Scott Colom, a Democratic district attorney, has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, NBC News and CNN project, winning a Senate seat his party last carried in 1982 and widening the Democratic majority voters delivered in last week’s midterm elections.
The networks made the call Wednesday, eight days after Election Day, with Colom ahead by fewer than 5,000 votes out of more than 950,000 cast, according to the New York Times count, which put about 99 percent of the vote in. Mississippi certifies its results Dec. 3.
Colom, 43, will be the first Black senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction and the first Black candidate elected to statewide office in the state since that era, according to CNN. He is the first Democrat to win a Mississippi Senate seat since 1982.
Colom has served since 2016 as district attorney for Mississippi’s 16th Judicial District — Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee and Oktibbeha counties — after unseating an incumbent who had held the office for nearly three decades. A seventh-generation Mississippian from Columbus, he campaigned on affordability and branded the incumbent “Cindy High Prices,” according to campaign coverage.
Three years ago, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to a federal judgeship in northern Mississippi. Hyde-Smith blocked the nomination, even as Mississippi’s senior Republican senator, Roger Wicker, backed him. On election night, Hyde-Smith told supporters, “I blocked Scott Colom from being a federal judge, and you blocked him from being a US senator,” according to CNN — a claim of victory the final count did not bear out.
President Donald Trump carried Mississippi by about 22 points in 2024 and flew in during the campaign’s final week to headline a rally for Hyde-Smith. Colom appeared outside that rally and challenged the president to a debate.
Hyde-Smith, 67, had said little since election night. Asked by reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday about the ongoing count, she said, according to CNN: “We are still counting votes and there’s a few thousand out. We feel confident.”
The Mississippi call moves the new Senate to 55 seats for the Democratic caucus — 53 Democrats plus two independents who caucus with them — to 44 for Republicans, with one race, in Alaska, still uncalled. Democrats won control of the chamber on election night, flipping seven Republican-held seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas.
In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola leads Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan by about 4,250 votes with roughly 84 percent of the vote counted, according to NBC News. If neither candidate wins a majority, the race advances to a ranked-choice tabulation on Nov. 18.
Democrats also control the House, with 254 seats called to 169 for Republicans and 12 races still uncalled, according to NBC News, which projects the final House count at about 259 seats to 176.
The new Congress convenes Jan. 3, 2027.
