Scott Colom flips Mississippi Senate seat by about 4,700 votes
Why it matters: The Democrat’s upset is the party’s eighth Senate pickup, with Alaska still undecided.
Democrat Scott Colom defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi, flipping a Senate seat in one of the nation’s most reliably Republican states. With 99% of the expected vote reported, Colom led Hyde-Smith 49.2% to 48.7%, a margin of about 4,700 votes. Hyde-Smith called Colom on Wednesday to concede, ABC News reported. Colom, a district attorney for four counties along the Mississippi-Alabama line, becomes Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator elected since Reconstruction in the 1870s. In his victory speech, he linked the result to the state’s history of racial injustice and civil rights activism and pledged to serve all Mississippians.