Democratic candidate Scott Colom has defeated Republican senator Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's closely contested US Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the state its first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Colom's narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations, yielding immediate echoes around the country.
The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of American president Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats' argument that their future runs through the American South.
AP has called the contest in Colom's favour after local elections officials spent several days processing absentee and provisional ballots, called affidavit ballots in Mississippi.
“While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” Hyde-Smith, 67, said in a two-minute concession speech posted online.
Votes cast for all 435 members of the House of Representatives and 35 seats in the Senates. (Source: 1News)
“I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
A spokesman for the senator said she called Colom to congratulate him and concede before the video was shared publicly.
Colom scheduled a victory celebration with supporters Wednesday night in Jackson.
The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947, and the winner then was a staunch segregationist.
Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, capitalised on the state’s large Black population, economic discontent and Hyde-Smith’s missteps as she sought a second full term.
“They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they’re going through,” Colom said in the campaign's closing stretch.
Colom said during the campaign that he could represent all of Mississippi, a state where racial divisions have long defined its politics and society.
“It’s got to be about having a party that represents rural America again, suburban America, urban America — a party that makes sure we actually deliver for voters in ways that make their lives better,” he said.
A race Washington once viewed as a long shot
The contest was a latecomer to the national spotlight, drawing attention and money months after Black senators, including Georgia's Raphael Warnock and Maryland's Angela Alsobrooks, first urged donors and party leaders to see the contest as winnable.
The son of a onetime Republican who worked for president Ronald Reagan, Colom garnered attention for his aggressive campaign as Democrats widened the Senate battleground map and Hyde-Smith's vulnerabilities crystallised.
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He produced the year’s most widely circulated ads. After Hyde-Smith seemed to brush off high beef prices by saying consumers could choose other proteins, Colom cut a 30-second spot depicting incredulous voters saying they’d “pick another senator instead.”
When Trump came to Corinth, Mississippi, in late October for a rally with Hyde-Smith, Colom walked the line of Trump supporters as they waited outside the gates.
He introduced himself, asked about their concerns and explained his priorities.
Later that evening, when Trump called Hyde-Smith to the stage, she said nine words in six seconds: “Is this not the best president in our lifetime?”
Then she stepped away.
Colom's appearance outside the rally tracked his strategy of criticising Trump’s policies — especially the Iran war and tariffs that he said were especially hard on Mississippi farmers — without taking personal jabs at the president or people who voted for him.
Instead, he consistently put the onus on Hyde-Smith, framing her as a nonentity in Washington — a critique that resonated in a state that has been accustomed to long-serving senators like Thad Cochran, Trent Lott and John Stennis, who all rose to powerful posts and routed federal money back to Mississippi.
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