Mississippi elects first Democratic senator in 44 years as Dems finally find a winning strategy: Spend nothing and let the other candidate talk beef
Democrat Scott Colom has won Mississippi’s Senate race, becoming the state’s first Black senator since 1874.
Key points
- Colom is the first Democrat Mississippi sent to the Senate since noted segregationist John Stennis won his last term in 1982.
- Mississippi, which up until last week’s elections was nearly unanimously rated as a solid Republican state, is the only state in the country that doesn’t allow automatic recounts, meaning the loser has to go to court to get the votes reexamined.
- Colom also flipped Forrest County, named for the Ku Klux Klan’s first grand wizard, 12,064 to 9,749, and won Jefferson Davis County, named for the president of the Confederacy, 2,943 to 1,534.
Mississippi’s first, Hiram Revels, was also the nation’s first Black senator, appointed by the state legislature in 1870.
Bruce, who was born into slavery and left office in 1881, and the first Black senator the state’s voters have ever chosen directly.
Additional details
- Mississippi’s senior senator, Republican Roger Wicker, supported him.
- What’s notable about the race is the sheer lack of attention it has garnered (at least, up until recently) and how Colom even became a viable contender in the first place.
- He told the New York Times in 2025 he wanted to help elect a Democrat in Mississippi and find other winning tickets in states that would be relatively cheap to compete in.
- The win was mostly Colom: he held events in all 82 Mississippi counties, the Washington Post reported, while Hyde-Smith hadn’t held a town hall in six years.
- In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom, a district attorney, to the federal bench in northern Mississippi.
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