Scott Colom

Scott Colom is a seventh-generation Mississippian. He is the son of two lawyers, one of whom was a Republican who worked for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. And, if history had played out a little differently, he might have been a federal judge. Instead, in one of the most stunning results from the 2026 midterm elections, his victory in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race will make him the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction.

Early years

Quick Facts

Scott Colom

• Full name: Scott Winston Colom (pronounced ka-LOME)
• Born: December 24, 1982, Columbus, Mississippi, U.S.
• Education: Millsaps College (B.A. in history and English, 2005); University of Wisconsin Law School (J.D., 2009)
• Best known for: Being the first Black person elected to the U.S. Senate from Mississippi since Reconstruction. He defeated incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, 49.2 percent to 48.7 percent.
• Political affiliation: Democratic Party
• Family: Married to Nadia Dale Colom, a real estate agent; the couple has two daughters.
• Quotation: On Mississippi in a 2020 profile: “We’re the most underrated state in the country. We have so much promise, so much potential. I feel like there’s a camaraderie here among the people trying to push the state forward that you don’t have other places.”

Scott Colom and his twin brother, Andrew, were born into a family of lawyers. Dorothy Colom was an attorney who became the first Black person elected to serve as a judge on the chancery court from their area. Wilbur Colom, also an attorney, served on Reagan’s transition team and was the Republican nominee for state treasurer in 1987. (Unlike his son, he lost.) Colom knew his parents gave him opportunities that others didn’t have, saying in a 2020 interview that he was “born on third base.”

Colom attended Millsaps College in Mississippi, where he played basketball and majored in English and history. After graduation he went to Guyana for a year to teach. It proved to be a formative experience. “Teaching abroad impacted my view of education and the world around me,” he told Millsaps in 2025. After he returned, he studied law at the University of Wisconsin, where he graduated cum laude.

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Early career

After law school he worked at the Mississippi Center for Justice, representing people who couldn’t afford a lawyer in civil cases, before going to work for his father’s firm. In 2011 he was named a justice court judge in Lowndes county. At 28 he was the youngest and first Black judge in the county. In 2015 Colom ran to become district attorney in the 16th district of Mississippi. When he defeated an incumbent who had been in office since 1989, he became the first Black prosecutor in a majority white district in the state. He easily won reelection in 2019 and 2023.

Earning notice as a prosecutor and almost a judgeship

As district attorney, Colom earned a reputation as a hands-on prosecutor, with a high conviction rate. But he also established programs to help first-time offenders avoid prison and provide assistance with substance use issues as well as counseling services to victims of violent crime. His office partnered with the Innocence Project to investigate possible wrongful convictions.

Colom’s work was getting him noticed on the national stage, and in 2022 U.S. Pres. Joe Biden nominated him for a district court judgeship, a seat on the federal bench. For such nominations to get voted on by the Senate, both senators from the state that the judge will serve in must endorse the nominee. Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker backed Colom’s nomination, but Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith did not. She cited his support for transgender athletes and campaign contributions he had received from billionaire George Soros as her reasons. Hyde-Smith’s position doomed Colom’s nomination.

Running—and winning—as the underdog

In September 2025 Colom announced that he would run for the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat from Mississippi. He won his primary race in a landslide, but defeating an incumbent Republican in a state as deeply Republican as Mississippi in the November 2026 general election seemed an almost impossible task. Hyde-Smith had won her 2020 Senate race by 10 points, and in the 2024 presidential election the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, won the state by 23 points. The nonpartisan and widely respected Cook Political Report rated the race as “likely Republican” as late as October, noting that Colom’s bid might make it easier for a Democrat to win in the future:

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Democrat Scott Colom has run an admirable race, and Democrats are hoping that Black turnout surges enough to keep the race close and set the stage for more competitive races in the Deep South in future cycles.

Colom was undeterred. His message was moderate and mainstream. He told voters he wanted to put violent criminals behind bars, to end the Iran war, and to bring down costs. And he went anywhere and everywhere to reach voters. When Trump came to the state to campaign for Hyde-Smith shortly before election day, Colom was there asking Trump supporters for their votes.

When Hyde-Smith was asked in an interview about the high cost of meat, she dismissed the issue, saying that people “have so many proteins to choose from.” The Colom campaign seized the moment and created one of the campaign season’s most viral ads, in which voters expressed little interest in choosing different proteins, saying they’d “rather pick another senator instead.”

The historic potential of his candidacy was not lost on Colom, and his campaign’s final message was an ad that put him at the Jackson, Mississippi, house where civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered in 1963. “He was killed for helping Mississippians vote. On Tuesday use your vote and honor everyone who died for that right.”

In the end Colom put together perhaps the most unlikely of victories scored by Democrats during the 2026 midterms. He won in counties that might have seemed unthinkable for a Black Democrat to take. He won Forrest county, which is named for a Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader, by 10 points. He may have surprised political pundits, but, as he clung to a narrow lead two days after voters went to the polls, he told reporters:

I knew we could win. I knew that there were voters out there that loved our state more than they loved their political party.

Mississippi’s barrier breakers

Ida B. Wells: Crusading journalist

Fannie Lou Hamer: Political activist

James Meredith: Historic student

Medgar Evers: Voting rights martyr