Hyde-Smith says the Mississippi Senate race is not over
The possibility of Democrat Scott Colom defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has put many Black voters somewhere between cautious optimism and outright celebration. In a state where nearly 40% of the population is Black, the outcome could make Colom the first Black senator from this Deep South state since post-Civil War Reconstruction, while top representation for generations has been white. Colom and his Black supporters have never ignored the significance of his candidacy as a Black man. Colom has not won the race, and The Associated Press has not called it.
“We are not backing down,” Hyde-Smith posted Friday on social media. “This election is not over. Our team is working across Mississippi to monitor the remaining ballots and protect the integrity of the process. We will see this through to the very end!” She had not appeared publicly since election night, when she essentially declared victory despite a razor-thin margin with ballots still uncounted.
Colom said ballots tallied since Tuesday’s election leaned in his favor. He also asked why Hyde-Smith had not explained her strategy going forward. “She’s still our senator. Where is she? Why is she not doing any interviews?” Colom asked. “Why can’t she explain what her pathway to success is?”
Colom also asked residents to allow local officials time to complete the process. “We’re going to make sure everything is followed according to the law, and I have confidence in those local officials,” Colom said. “They’re doing their jobs. Got to be patient with them.”
Colom visited Jackson’s Farish Street business district Friday, where civil rights leaders once organized. Maati Jone Primm, who owns Marshall’s Music & Bookstore in Jackson, said, “It’s so wonderful! It’s so wonderful to have Scott Colom as our representative.” The store opened in the 1930s and is recognized as the oldest Black-owned bookstore in the U.S.
Primm said the Farish Street neighborhood still represents Black Mississippians’ “first migration, from the plantation to the city.” Having Colom there as a potential senator, she said, “makes us so proud, and it gives us someone to aspire to. Our youth need to see the possibilities for their lives, and we do when we see our next senator from Mississippi.”
Sorie Tarawally, a 76-year-old attorney born in Sierra Leone, arrived in the Deep South to attend law school at the University of Mississippi and has long known Colom’s father. “I’m so glad we are at the point where we are,” Tarawally said. He called the 43-year-old candidate “the man, our messiah, our savior.”
“We are motivated by the gross inequalities we have seen in society and how only one side seems to benefit,” Tarawally said. “So, we want a person who speaks to our benefit.”
The Associated Press said the result would not change the balance of power in Washington because Democrats already had won control of the Senate. The outlet placed the larger effect in Mississippi, where white conservatives have dominated the Statehouse and congressional delegation for nearly 150 years. Through Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights era, those leaders were nearly all Democrats; after the Civil Rights Movement, they overwhelmingly shifted to Republicans. The Associated Press said Black Mississippians had long faced a lack of proportional representation at the top levels of state government and in Washington.
Colom was initially viewed as a long shot, and it was not until late October that Senate Democrats’ top campaign group started spending on advertising to support him. The Associated Press reported that the midterms revealed a broad backlash against redistricting efforts in the South that were aimed at boosting Republicans and, by extension, reducing Black representation.
The contest remains too early for The Associated Press to call. Colom’s historic bid hinges on a tedious process playing out in elections offices across Mississippi’s 82 counties. Local officials are receiving and examining absentee and provisional ballots — the latter called affidavit ballots — before deadlines next week. Volunteers and lawyers representing each campaign look on in anticipation of potential litigation. The precise number of outstanding ballots is not known.
The pool of outstanding ballots includes absentee ballots, which can be counted as long as they are received by Tuesday, five business days after the election. The rest are affidavit ballots, cast at the polls when there is a glitch: perhaps the person’s name was not on the rolls, the person did not have proper identification, or a poll worker determined that the person’s identification did not precisely match the name on the list.
Voters who had identification issues have until Tuesday to address those matters in person at their local elections office. For voters who were not on a precinct’s rolls, local officials can verify a person’s status using previous records and the information on the affidavit filed with the ballot. Those voters typically bear no responsibility to appear in person, and they can check their ballot’s status on the Mississippi secretary of state’s office website. Counties have until Friday to certify complete results to the secretary of state.
Mississippi law has no provision for a statewide recount. Campaigns could seek court orders, usually county by county, to examine ballots.
During the campaign, Colom emphasized that he could represent all Mississippians. He said President Donald Trump’s policies — the war with Iran and tariffs, especially — cut across all demographic lines. He also described the extended ballot-counting process as a benefit to the state’s 2.95 million residents. “I’m so glad the national press is getting to see the beauty of our state,” he said.
Colom ended his campaign with an advertisement set at the Jackson home of Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was gunned down in 1963 in his own driveway, dying in front of his wife and children. “It’s a powerful reminder of the sacrifice to gain the ballot, and nobody sacrificed more than Medgar Evers and his family,” Colom said Friday.
“What was important to me about that ad is we didn’t ask people to vote for me. We just talked about the sacrifice, talked about the story,” he continued. “We just wanted that to be the closing ad because I wanted that to be the last message that the people of Mississippi heard.”