends in elections?
