"The 43-year-old district attorney defeated incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the Republican junior senator, and upended years of conventional wisdom about Mississippi’s status as a 'solid red state,'" reports Nick Judin of the Mississippi Free Press. Colom "maintained a slow velocity" since Election Day on Nov. 3 as absentee and affidavit ballots were counted. Hyde-Smith lost the lead late on Election Day, and never regained it. Judin reports there were "Democratic gains across every county in the state."
That's saying something, given that "Mississippi is one of the hardest places in the country to cast a ballot," according to the Legal Defense Fund. The state has some of the most restrictive voter ID laws and requires an application to vote by absentee ballot. It is also one of the only states left that requires an excuse to vote by mail. Mississippians can't be helped with filling out a ballot by law, and there is a lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of felonies.
More than half of Mississippi's population is rural, and of its 82 counties, 65 are rural. Historically, the state and its majority rural counties have been Republican strongholds, but Colom's campaign "peeled off unprecedented swaths of voters" in a win that is a clear rebuke of Trumpism, Judin writes. To emphasize the point: "Colom, who launched his campaign after Sen. Hyde-Smith used a Senate procedure to block then-President Biden’s nomination of him to the federal bench, defeated her with just over 49% of the vote."
Judin's article is a must read for those interested in Mississippi's voting and election history. It also offers a profile of the freshman Senator-elect Colom. (Photo by Vickie D. King of Mississippi Today)
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