We can finally make the call
I have great news to report. Democrat Scott Colom has won the Mississippi Senate race.
Lawyer, prosecutor, and now Senator-elect Scott Colom has defeated MAGA Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. CNN has also projected the race for Colom, and with this win Democrats now hold 55 Senate seats.
Here’s how we got there. Three more vote drops just came in, totaling 2,394 votes, and Colom won 74.4% of them. The ballots still outstanding look just like those, so his statewide lead, now 4,585 votes, is only going to grow. A recount isn’t going to change a margin that keeps getting bigger. We can safely call it: Scott Colom will be the next U.S. Senator from Mississippi.
This was a nail-biter. On election night the two candidates were separated by a few dozen votes. Then the counting continued, Colom pulled ahead, and his lead kept growing.
A historic night
Yes, this is a huge upset, but it’s also a MAJOR moment in American history.
Scott Colom will be the first Black senator to represent Mississippi since Reconstruction. Mississippi’s legislature sent Hiram Revels to the Senate in 1870 and Blanche Bruce in 1875. That’s the last time it happened, roughly 145 years ago. And since Revels and Bruce were chosen by the legislature, Colom will be the first Black senator Mississippi voters ever elected themselves.
He did it in a state everyone said was impossible for a Democrat, by bringing together Mississippians of every background.
Karma.
I call this poetic justice.
President Biden nominated Scott Colom to be a federal judge in 2022. Colom had bipartisan support. He was a respected district attorney and a beloved figure in Mississippi. Then Cindy Hyde-Smith, as Mississippi’s senator, used her power to block his nomination.
So Scott Colom ran against her. And now he’s taking her seat.
“Pick another senator instead”
I think Colom ran one of the best ads of the whole cycle. When beef prices were soaring, Hyde-Smith shrugged it off and told people, basically, there are so many proteins to choose from, pick another protein.
Colom’s campaign put her words in front of Mississippians, and they answered: I’d rather pick another senator instead.
He started calling her “Cindy High Prices,” and it stuck, because it was true.
He went to the Trump rally line to listen
When Trump came to Mississippi before the election, which was itself a sign the race was moving toward Colom, Colom went out and walked the line of people waiting to get in. He wasn’t there to argue. He was there to listen.
In his words, he talked with voters, asked questions and heard what mattered to them, and promised that as senator he’d represent all 82 counties and every Mississippian, no matter who they voted for.
What did people in that line tell him? Gas prices. Grocery prices. They wanted out of the war in Iran. They weren’t fans of the tariffs. They worried about data centers driving up their electric bills, about Flock surveillance cameras and privacy, and about whose interests Washington was really looking out for. One veteran told him the Second Amendment mattered most. Another voter said what they wanted was honesty.
Colom told me afterward that some of the people in that line weren’t even Trump supporters. One person said there was nothing else to do in town that night, so they came for the experience. And they planned to vote for Colom.
“Thank you for giving me the opportunity very early on”
I first interviewed Scott Colom on September 23, 2025. I titled the video “Trump gets a rude awakening from voters in Mississippi.” A lot of you told me I was being hyperbolic, that a Democrat could never win in Mississippi.
Well, here we are.
When I spoke with Colom again about two weeks before the election, he brought up that first interview. He thanked us for giving him the chance, very early on, when nobody thought Mississippi was on the radar, to tell his story. Since then, he told me, he did more than 60 town halls. He went to housing projects, college campuses and music festivals and built a campaign from the grassroots.
Meanwhile, he pointed out, his opponent hadn’t held a town hall in six years and refused to debate him. He even challenged Trump to debate him instead, since Hyde-Smith wouldn’t.
He told me a story his mother used to tell him: talk too much and your ears shrink, and if they shrink enough, you can’t hear. Trump and Cindy High Prices, he said, have been talking too much and not listening, so they don’t understand how much people are struggling. The tariffs have been terrible. The war in Iran has been a disaster for Mississippi. And on the Epstein files, he said, they promised to prosecute pedophiles, not protect them.
Betraying Mississippi’s farmers
Colom made a direct case to farmers, who were promised that America First meant someone would look out for them. Instead, tariffs cost them their customers. The war in Iran sent diesel prices through the roof, pushing up their costs, and farmers are filing for bankruptcy. One of the few groups doing well was cattle ranchers, because beef prices were high. Then Trump cut a deal with Argentina, dropped the tariffs and brought in cheap Argentine beef.
Argentina first, not Mississippi first. That’s what Colom called a betrayal, and Mississippi voters agreed.
He knew all along
In that first interview in September 2025, Colom was already sure Mississippi was in play. He reminded me the last Democrat to run for governor lost to the Republican incumbent by only about 27,000 votes. Mississippi is competitive, he said, whenever Democrats have the resources to get their message out.
He laid out his first two priorities. First, raise the minimum wage. Mississippi has no state minimum wage, so it’s the federal $7.25 that nobody can live on, and raising the floor lifts everyone’s wages. Second, repeal the health care cuts and save Mississippi’s hospitals.
He also said Republicans were already spending money against him because they knew the state was competitive. He was right about that too.
Fifty-five, and soon fifty-six
With Colom’s win, Democrats now hold 55 Senate seats. We expect Alaska to be called for Mary Peltola soon. That would be 56 seats, which is about the most anyone thought was possible this cycle.
Congratulations, Senator-elect Scott Colom. Well done.
Thanks to everyone who’s been sharing photos of your Blue Wave gear from the Meidas store! We love seeing it and hearing about all the compliments you’ve been receiving! You can get yours here.
And WTF America?! is officially out now. My brothers and I wrote it, but this book is also about you: the millions who refused to back down when it mattered most. Find it wherever books are sold, and let’s keep spreading the word!
