JACKSON, Miss. — When Scott Colom, a local district attorney, announced his candidacy late last year, it seemed like a long shot in a ruby red state.
But by October of this year, a month before votes came pouring in for him, he was confident.
"We didn't have hundreds of million dollars to come in to spend – we did it going door to door, festival to festival, earning support," Colom said at a canvassing event on the Mississippi coast. "We're gonna shock a lot of people, but I'm not gonna be shocked. The people of Mississippi are behind this campaign: they understand Mississippi matters."
Colom narrowly defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, according to a race call by The Associated Press on Wednesday evening, marking one of the most stunning upsets of the midterm elections this year.
Flipping red counties with a focus on affordability
Colom won by less than five thousand votes, with a small fraction of the vote still left to be counted.
While he swept areas of Mississippi that have traditionally leaned left, like Hinds County, home to Jackson, the state capital, he also picked up places that have traditionally voted Republican, like Forrest County, which President Trump won in 2024 with about 58 percent of the vote.
Colom has been the district attorney for the state's 16th judicial district since 2016. That includes his hometown of Columbus, Mississippi, in Lowndes County – an area that's also got a right-leaning voter base.
Colom ran on accessible healthcare, saving rural hospitals and affordability. He said that working in a Republican-majority area informed the need for bipartisanship in tackling those issues.
"I believed that the majority of the Mississippians love our state more than they hate the Democratic party or love the Republican party," Colom said. "They want their kids to have good schools. ... they want to be able to make sure that young people, if they want to stay in Mississippi, can have a job. They want the hospitals to stay open."
While Colom isn't surprised that his message resonated this year with voters, he faced obstacles when a federal judicial nomination stalled in the U.S. Senate in 2023, when then-President Joe Biden nominated him for a federal judgeship.
Mississippi's Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican, indicated he would support his nomination.
The state's Junior Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked him. She cited donations from billionaire philanthropist George Soros around Colom's run for DA, which in 2023, Colom said were to an independent PAC – not his campaign.
She also said he opposed legislation to protect female athletes in a statement provided to the Mississippi Free Press at the time.
In a letter to Hyde-Smith, Colom said he didn't know what she was referring to and noted that he'd signed a statement saying he wouldn't use law enforcement resources to criminalize doctors who offer gender affirming care to transgender youth.
He also stated in the letter that if he was confirmed as a judge, any of his personal views would be irrelevant to his "daily work." And he asked the senator to reconsider – she didn't.
Three years later, she was defending her seat from him. She was confident, on election night, that she'd beat him, telling her supporters, "I blocked Scott Colom from being a federal judge, and you blocked him from being U.S. senator."
She instead lost and on Wednesday night, she issued a statement conceding the race, saying she respects the decision of Mississippi voters.
A narrow victory that 'made a difference'
Colom recognized that attention from national Democratic leaders, and his party's campaign funds, came late this year, but he noted that it was the attention his campaign received from voters within the state that made the difference.
"They understand the power of their vote in ways that we really haven't seen in a long period of time, because if you look at these margins, certainly everything that everybody did made a difference," Colom told reporters in Jackson just days before the election was called.
Being elected as a Democrat is no small feat either. The last time Mississippi sent a Democrat to the Senate was 1982 and an incumbent hasn't been defeated since 1942.
Colom now also holds the distinction of being the state's first Black senator since Reconstruction.
It's something he's proud of – but not the laurels he's resting on.
"My job is to be a senator that makes it easier for the next African American that has the work ethic, the vision, the values, and they want to be United States senator, make it easier for them," Colom said. "I am a person that is continuing to show up in the community and take the tough questions and explain my, you know, live my values. And if I do that, it makes it easier for the next person to be judged by their character and not their skin color."
While his victory is historic, his campaign has also made waves – especially on social media. In an interview with WLOX, Hyde-Smith responded to questions about beef affordability by suggesting folks pick a different protein.
Colom hit back, with a campaign ad, suggesting folks pick another senator instead.
Eventually, the rest of the country started listening. About two weeks before the election, the PAC associated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer donated $1.2 million for advertising.
And, several big name Democrats also ended up joining Colom on the campaign trail: former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, to name a few.
Colom traveled the whole state – from the coast to the capital, up to the Tennessee border. While in the Mississippi Delta, he said what he wants to do while in the Senate all goes back to his home of Columbus.
"I've always been committed to trying to make my community better, trying to make my city better, trying to make my state better, and that's what running for United States Senate is all about for me," Colom said. "It's a continuation of a service that runs in my family and I was raised [by] my community and my church to give back and that's why I'm doing it in this moment."
Tiara Jackson of Mississippi Public Broadcasting contributed to this report.
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