LOTS OF POSTS IGNORED BY BLOGGER.....

OR REMOVED ON THEIR WHIM!

ALL POSTS ARE AVAILABLE ON

MIDDLEBORO REVIEW AND SO ON

BLOGGER DOESN'T LIKE TRUTH OR FACTS!

BLOGGER DOESN'T LIKE FUND RAISERS AND DELETES

POSTS THAT INCLUDE FUNDRAISING THAT 'VIOLATES THEIR

UNDEFINED COMMUNITY STANDARDS SO ALL 'FUND RAISING'

IS DELETED - CONTRIBUTE AS YOU ARE INCLINED TO SUPPORT

IMPORTANT ISSUES! THESE ARE NOT SOLICITATIONS

Democrat Scott Colom makes history with victory in Mississippi Senate race

Colom will be the state’s first Black senator since the 19th century

Jeff Singer Nov 11

Democratic Sen.-elect Scott Colom of Mississippi. (Credit: Scott Colom Facebook)

Mississippi Democrat Scott Colom has scored a historic upset over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, CNN projected Wednesday, news that energizes Democrats about the possibility of further gains as soon as next year.

Colom’s 49.2 to 48.7 win makes him the first Black person to win a statewide election in the Magnolia State since 1873, when a trio of African Americans was elected to state office near the end of the Reconstruction era.

He’ll also be the first African American to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since Republicans Hiram Revels and Blanche Bruce, who became the country’s first two Black senators following the Civil War when the state legislature selected them.

But segregationist Democrats took over the state just before the federal government abandoned the Reconstruction project in 1877, and they would dominate state politics for close to another century before being supplanted by conservative Republicans.

The last Mississippi Democrat to win an election to the upper chamber prior to Colom was Sen. John Stennis, who supported segregation for much of his long career. Yet even he had to bow before a changing reality and appeal to the state’s large Black electorate as he successfully campaigned for a final term in 1982.

Colom, who was born the month after Stennis’ last victory, will be a very different kind of Democratic senator than Stennis, who voted against designating Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday during that last term. But when Colom announced his campaign last year, few influential figures in either party thought he could beat Hyde-Smith, who had blocked his nomination to a federal judgeship in 2023

One early believer, though, was Sen. Raphael Warnock, who made history himself in 2021 when he became Georgia’s first Black senator. CNN recently reported that a roomful of donors laughed when Warnock told them in April, “There’s one race I think we’re sleeping on, and that’s Mississippi.”

But Warnock nonetheless insisted Colom had an opening in a state Donald Trump carried in a 61-38 landslide in 2024 and where Democrats hadn’t won a statewide race in over a decade. The last such victor was Jim Hood, who won his fourth and final term as attorney general in 2015. Hood, though, lost a close 2019 race for governor to Republican Tate Reeves, while fellow Democrat Brandon Presley also fell just short against Reeves four years later.

Trump’s toxic approval ratings, however, offered Democrats a new opportunity in areas where they’d long struggled.

Democrats in the South benefited from strong Black turnout in the first national election since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in April. According to estimates from the New York Times, African Americans made up 33% of the electorate in Mississippi last week, an increase from 30% two years ago. The white share, meanwhile, fell from 65% to 60%.

And while the state’s white voters, who shifted sharply toward the GOP following the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, still overwhelmingly favored Republicans, Colom made key inroads. Most notably, Trump won this demographic by an 83-16 margin, but Hyde-Smith prevailed by a significantly smaller 73-25 spread. Black voters, likewise, favored Colom 91 to 7 after supporting Kamala Harris 88 to 11, a small but crucial increase that made the difference in a tight race.

Hyde-Smith also unwittingly provided Colom plenty of fodder. The Democrat focused in particular on a February interview in which the senator responded to a question about rising beef prices by saying her constituents “have so many proteins to choose from.” Colom turned that clip into a viral video in which an incredulous cast concluded, “Pick another protein? I’d rather pick another senator instead.”

Mississippi voters have now done just that, and they may not be done.

With Reeves term-limited, Colom’s win gives his party new optimism about flipping the governor’s office and winning other statewide offices. Presley appeared likely to run for governor again even before last week, and other Democrats also have time to consider campaigns ahead of the state’s Feb. 1 filing deadline.

And this time, Democratic donors won’t be laughing at the idea that they can win.

Thank you so much for being a paid subscriber to The Downballot! If you’d like to further support our work, you can donate on our ActBlue page.