Democrat Scott Colom is projected to defeat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race, according to a CNN projection on Wednesday, eight days after the Nov. 3 election.
With an estimated 99% of ballots counted, Colom led Hyde-Smith by 4,404 votes, 49.18% to 48.72%, according to the Associated Press. A late count of ballots from Hinds County, which includes Jackson, widened his lead after affidavit and mail ballot deadlines passed on Tuesday. The results have not been certified. Mississippi law does not provide an automatic recount, and Hyde-Smith’s campaign has signaled a possible legal challenge.
If certified, the result would make Colom the first Black person elected to statewide office in Mississippi since Reconstruction and the first Democrat to win a U.S. Senate race in the state since 1982.
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Colom, 43, has served as district attorney for Mississippi’s 16th Judicial District since 2016. The district covers Clay, Lowndes, Noxubee and Oktibbeha counties.
His race against Hyde-Smith followed a dispute over a federal judgeship. In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi on the recommendation of Rep. Bennie Thompson. Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican, approved the nomination by returning his blue slip.
A blue slip is a form the Senate Judiciary Committee sends to both senators from a judicial nominee’s home state. By tradition, a district court nominee does not get a hearing unless both senators return it. The practice is a Senate custom, not a law.
On April 4, 2023, Hyde-Smith announced she would not return her blue slip, which stopped the nomination. She cited a 2021 letter Colom signed with other prosecutors opposing laws that criminalize transgender people and gender-affirming care, along with support his 2015 district attorney campaign received from a political action committee funded by George Soros. Colom responded in a letter asking her to reconsider, writing that the statement he signed did not address legislation on athletics. Hyde-Smith did not change her position.
At the time, the White House said Hyde-Smith had not raised those concerns during months of consultation. Former Republican Govs. Phil Bryant and Haley Barbour had supported Colom’s nomination.
On election night, before the race was called, Hyde-Smith told supporters, “I blocked Scott Colom from being a federal judge, and you blocked him from being a US senator.”
In a Law360 interview on Election Day, Colom said he would forgive Hyde-Smith over the blue slip.
The blue slip carries a long history in Mississippi. Sen. James Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat and segregationist who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1956 to 1978, used it to give Southern senators effective veto power over federal judges in their home states during the civil rights era.
Colom won the Democratic primary in March with 73.3% of the vote. Independent Ty Pinkins was also on the general election ballot. In the final week of the campaign, Trump held a rally for Hyde-Smith in Corinth.
Hyde-Smith was appointed to the Senate in 2018 by Bryant to fill the seat of retiring Sen. Thad Cochran. She won a special election that year over Democrat Mike Espy and defeated him again in 2020.
Mississippi was the first state to send Black senators to Congress. Hiram Revels took his seat in 1870, and Blanche K. Bruce served from 1875 to 1881. Both were chosen by the state legislature before the 17th Amendment established direct election of senators in 1913. If Colom’s win is certified, he will be the first Black senator Mississippi voters have elected directly.
