After more than a week of counting, Mississippi has a new senator-elect, and he’s making history. CNN projected on Wednesday, November 11, that Democrat Scott Colom will defeat Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Colom will be the first Democrat elected to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since 1982.

He will also be the first Black senator to represent the state since Reconstruction, when Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce served in the chamber.

It’s a stunning result in a state President Donald Trump carried by nearly 23 points in 2024. Most forecasters rated the seat safely Republican heading into Election Day, and Hyde-Smith outraised Colom by more than two to one.

Instead, the race became one of the tightest in the country. Early on the morning after the November 3 election, Colom led by just 43 votes out of more than 925,000 cast. As affidavit and mail-in ballots were counted over the following week, his lead grew to nearly 4,000 votes. Independent Ty Pinkins took a small share of the vote.

The count was slowed by Mississippi’s rules, which give voters five business days to cure ballots cast without photo ID and allow mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive up to five days later. Thousands of affidavit ballots, many of them in Hinds County, had to be verified one by one.

The final stretch also brought fights over which ballots should count. Hyde-Smith declared victory on election night, and as the count went on she posted on Facebook, “We are not backing down. This election is not over.” Counties are expected to certify results by Friday.

Colom, a seventh-generation Mississippian, was raised in Columbus. Politics and the law run in his family. His mother, retired Judge Dorothy Colom, was the first Black person elected to her region’s Chancery Court. His father, Wilbur Colom, is an attorney who once worked for President Ronald Reagan. In 2015, at 32, Colom unseated a 27-year incumbent to become district attorney for Mississippi’s 16th Circuit District, the first Black person to hold the post.

His path to the Senate also runs through Hyde-Smith herself. In 2023, she blocked his nomination to a federal judgeship, even though Republican Sen. Roger Wicker supported it. Colom has insisted that wasn’t what drove him to run. “I’m a Christian. I forgive her,” he told CNN.

He ran on lowering costs for families, protecting rural hospitals, raising the federal minimum wage and restoring Affordable Care Act tax credits. His campaign got a boost after Hyde-Smith drew criticism for remarks about rising grocery prices, including beef. Colom answered with an ad in which a voter suggests that rather than “pick another protein,” she’d “rather pick another senator instead.” The ad racked up more than 7.5 million views on X.

On election night, with the race still too close to call, Colom made clear he saw his role as something different. “I never planned to be just another Democratic senator,” he told supporters. “I planned to be Mississippi’s Democratic senator.” He added that his focus would be “getting costs down, because the tariffs are not working.”

Colom’s win adds to a strong midterm night for Democrats, who flipped Senate seats in several Republican-leaning states, including Texas and South Carolina.

For Mississippi, where nearly 40% of residents are Black, it marks the first time in almost 150 years that a Black senator will speak for the state in Washington.