Democrat Scott Colom could become the first Black man from Mississippi to reach the US Senate in 150 years. With 97 per cent of votes counted on Friday afternoon, Colom led Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith by 0.3 percentage points. "It just feels like our time has come," said Flonzie Brown-Wright.
Democrat Scott Colom could become the first Black man from the state to reach the US Senate in 150 years
There were still "hangings, shootings and assassinations" across the American South in 1968, the year Flonzie Brown-Wright became the first Black woman elected to public office in post-Reconstruction Mississippi.
In a few days, she may see Mississippi send a Black man, Democrat Scott Colom, to the US Senate for the first time in 150 years.
"It just feels like our time has come," the 84-year-old civil rights activist said of Colom's surprisingly strong run in deep-red territory, where he is leading the Republican incumbent by roughly 2,000 votes with just a few thousand ballots left to be counted. "In the South, even though we have dropped the ball in some instances, we have kept our eyes on the prize."
As they watched a "blue wave" wash over Georgia, South Carolina and Texas on Tuesday, Democratic leaders in Washington were thunderstruck as Colom, a 43-year-old district attorney, inched ahead of his Republican opponent. The last time a Democrat won a US Senate seat in Mississippi was 1982, when it was won by a segregationist.
Going into election night, polls showed Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith leading Colom by as much as six points. With 97 per cent of votes counted on Friday afternoon, Colom led Hyde-Smith by 0.3 percentage points.
It was not expected to be this close. But in America's poorest state -- which Donald Trump won by 23 points two years ago -- the groundwork for a potential upset had been quietly laid by a handful of strategists, who believed energising Black and working-class voters could make Mississippi competitive.
"Mississippi was written off. They were saying it is a reliably red state, [but] nobody actually sat down and did the math . We have a 38 per cent Black population," said Brandon Presley, a mentor to Colom who lost a race for governor in 2023 by just under 27,000 votes.
"This," he added, "is the dawn of a new era in the South for Democrats."
Presley admits it took a candidate "who had the kind of pizzazz that my cousin Elvis had on the stage" to get Democrats this close.
In what started as a sleepy race, Colom, who speaks in a disarming southern drawl, emerged as a political rock star, holding more than 60 town halls and appearing at several music festivals across the state's 82 counties.
"I've been doing this for months . . . getting out there, talking, listening, learning and showing up," Colom told reporters on Thursday.
Mississippians he met on the trail once believed in Trump's 'America First' message, but they had been "betrayed", Colom said. "They were promised on day one lower grocery prices. That did not happen."
Colom's "Mississippi Matters" campaign capitalised on such sentiment, releasing several viral videos -- produced on a shoestring budget with the help of tech-savvy staffers and family members -- that tapped into anger at the Trump administration over the cost of living crisis.
One ad seized on a comment by Colom's opponent, Hyde-Smith, in which she dismissed concerns over rising beef prices by advising Mississippians to pick another protein. The 28-second spot featured a man grilling a burger, saying he'd "rather pick another senator instead" and a woman suggesting Hyde-Smith "done lost her damn mind".
Another ad featured Colom approaching Maga diehards lining up for a Trump rally and finding common ground with them over the president's tariffs and the Iran war.
Colom's campaign also benefited from appearances by high-profile Democrats including Georgia senator Raphael Warnock and former president Bill Clinton, who hails from nearby Arkansas.
Touting his record as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, Colom won over many white voters who had soured on Trump, flipping even the formerly Republican Forrest County, named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first "grand wizard" of the after Ku Klux Klan.
But Colom -- who would be a federal judge today had his nomination by Joe Biden not been effectively blocked by Hyde-Smith in the Senate in 2023 -- could ultimately be carried to victory by sky-high turnout in the Mississippi Delta, home to the highest concentration of Black voters.
Their enthusiasm for Colom has left Democrats believing they could remain competitive in deep-red states like Mississippi long after the end of the Trump era. Some argue the party missed an opportunity by not throwing more resources into races in southern states this year.
James Carville, the veteran Democrat strategist who grew up in Louisiana and helped raise money for Colom, told the FT it was "tragic" that the party had not seen the potential to sweep the south.
On Tuesday, governor races in Alabama and Tennessee were won by Republicans with very narrow margins, while Trump's party haemorrhaged support in Arkansas.
"If you talk to Washington-based Democratic political types, if you say Louisiana or Mississippi, they shut down on you," Carville said. He lamented that another Black candidate, Louisiana Democrat Jamie Davis, came within 26,000 votes of clinching victory on Tuesday.
"With another million dollars," he said, "we would have had a senator from Louisiana."
For now, the urgent matter for Democrats is making sure Colom crosses the finish line. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer has sent party operatives and lawyers to Mississippi to observe ballot processing and to gear up for a legal fight should Hyde-Smith challenge the result.
But whatever the final outcome, veteran campaigner Brown-Wright, who worked closely with Martin Luther King, believes the Colom camp's success will lift Democrats in the Deep South for years to come.