Hyde-Smith concedes Mississippi Senate race to Colom
The Republican congratulated the Democrat in a video on X. Mississippi has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982.
Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith conceded Wednesday that she lost Mississippi's Senate race to Democrat Scott Colom. She said so in a 2-minute, 17-second video on X, eight days after the Nov. 3 vote.
The result is not the one she wanted, she said, but "I respect the decision of Mississippi voters." She congratulated Colom and wished him well in the "tremendous responsibility" of representing the state.
Colom is now the senator-elect.
The Democratic Party celebrated the seat change: Mississippi will have a Democrat in the Senate for the first time in 38 years, since 1982. Among the congratulations was one from Sen. Bernie Sanders, who called Colom Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War.
Mississippi is one of the most conservative states in the country. Colom, a district attorney in the northeast of the state, had pledged in a Nov. 9 message to work "every day" in the Senate for its residents, before the concession.
Hyde-Smith arrived in the Senate in 2018, appointed to fill a vacancy, and won that special election and the one in 2020. In her video she says her campaign spent the past week working so that "every legally cast vote" would be counted. Signing off, she said her time in the Senate may be ending, but her affection for Mississippi is not.
The official count still has to be certified. Mexico watches every seat: the chamber confirms appointments and votes on trade and security treaties and laws that touch the bilateral relationship.
Colom would take office with the new Congress in early 2027.
