Democrat Scott Colom is projected to win Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race, defeating Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.
CNN made the projection.
In a state where generations of Black Americans were denied the right to vote through violence, intimidation, and discriminatory laws, Colom will be the first Black U.S. senator ever elected directly by the state’s voters.
Colom will serve as the first Black senator from Mississippi since 1881.
Until Colom, no Black candidate had won ANY statewide election in Mississippi since 1873, during Reconstruction.
Yet about 38% of Mississippi’s residents are Black, the highest percentage of any state in the country.
Hyde-Smith’s record
In Hyde-Smith, Colom faced an opponent who had made racist remarks and publicly glorified the Confederacy.
During her first campaign for Senate in 2018, Hyde-Smith was caught on video saying of a supporter, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.”
Cindy Hyde-Smith at a November 2018 campaign stop in Tupelo, Mississippi. Video first published by Lamar White Jr.
Mississippi recorded 581 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, the most of any state in the Union.
Days after the video surfaced, a 2014 Facebook post resurfaced showing her wearing a Confederate soldier’s cap and holding a rifle at Jefferson Davis’s home in Biloxi.
She had captioned it “Mississippi history at its best!”
Hyde-Smith later apologized to anyone offended by the hanging remark and said there was no ill will behind it.
The nomination she blocked
Colom likely would never have entered this race had Hyde-Smith not blocked his nomination to the federal bench.
President Joe Biden nominated him in 2022 to serve as a federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Colom’s nomination was supported by Mississippi’s senior Republican senator, Roger Wicker, and two of its former Republican governors.
But the following year, Hyde-Smith blocked the nomination, citing what she called his “opposition to legislation to protect female athletes.”
Colom had signed a prosecutors’ letter opposing the criminalization of gender-affirming care, but that letter did not address trans women athletes participating in women’s sports.
Hyde-Smith also cited the fact that a political action committee funded by George Soros had backed his 2015 run for district attorney.
Explaining why he would not have challenged Hyde-Smith had he been confirmed, Colom later told The Breakfast Club: “I wasn’t going to resign from the bench to run against her.”
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Beautiful comeuppance! She looks about 114 years old, too. All that hate seems to age people…