Scott Colom becomes Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction in upset win

Democrat Scott Colom has won the US Senate race in Mississippi. He unseated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith after more than a week of vote-counting in one of the closest contests of the 2026 midterm elections.

CNN’s Decision Desk projected the result on Wednesday, 11 November 2026, and other US media made the same call. Colom, 43, becomes the state’s first Black senator since the Reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War.

He will also be the first Black person elected to statewide office in Mississippi since Reconstruction. He is the first Democrat the state’s voters have sent to the Senate in more than four decades.

The race was one of the last undecided contests from the elections on 3 November, in which Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress. Reuters reported that the count was so close that Colom at times led by only a few dozen votes.

Concession and reactions

According to Colom’s campaign, Hyde-Smith called Colom to concede. The campaign said Colom told her: “God bless you, thank you senator.”

In a video shared on X, Hyde-Smith said: “While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters.”

“I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state,” she added.

Senate Republican leader John Thune told CNN he had spoken with Hyde-Smith shortly after the projection. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “I just got off the phone with her, and so, but yeah, tough year all the way around.”

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X: “Blue Mississippi is here. Scott Colom is the only person who could’ve gotten this done. I knew it from the moment I met him.”

“Scott will make a fantastic Senator for the people of Mississippi, and I can’t wait to welcome him to the Senate,” Schumer added.

Former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu had worked to get money into the race and campaigned for Colom until the end. He told CNN that Colom’s victory overwhelmed him.

“In an election of historic firsts, this one is the one that history will regard as the most profound,” Landrieu said.

“When it seemed like the lights were dimming on American democracy, the people of Mississippi reminded us what America is really all about,” he added.

Landrieu is also a former lieutenant governor of Louisiana and has been working to revive the Democratic Party in the South. He told CNN in the spring that he is considering a run in the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries.

In Jackson, members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) cheered and embraced at their historic state headquarters after the projection, CNN reported.

They had gathered at the M.W. Stringer Masonic Lodge, where Medgar Evers once worked. Evers was an NAACP field secretary and voting rights leader who was assassinated in 1963.

An upset in a Republican stronghold

Hyde-Smith, 67, who was first elected in 2018, had consistently led in opinion polls. President Donald Trump won Mississippi by nearly 23 points in 2024, and he campaigned in the state for Hyde-Smith near the end of the race.

According to CNN, Mississippi is the most Republican state that Senate Democrats have won this cycle. The broadcaster said the result showed how hard the environment was for Republicans, as voters dealt with a war overseas and high prices at home.

Colom, a district attorney, told Reuters in an October interview that Mississippi voters felt “betrayed” by Trump’s policies. He pointed to the war in Iran, which has driven up fuel prices.

He said his campaign reached voters through town halls and visits to public housing, festivals and food trucks. “We did it the hard way, the grassroots way,” he told Reuters.

According to Reuters, October rallies with Democratic Senators Raphael Warnock of Georgia and Cory Booker of New Jersey gave the campaign a boost.

In an analysis for CNN, Stephen Collinson wrote that Colom’s “get another senator” campaign advertisement went viral. He also wrote that by the time Hyde-Smith realised she was in a real contest, it was too late.

Collinson argued that Democrats had shown they could win in deeply conservative states. Their approach was to maximise Black turnout and win some White working-class voters with a populist economic message that avoids culture-war issues.

He noted that Democrats will now hold Senate seats from Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina, Kansas, Georgia and North Carolina. He cautioned, however, that an unpopular Trump will never be on the ballot again.

The two candidates had clashed before. In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked former President Joe Biden’s nomination of Colom as a federal district judge in northern Mississippi, Reuters reported. She cited his position on transgender issues.

Mississippi’s other senator, Republican Roger Wicker, had supported the nomination.

Schumer’s role and leadership questions

CNN’s Aaron Blake reported that Schumer backed Colom very early, when few people had heard of him. Schumer invited Colom and his father to brunch two years ago.

Like several other Democrats who won in Republican-leaning states, Colom has suggested the party needs new leadership.

He has not said outright that he would not support Schumer. Instead, he has said he does not like that the Democrats’ House and Senate leaders both come from the “same borough” of New York City.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is likely to become Speaker of the House, is also from Brooklyn.

Historical significance

The last Black senator elected from Mississippi was Blanche Bruce, a former slave, in 1874. At that time, US senators were chosen by state legislatures rather than by popular vote.

The last Democrat to represent Mississippi in the Senate was John Stennis, an avowed segregationist. He last won election in 1982 and retired in 1989 after decades in the chamber.

Collinson noted that the victory came in a state that was a centre of the civil rights movement. It also came at a time when the US Supreme Court has been dismantling large parts of the Voting Rights Act.