Scott Colom is a Mississippi district attorney who in 2026 defeated incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith to become the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. In one of the most stunning stories of the 2026 midterm elections, the race between Colom and Hyde-Smith was too close to call eight days after the Election Day. Mississippi is typically a red state, with Hyde-Smith having won her 2020 Senate race by 10 points; in the 2024 presidential election, U.S. Pres. Donald Trump won the state by 23 points.
Colom is a Mississippi native and the son of two judges. He graduated cum laude from the University of Wisconsin School of Law in 2009 and immediately began working for the Mississippi Justice Center. Subsequently he went into private practice where he handled a number of high-profile cases, including one in which high school administrators suspended a student for publishing a rap song on Facebook that criticized coaches at the school. In 2015 he ran to become district attorney, defeating a 30-year incumbent. During his tenure, he pursued a number of cold cases, securing convictions in murder and rape cases dating from the 1990s.
In 2022, U.S. Pres. Joe Biden nominated Colom for a role as a district judge in Mississippi. His nomination went to the Senate where Hyde-Smith blocked it. Three years later, Colom announced his run for the Senate and in a stunning upset defeated the woman who had kept him off the federal bench.