Democrat Scott Colom has beaten Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, a state Trump won by about 20 points. NBC News and CBS News projected the race Wednesday after more than a week of counting. Colom led by about 4,600 votes with 99% counted, CBS reported, and Mississippi doesn’t allow recounts.
He’ll be the first Democrat Mississippi has elected to the Senate since 1982 and its first Black senator since Reconstruction. It’s the eighth Senate seat Democrats have flipped this year, which gives them at least 55 seats when the new Congress starts in January.
Who is Scott Colom?
Colom, 43, is a district attorney in northeast Mississippi. In 2023, President Biden nominated him to be a federal judge, and Hyde-Smith blocked it, citing questions about his views on transgender issues. Two and a half years later he ran against her. “There were times that I couldn’t get donors to answer the phone,” he told supporters. His first town hall in Jackson drew fewer than 10 people.
On Wednesday night at Tougaloo College, he said, “All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this.” Hyde-Smith conceded in a video: “While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters.”
How did a Democrat win Mississippi?
He ran on prices and health care, and he made it personal. He called his opponent “Cindy High Prices” and hit her for voting for the Republican bill that cut Medicaid, in a state where rural hospitals are hanging on. “We were betrayed by Cindy Hyde-Smith because she allowed tariffs to hurt us,” he told NBC News. He also said she “gave away our voice in the war in Iran, which drove up costs for farmers and for truckers and for businesses.”
That’s the same message that worked across the country on Nov. 3, when Democrats took both chambers. NBC’s exit polls in Mississippi found most voters disapproved of Trump’s job performance and said tariffs had hurt the economy. Trump himself visited the state eight days before the election, and it wasn’t enough.
What’s left in the Senate count?
Only Alaska, where Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola are still too close to call. Mississippi counties have until Friday, Nov. 13, to certify their results. Meanwhile, House Republicans have picked Jim Jordan as their new leader, and the party is still arguing over why it lost.
The BeezLoop Take
This is the clearest sign yet that the midterms were about the cost of living, not party labels. A prosecutor nobody would take calls from beat an incumbent in one of the most Republican states in the country by talking about grocery prices, tariffs and hospitals.
Republicans can’t blame this one on a bad map or a weak candidate in a swing state. If they’re losing Mississippi on prices, the problem is the policy.
The open question: can Colom vote like a Mississippian in a Democratic Senate and hold the seat in 2032, or is this a one-time protest vote?
Sources: NBC News · CBS News · CBS News (video)
