Democrat Scott Colom wins Mississippi Senate seat in historic upset

Democrat Scott Colom has won the US Senate race in Mississippi, becoming the first Black senator elected from the southern US state in more than 140 years, US networks projected on Wednesday.

Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. It was perhaps the most remarkable seat flip of a midterm election in which Democrats won back the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

CNN, NBC and CBS called the race on Wednesday, eight days after election night. With about 99 per cent of the vote counted, Colom led Hyde-Smith by 49.2 per cent to 48.7 per cent, a margin of 4,585 votes.

“Mississippi, our prayers have often changed the course of history,” Colom told a jubilant crowd of supporters in Jackson, the state capital, on Wednesday night. “God didn’t want us to get it the easy way. He wanted us to get it the Mississippi way.”

In a prayerful, solemn speech, he paid tribute to Mississippi’s long tradition of Black activism and faith in progress.

He will also be the first Democratic senator from Mississippi in nearly 40 years.

Hyde-Smith, 67, who has held the seat since 2018, conceded in a video posted on X.

“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.”

A blow for Trump

The result in one of the most solidly Republican states deepens the setback for US President Donald Trump. Voters across the country turned away from his Republican Party, even in states that had not sent a Democrat to Washington in decades.

Democrats will now hold 55 seats in the 100-member Senate and Republicans 44. One race, in Alaska, has yet to be called.

Including Mississippi, Democrats flipped eight Republican-held Senate seats, with breakthroughs in South Carolina, North Carolina, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and Maine. Several of those seats had not changed hands for decades.

Control of both chambers of Congress gives Democrats the power to block legislation, investigate the administration and stop Trump’s appointments. The defeat also leaves the 80-year-old president as a lame duck for the final two years of his term.

The race went down to the wire, surprising many observers who had doubted how far the Democratic wave would reach. The wave was driven by mounting anger over Trump’s hardline immigration policy, the war in Iran and the rising cost of living.

“Blue Mississippi is here,” Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, wrote on X after the projections came in.

“Scott Colom is the only person who could’ve gotten this done. I knew it from the moment I met him.”

‘The power of prayer’

The first Black senator ever elected in the United States, Hiram Revels, was from Mississippi. He served during the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War.

In his speech, Colom described how Revels, a minister by training, used his powerful oratory to win the backing of other politicians for his run for the Senate.

“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.

“It’s local people that have faith that Mississippi can make progress, and it’s local people like the people out here who had faith that we could win this election,” he added.