Scott Colom Elected to US Senate, Ending 145-Year African American Absence
Mississippi voters elected Democrat Scott Colom to the United States Senate, ending a 145-year absence of African American representation from the state in the chamber and bringing Democratic seats to 55 against 44 for Republicans in the midterm results confirmed on Wednesday according to ANSA.
The 43-year-old attorney and district attorney defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in a contest that la Repubblica reported was launched in September 2025 as an apparent long shot. CNN projections awarded the race to Colom after a multi-day count delayed by provisional ballots and mail-in votes, corriere.it reported. Donald Trump won the state by nearly 23 percentage points during the 2024 presidential election, according to il Giornale.
Colom capitalized on voter discontent over the cost of living, groceries, and the protection of rural hospitals. Hyde-Smith, 67, had been appointed to the seat in 2018 by then-governor Phil Bryant and campaigned alongside Trump, who called her a 100% MAGA candidate, Il Messaggero reported.
Campaigning under the slogan “Mississippi Matters,” Colom criticized Hyde-Smith for her closeness to Trump and her response to rising beef prices, turning a suggestion that Americans choose other protein sources into an online campaign ad urging voters to change their senator, corriere.it reported.
Born and raised in Columbus, Mississippi, Colom comes from a family deeply rooted in state public life. His father, Wilbur, served as a Republican Party official and a candidate for state treasurer in 1987, while his mother, Dorothy, served as a judge and the first African American woman elected to a court in her region. After graduating from Millsaps College, Colom studied law at the University of Wisconsin and spent 16 months teaching elementary school in Guyana.
In 2011, he became the youngest and first African American to serve as a local trial court judge in Lowndes County. He was elected district authority in 2015, winning reelection in 2019 and 2023. In 2022, Joe Biden nominated him to serve as a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi, but that nomination was blocked by Hyde-Smith.
National Democratic groups initially paid little attention to the race in Mississippi, and Colom received financial resources for his hard-fought campaign only at the last minute when his party realized the unexpected possibility of winning. To support him, prominent Democratic figures arrived on the ground, ranging from Barack Obama and Kamala Harris to Senator Raphael Warnock and Bill Clinton.
The victory marks the first time a Democrat has won a Senate seat in Mississippi since 1982, when John Stennis was reelected, il Giornale reported. No African American had represented the state in the upper house since the Reconstruction era following the Civil War, when Blanche K. Bruce’s term ended in 1881; he had been chosen by the state legislature before direct Senate elections became the rule.
“In Mississippi nessuno è al di sopra della legge e nessuno dovrebbe essere escluso dalla sua protezione,” Colom declared, referencing the civil rights history of the state, including the WWII military service of Medgar Evers and the decades required to convict his assassin, il Giornale reported.
