GDELTMississippi
How Scott Colom defied the odds to go from DA to Mississippi's Democratic U.S. senator
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How Scott Colom defied the odds to go from DA to Mississippi's Democratic U.S. senator
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Open article →Why Democrat Scott Colom’s win in Mississippi Senate race is so significant After winning a close race in Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom will become the state's first black US senator for more than 150 years, and the third in history. It is a historic result in the deeply conservative southern state that last sent a Democrat to the US Senate in 1982, and had not seated a black senator since 1875. Colom follows Hiram Revels, who became the first black person ever to serve in the chamber when he was seated from 1870 to 1871, and Blanche Bruce, whose term ran from 1875 to 1881. Revels and Bruce were both members of the Republican Party. Revels was chosen as Mississippi's first senator after the Civil War, serving for just over a year and campaigning strongly for racial equality. A few years later, Bruce, who was born into slavery, became the first black person to serve a full term in the US Senate. He remained in Washington after leaving the chamber and held a role in the Treasury. Both terms came before the repressive Jim Crow laws began to enforce racial segregation across Mississippi and other southern US states. Blanche Bruce (L) and Hiram Revels (R) are the two previous black senators to have been chosen by Mississippi A significant factor in Colom's victory was his success in mobilising young people and the state's large black population, who are expected to have turned out in high numbers. In a victory speech, Colom referenced how Revels, who was a minister and served as a chaplain during the Civil War, gained support for his Senate campaign through his words. "That's an example of the power of prayer, and through our history, there are so many people that lifted this state up through the power of prayer in very dark times," Colom said. A portrait of Hiram Revels, taken in about 1870 Prior to the result being called, the BBC spoke to students at Jackson State University, a historically black college in Mississippi. Many of them had voted for the first time and backed Colom. "I really feel like a change is what we need," 18-year-old Jamyria Dunn said. "I've had some amazing days in my life," she continued, "but seeing Mississippi, this state in particular, turn blue, would really bring a light to my heart that people just would not understand." Democrat Scott Colom makes history as Mississippi's first black senator since 19th Century
Open article →Why Democrat Scott Colom’s Senate win in Mississippi is so significant Democrat Scott Colom has won the US Senate race in Mississippi, delivering a shock victory for the party in a deeply conservative state that has elected Republicans for decades. Colom's victory makes him the first black person from Mississippi to be seated in the US Senate since Blanche Bruce served from 1875 to 1881. Fewer than five thousand votes out of nearly a million counted separated him from his Republican opponent, the incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. The result means the Democrats will hold 55 seats in the 100-member Senate, with a knife-edge race in Alaska still to be called. Before Scott Colom, these two men were the last black US senators in Mississippi Colom, 43, won with 49.2% of the vote. Hyde-Smith, who received 48.7%, congratulated Colom in a video posted on X on Wednesday evening and wished him well. "While this was not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters," she said. The contest was not considered to be in play until the final weeks of the campaign, given President Donald Trump won the state in the 2024 election by more than 22 points. Colom offered a victory speech on the campus of Tougaloo College, met by hundreds of cheering supporters standing side-by-side under the night sky. A crowd of supporters turned out to cheer Colom's win Excitement filled the air as he thanked them for the support over the days of waiting for a result since the 4 November election. "They did not believe a moment like this was possible, but I kept the faith," Colom said. "It's not something that I did y'all," he continued. "It's something we did." "In Mississippi, it's local people that make the difference." Dozens of people were gathered at the Mississippi HQ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Jackson on Wednesday when Colom's victory was announced. The room burst into deafening applause and cheers. "This is an amazing result," said Leon Russell, chairman of the NAACP board. "This is purely the work of particularly the black community," he continued. "There was not a whole lot of money, but there was a whole lot of organising. Across the room, filled with people embracing, Amber Thomas sat, revelling in the victory. "When you fight, you win," Thomas said. "Right now, I am overwhelmed with joy." Colom supporters celebrate his win in Jackson, Mississippi The last black senator in the state before Colom was Bruce who was chosen by the state legislature. It has taken a century and a half for the state to choose a new one, this time by Mississippi voters. In his campaign, Colom strove to engage Republican voters, even going to a Trump rally to speak to people in line outside. Another key moment was his opponent telling voters to "pick another protein" when asked about surging beef prices, something Colom turned into a viral advert of his own. , external Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith has been in the Senate since 2018 Colom appeared to a ride a national wave of resentment against Republicans. Voter backlash against Trump's Republican party has been driven in large part by economic woes, blamed on his administration's tariffs and war with Iran, according to exit polls. Colom, a local prosecutor, used the national mood to his advantage, highlighting his opponent's support for Trump's tariffs and giving her the nickname "Cindy High Prices". The Democrat campaigned aggressively, visiting all of Mississippi's 82 counties. Hyde-Smith's campaign assailed Colom as a puppet of billionaire liberal donor George Soros, whose family has helped fund the Democrat's political campaigns. The 67-year-old Republican was criticised for a lack of public appearances. Democrats have scored a series of major wins in these midterm elections, taking control of both the US House of Representatives and the Senate. The party flipped Senate seats in Republican strongholds, including Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and Iowa. GLOBAL: Midterms results spark fears in Israel over US ties DATA: How America voted in maps and charts EXPLAINING: What Democrats can and can't do with power FULL RESULTS: US midterm elections results 2026 Follow the twists and turns of Trump's second term with North America correspondent Anthony Zurcher's US Politics Unspun newsletter. Readers in the UK can sign up here . Those outside the UK can sign up here .
Open article →In a state that hasn't had a Democrat in office since 1980 and hasn't sent a Black senator to Washington since the 1870s, Colom's win represents a massive upset in state politics.
Open article →Scott Colom has won the U.S. Senate race in Mississippi. After a very close race, he's the first Black man to represent the state in the Senate in nearly 150 years.
Open article →This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication. Yesterday CNN declared Scott Colom the winner in the race for the Senate seat in Mississippi. One of their political pundits, it’s important to recognize him as a Black man, talked about the long history that came before and the people who paved the roads to make this possible. Another, a GOP strategist and often apologist for Trump then criticized him, basically saying how dare you, how dare you undermine the work of Scott Colom by bringing up the past. I need to say both are true: Scott Colom ran an incredible campaign, he and his crew worked hard and worked brilliantly. And I have no doubt that were Scott Colom sitting beside me he’d say the same: yes, he worked hard and there is NO way he would have succeeded without the work of those who came before him. I’d like to give a brief history about the fight for voting rights in Mississippi. What I’m about to recount is also true of many other states in the deep south. May 7, 1955, Bilzoni, MS: George Lee, a minister, was murdered after he refused to give up his fight for voting rights September 25, 1961, Liberty, MS: Herbert Lee, who worked with Bob Moses to register Black voters, was killed by state legislator June 12, 1963, Jackson, MS: Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a sniper in front of his home January 31, 1964, Liberty, MS: Louis Allen, who witnessed the September 25, 1961 murder of Herbert Lee was killed June 21, 1964, Philadelphia, MS: It’s not clear when the murders actually occurred. This is the date of the most infamous of the Mississippi voting rights murders. James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner were returning to Meridian, MS after having spent time investigating the burning of a church near Philadelphia, MS. They were arrested and then disappeared. This became national news as the search continued to find them. Likely a big part of the attention came because Goodman and Schwener were white. There was an extended search, that included the FBI, before their bodies were found on August 4, 1964 January 10, 1966, Hattiesburg, MS: Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer died after suffering burns when his home was firebombed. His offense? Offering to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee to vote It’s important to also remember Fannie Lou Hamer. On June 9, 1963 she was nearly beaten to death in Winona, MS. She was returning from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. She lost the vision in one eye and suffered permanent kidney damage. She died at age 59, her life likely cut short because of the injuries she sustained during the beating. Yet she didn’t back down. She continued the fight, the right, to achieve voting rights for Black people in the south. She famously said “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Today, with the election of Scott Colom I’m thinking a lot of us are a bit less sick and tired. Want to be entertained? This ad from the Colom campaign is one of the best ever! The Ugliness is the Hope, but only if we embrace the rage and act. Resist. Persist. Oppose. Propose. Be the opposition with a proposition. This was originally published at davidvalade.blog We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet. Can you donate $5 or more to support Daily Kos and our continued work? Sign up to get the best of Daily Kos right in your inbox. This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member. Recommending and sharing stories helps us decide which stories are most important to show our readers. It could be because of network issues or a problem with our commenting provider, or your browser or an extension may be blocking them. This can happen with Firefox Strict mode, uBlock Origin, Brave, or ad blockers. Try reloading the page, disabling your ad blocker for this site, or switching Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection to Standard mode. Sign up to get the best of Daily Kos right in your inbox. Daily Kos is independent, reader-funded progressive media rooted in a partisan community. Daily Kos publishes its content for broad public use so that ideas and information can spread as widely as possible. Unless otherwise specified, site content may be reused or republished for any purpose without explicit permission. “Kos” and “Daily Kos” are registered trademarks of Kos Media, LLC. ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + "
Open article →This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication. Yesterday CNN declared Scott Colom the winner in the race for the Senate seat in Mississippi. One of their political pundits, it’s important to recognize him as a Black man, talked about the long history that came before and the people who paved the roads to make this possible. Another, a GOP strategist and often apologist for Trump then criticized him, basically saying how dare you, how dare you undermine the work of Scott Colom by bringing up the past. I need to say both are true: Scott Colom ran an incredible campaign, he and his crew worked hard and worked brilliantly. And I have no doubt that were Scott Colom sitting beside me he’d say the same: yes, he worked hard and there is NO way he would have succeeded without the work of those who came before him. I’d like to give a brief history about the fight for voting rights in Mississippi. What I’m about to recount is also true of many other states in the deep south. May 7, 1955, Bilzoni, MS: George Lee, a minister, was murdered after he refused to give up his fight for voting rights September 25, 1961, Liberty, MS: Herbert Lee, who worked with Bob Moses to register Black voters, was killed by state legislator June 12, 1963, Jackson, MS: Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a sniper in front of his home January 31, 1964, Liberty, MS: Louis Allen, who witnessed the September 25, 1961 murder of Herbert Lee was killed June 21, 1964, Philadelphia, MS: It’s not clear when the murders actually occurred. This is the date of the most infamous of the Mississippi voting rights murders. James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner were returning to Meridian, MS after having spent time investigating the burning of a church near Philadelphia, MS. They were arrested and then disappeared. This became national news as the search continued to find them. Likely a big part of the attention came because Goodman and Schwener were white. There was an extended search, that included the FBI, before their bodies were found on August 4, 1964 January 10, 1966, Hattiesburg, MS: Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer died after suffering burns when his home was firebombed. His offense? Offering to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee to vote It’s important to also remember Fannie Lou Hamer. On June 9, 1963 she was nearly beaten to death in Winona, MS. She was returning from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. She lost the vision in one eye and suffered permanent kidney damage. She died at age 59, her life likely cut short because of the injuries she sustained during the beating. Yet she didn’t back down. She continued the fight, the right, to achieve voting rights for Black people in the south. She famously said “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Today, with the election of Scott Colom I’m thinking a lot of us are a bit less sick and tired. Want to be entertained? This ad from the Colom campaign is one of the best ever! The Ugliness is the Hope, but only if we embrace the rage and act. Resist. Persist. Oppose. Propose. Be the opposition with a proposition. This was originally published at davidvalade.blog We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet. Can you donate $5 or more to support Daily Kos and our continued work? Sign up to get the best of Daily Kos right in your inbox. This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member. Recommending and sharing stories helps us decide which stories are most important to show our readers. It could be because of network issues or a problem with our commenting provider, or your browser or an extension may be blocking them. This can happen with Firefox Strict mode, uBlock Origin, Brave, or ad blockers. Try reloading the page, disabling your ad blocker for this site, or switching Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection to Standard mode. Sign up to get the best of Daily Kos right in your inbox. Daily Kos is independent, reader-funded progressive media rooted in a partisan community. Daily Kos publishes its content for broad public use so that ideas and information can spread as widely as possible. Unless otherwise specified, site content may be reused or republished for any purpose without explicit permission. “Kos” and “Daily Kos” are registered trademarks of Kos Media, LLC. ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + "
Open article →This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication. Yesterday CNN declared Scott Colom the winner in the race for the Senate seat in Mississippi. One of their political pundits, it’s important to recognize him as a Black man, talked about the long history that came before and the people who paved the roads to make this possible. Another, a GOP strategist and often apologist for Trump then criticized him, basically saying how dare you, how dare you undermine the work of Scott Colom by bringing up the past. I need to say both are true: Scott Colom ran an incredible campaign, he and his crew worked hard and worked brilliantly. And I have no doubt that were Scott Colom sitting beside me he’d say the same: yes, he worked hard and there is NO way he would have succeeded without the work of those who came before him. I’d like to give a brief history about the fight for voting rights in Mississippi. What I’m about to recount is also true of many other states in the deep south. May 7, 1955, Bilzoni, MS: George Lee, a minister, was murdered after he refused to give up his fight for voting rights September 25, 1961, Liberty, MS: Herbert Lee, who worked with Bob Moses to register Black voters, was killed by state legislator June 12, 1963, Jackson, MS: Medgar Evers was shot and killed by a sniper in front of his home January 31, 1964, Liberty, MS: Louis Allen, who witnessed the September 25, 1961 murder of Herbert Lee was killed June 21, 1964, Philadelphia, MS: It’s not clear when the murders actually occurred. This is the date of the most infamous of the Mississippi voting rights murders. James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Henry Schwerner were returning to Meridian, MS after having spent time investigating the burning of a church near Philadelphia, MS. They were arrested and then disappeared. This became national news as the search continued to find them. Likely a big part of the attention came because Goodman and Schwener were white. There was an extended search, that included the FBI, before their bodies were found on August 4, 1964 January 10, 1966, Hattiesburg, MS: Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer died after suffering burns when his home was firebombed. His offense? Offering to pay poll taxes for those who couldn’t afford the fee to vote It’s important to also remember Fannie Lou Hamer. On June 9, 1963 she was nearly beaten to death in Winona, MS. She was returning from a voter registration workshop in South Carolina. She lost the vision in one eye and suffered permanent kidney damage. She died at age 59, her life likely cut short because of the injuries she sustained during the beating. Yet she didn’t back down. She continued the fight, the right, to achieve voting rights for Black people in the south. She famously said “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Today, with the election of Scott Colom I’m thinking a lot of us are a bit less sick and tired. Want to be entertained? This ad from the Colom campaign is one of the best ever! The Ugliness is the Hope, but only if we embrace the rage and act. Resist. Persist. Oppose. Propose. Be the opposition with a proposition. This was originally published at davidvalade.blog We continue to be paywall-free. We continue to be supported by our readers, not billionaires or corporations. But we need to bring in more revenue. We are leaning on our community more than ever to help make ends meet. Can you donate $5 or more to support Daily Kos and our continued work? Sign up to get the best of Daily Kos right in your inbox. This content was created by a Daily Kos Community member. Recommending and sharing stories helps us decide which stories are most important to show our readers. It could be because of network issues or a problem with our commenting provider, or your browser or an extension may be blocking them. This can happen with Firefox Strict mode, uBlock Origin, Brave, or ad blockers. Try reloading the page, disabling your ad blocker for this site, or switching Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection to Standard mode. Sign up to get the best of Daily Kos right in your inbox. Daily Kos is independent, reader-funded progressive media rooted in a partisan community. Daily Kos publishes its content for broad public use so that ideas and information can spread as widely as possible. Unless otherwise specified, site content may be reused or republished for any purpose without explicit permission. “Kos” and “Daily Kos” are registered trademarks of Kos Media, LLC. ' + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.webview_notification_text + ' " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_title + " " + scriptOptions._localizedStrings.redirect_overlay_text + "
Open article →Democrat Scott Colom is projected to win the hotly contested Mississippi Senate seat, a significant upset for Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. With Colom's win, Democrats will have a 55-seat majority in the Senate.
Open article →Scott Colom speaks with attendees at an event held at the Two Mississippi Museums in Jackson, Miss. on Aug. 1, 2026. Sarah Warnock/AP hide caption Democrat Scott Colom has won election to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi, according to a race call by the Associated Press, narrowly defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. After more than a week of counting outstanding, absentee ballots and affidavit — or provisional — ballots, Colom won the closest Senate race in the country by just a few thousand votes. His victory expands the majority Democrats will have in the new Congress to 55 seats, with the race in Alaska still undecided. In a midterm full of stunning upsets for Democrats, Colom's victory underscores a dramatic shift in the political landscape across the South driven by a surge of Black voter turnout. Mississippi has the highest share of Black voters in the country, at close to 40%, but President Trump won the state by 23 points in 2024. Mississippi hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in more than 40 years and hasn't sent a Black senator to Washington since Reconstruction. The state's rural, agriculture-heavy economy was disproportionately impacted by rising prices, and saw millions in investment from both parties, particularly in the final weeks of the race. Colom, a district attorney, made cost of living a centerpiece of his campaign message, decrying "Cindy High-Prices" as bad for Mississippi. Hyde-Smith conceded the race in a video posted to social media shortly after the AP's race call on Wednesday. "While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters," she said. "I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state." Speaking to supporters at the historically Black Tougaloo College campus in Jackson, an emotional Colom paid tribute to his faith in God and to hard work by his campaign. "For months and months, I've been telling everybody everywhere I go that we're gonna win this election," he said. "But every time I said it, I pointed out that the people were gonna give me too much credit for it. Because it's not something that I did, y'all. It's something that we did!" Unlike most other contested Senate races that flipped, Mississippi did not see much national money or attention until the closing days of the election. That included a rally in the final week by President Trump and high-profile visits from former Vice President Kamala Harris, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and other Democrats. The Cook Political Report had the race rated as Likely Republican going into election night. Colom told NPR earlier this month that a lack of investment from national Democrats until the last minute was a mistake. "The reality is, Mississippi has never been a lost cause, we've been a betrayed cause," he said. "The Democratic Party has not been trying to win Mississippi. Let's stop kidding ourselves, right? They spent hundreds of millions of dollars in other states. They spent almost nothing in Mississippi." Colom's campaign was a contrast in style from Hyde-Smith, who rarely spoke to reporters in Washington and had minimal presence in the state. When asked about high beef prices earlier this year, Hyde-Smith — a cattle rancher and onetime state agriculture commissioner — said that "you have so many other proteins to choose from." That led to a viral campaign ad from Colom, which featured several people expressing disbelief at the senator's suggestion to "pick another protein." Instead, the ad said, it was time to "pick another senator." NPR does not offer or accept money for coverage or interviews. Anyone who makes such an offer or request is not an NPR employee and does not represent NPR.
Open article →In a major upset, Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi , NBC News projects, capping off a string of Democratic victories by flipping the reddest seat yet in this year’s midterms. Mississippi last elected a Democrat to the Senate 44 years ago, just a few weeks before Colom was born in 1982. Colom will become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. The historic win comes after days of uncertainty in the race, with Colom holding a razor-thin lead over Hyde-Smith as more votes continued to be counted. Colom, a district attorney, remained confident throughout the vote counting that he would prevail. “For months and months, I’ve been telling everybody, everywhere I go, that we’re going to win this election. I was saying it eight and nine months ago,” Colom told a crowd of his supporters in Jackson on Wednesday night. Colom emphasized that what he described as the “Mississippi faith tradition” guided his campaign and said, “This journey started with a prayer.” “All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this,” he said. “I had the courage to believe in Mississippi. I had the courage to understand that we can show the country that Mississippi matters.” Colom said that “in Mississippi, our prayers have often changed the course of history,” noting that the first Black senator ever elected in the U.S. came from Mississippi. He ended his remarks by promising to represent all Mississippians, including “the ones that voted for me, the ones that didn’t vote for me and the ones that didn’t vote.” Hyde-Smith congratulated Colom in a video message Wednesday evening. “While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” she said. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.” Colom’s campaign confirmed to NBC News that Hyde-Smith had called him to concede. Colom’s victory means Democrats will hold at least 55 Senate seats next year. The only Senate race left to be called is in Alaska. In the next Congress, no Democratic senator will represent a redder state than Colom. Donald Trump carried Mississippi by 23 percentage points in 2024. Colom’s victory also underscores the Trump administration’s broad unpopularity with voters just two years after that presidential election, even in parts of the ruby-red Deep South. A majority of Mississippi voters said they disapproved of Trump’s overall job performance, according to NBC News exit polling. Majorities also said that his policies, including tariffs, hurt the economy and that it was wrong for the U.S. to take military action in Iran. Colom, the eighth Democrat to flip a Republican-held Senate seat so far this year, long believed Democrats had an opportunity to win Mississippi, given its sizable Black population and plenty of white voters in rural areas who he thought could back a Democrat. He chided his party for writing off the state. “We were never a lost cause. We were a betrayed cause,” Colom recently told NBC News . “We were betrayed by Cindy Hyde-Smith because she allowed tariffs to hurt us. She allowed people — hundreds of thousands of Mississippians — to lose healthcare. She gave away our voice in the war in Iran, which drove up costs for farmers and for truckers and for businesses.” “But for too long we were also a betrayed cause by the national party, because they did not compete in this state,” Colom added. In late October, the Senate Majority PAC, a top Democratic super PAC, announced an ad campaign in the state through Election Day, starting with a 30-second spot that presented Colom as a crusader who would “fight corruption in both parties.” The group ended up spending nearly $2.1 million on the airwaves, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. The GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund responded with a similar-sized buy, airing ads that painted Colom as “too liberal” and “too radical.” The race also drew high-profile surrogates from both parties. Trump traveled to Mississippi eight days before the election, while Democrats such as former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Raphael Warnock of Georgia hit the campaign trail for Colom. Former President Barack Obama also appeared in an ad that the Colom campaign launched on digital platforms. Republicans tried to leverage those surrogates against Colom, with the Senate Leadership Fund launching one ad with a narrator saying, “Colom proudly campaigns with Kamala Harris because Colom supports their radical agenda.” But it was not enough to defeat Colom, who sharply criticized Hyde-Smith’s vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which cut Medicaid funds. Colom also faulted Hyde-Smith’s support for the Trump administration’s tariff regime and the costly war with Iran, labeling his opponent “Cindy High Prices.” Colom’s campaign also created a viral video highlighting Hyde-Smith’s comments that Mississippians struggling with high beef prices “have so many proteins to choose from.” The video featured clips of people saying: “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator.” NAACP President Derrick Johnson praised Colom’s victory, calling it proof that Mississippi and other states in the South were “underinvested in.” “The Scott Colom campaign proves that it is possible to win in the South when there’s investment,” Johnson said in an interview, adding that he hopes Colom’s victory will show that a state like Mississippi is not “deep red,” but rather “an opportunity state.” Johnson added that the Supreme Court’s April decision gutting the Voting Rights Act was “a direct attack on the rights of Black voters,” saying it was one of the many realities that urged people to turn out to vote. He also cited affordability and foreign wars as motivators. “Folks were seeing that we were losing grip in this country, that we were losing our democracy, that our very essence as a community, our community, was under attack, and people stood up and fought back at the ballot box,” Johnson said. Hyde-Smith, a former state agriculture commissioner who was appointed to the Senate in 2018 and won a full term in 2020, campaigned as a reliable conservative and tried to portray Colom as a “radical” progressive. She also touted her loyalty to Trump, who endorsed her more than a year before the midterms and said she was “ 100% MAGA .” Hyde-Smith said that over the last week, her campaign team “worked tirelessly to ensure every legally cast vote was counted and that the people of Mississippi received a fair and transparent election.” “I am proud of what we have accomplished together, but I want to make one thing very clear: An election may come to an end, but our commitment to Mississippi never will,” she said. Colom and Hyde-Smith had crossed paths before this year’s midterm elections. She blocked his nomination for a federal judgeship during the Biden administration. Colom recently told NBC News that he had forgiven her. Daniel Arkin is a senior reporter at NBC News. Bridget Bowman is a national political reporter for NBC News. Kyla Guilfoil is a breaking news reporter on the politics team for NBC News Digital.
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