Democratic nominee Scott Colom has defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race after a prolonged ballot counting process, giving the state its first Black U.S. senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Colom’s narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations, and it will echo through the country as well. The outcome adds to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states, and it will bolster some Democrats’ argument that their future runs through the American South.
About 40% of Mississippi’s people are black, though I would suspect they make up a smaller percentage of Mississippi’s registered voters
I just looked it up. The data from 2024 is 55.2% White, 36.3% Black, 3.7% Hispanic, 3.0% Multiracial, 1.0% Asian, and 0.8% Native American/Other.
It’s hard to fathom that they haven’t had a black senator for about 150 years with those demographics. I know, people say “tyranny of the majority.” But this really seems tyrannical.
Black people make up over a third of the population, yet black children had never in their lives experienced a black senator. And neither had their parents or grandparents or great grandparents.