Colom to become Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction -

Updated Nov. 11, 2026, 7:19 p.m. ET

Democrat Scott Colom defeats Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in historic Mississippi Senate race.
Colom becomes the first Black U.S. senator elected from Mississippi since the Reconstruction era.
Colom’s victory is the first time in more than 44 years that Mississippi has elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate.
Colom’s victory was aided by a late surge in support and a viral campaign ad criticizing Hyde-Smith.

In a monumental upset that is more than 156 years in the making, Democrat Scott Colom defeated Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the closely watched Mississippi Senate race, on his way to becoming the state’s first Black U.S. senator elected since the Reconstruction era.

After several days of ballot counting and back-and-forth banter that flirted with legal action, Colom was projected the winner by CNN and NBC News, flipping a deep-red state often associated with U.S. racial segregation and the Civil Rights Movement that has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in more than 44 years.

Mississippi is the eighth Senate seat Democrats have flipped from Republicans in this year’s midterm elections, creating a minimum 55-seat Senate majority going into 2027 while votes are still being counted in Alaska.

Colom held a razor-thin but growing lead as absentee and provisional votes were counted. His victory comes even as Hyde-Smith had been favored to win, according to the Cook Political Report, and in a state that President Donald Trump won by more than 23 points in 2024.

Colom ripped the nonpartisan group in a social media post, saying its forecast hurt his campaign.

“At some point, we have to talk about @CookPolitical and other ‘prognosticators’ who had me and other southern candidates labeled as solid R for much of the campaign cycle,” Colom said in a Nov. 9 post on X. “They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long.”

The former prosecutor’s win also comes three years after Hyde-Smith blocked Colom, then a district attorney, from serving as a U.S. District Court judge. Colom then decided to run for Hyde-Smith’s seat. He will be Mississippi’s first Black senator since Blanche K. Bruce, who was born into slavery and served in 1881, and the first Democrat the state has elected to the U.S. Senate since 1982.

Colom’s surprise win came after late surge from Democrats

Colom, 43, a seventh-generation Mississippian, campaigned on the Democrats’ consistent message of improving the cost of living and health care for residents. Sensing a slight possibility to flip the Senate seat, national Democrats invested in the race late, even though a win seemed unlikely as Election Day approached.

During much of the campaign Colom was considered the longshot but he infused hope and enthusiasm between cross-state campaigning and social media virality. He flipped at least 18 counties that voted for Trump in 2024, according to the USA TODAY Network, including some that have not elected a Democratic senator since the 1980s.

Colom repeated the same slogan at all of his events across Mississippi: “lower costs, higher wages, save our health care, save our hospitals.” He frequently took aim at Hyde-Smith during his campaign for what he described as her hiding from voters by refusing to do town halls or answer questions from journalists. He also dubbed her “Cindy High Prices” because, he said, her allegiance to Trump‘s economic policies raised costs for Mississippians.

During the race he also called for higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for health insurance and save state hospitals.

“These people, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, all these people, they’re making plenty of money,” Colom said during an Oct. 18 local TV interview. “We don’t need to give them corporate subsidies. They need to pay their share.”

But Mississippi voters made the race close, with Hyde-Smith leading early before Colom began surging. The race was so close that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee both sent legal teams to monitor the ballot counting.

“I’m confident that ultimately Mississippi has decided to go in a new direction,” Colom told reporters while meeting with campaign volunteers in Jackson, Mississippi, on Nov. 5. “We can’t get divided around national issues that are actually not going to really help our state because we are a state that needs to focus on our needs because we need it.”

Colom, Hyde-Smith no strangers to each other

The intense Senate election was not the first time Colom and Hyde-Smith squared off.

In 2023, President Joe Biden nominated Colom, a district attorney at the time, to serve as a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Mississippi.

But Hyde-Smith thwarted Biden’s nomination and Colom’s chances by not submitting a “blue slip” to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to advance. If a senator from the nominee’s state does not submit a slip, the confirmation of a lifetime judicial appointment is prevented.

Hyde-Smith said she objected to Colom’s support of transgender rights. About 2½ years later, Colom launched his Senate campaign.

Colom explains game-changing viral campaign ad

Part of Colom’s success and “beef” with Hyde-Smith also came from a snarky campaign ad, “Pick another protein,” that went viral and struck a chord with voters. The spot released last month shows Hyde-Smith, a cattle farmer and a former Mississippi Commissioner of Agriculture and Commerce, responding to a TV reporter’s question about what Republicans are doing about soaring beef prices.

“You know, you have so many proteins to choose from,” Hyde-Smith responded. Her answer was followed by people grilling and buying beef at a grocery store. “Pick another protein? She done lost her damn mind!” a woman in a diner said.

A man grilling hamburgers said he’d “rather pick another senator instead,” followed by Colom delivering a similar message. The ad got 2.8 million views in its first 36 hours across social media platforms.

On Nov. 4, Colom shared in a post on X the inspiration behind the ad.

Colom said the Open Society’s Patrick Gaspard gave him the idea to use Hyde-Smith’s “inexcusable gaffe and do something edgy with it.” Colom added that his content creator, Ryan Sayles, directed and edited the ad, which Colom considered the “breakout star” of this election cycle.

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