Mississippi is sending Scott Colom to the Senate. First Black man to hold the seat since Reconstruction. One hundred and fifty years. That’s how long it took, in a state where the seat was kept warm by a woman who thought “public hanging” was a punchline.
Cindy Hyde-Smith survived that comment in 2018 because the alternative was losing the seat. The party swallowed it and the voters shrugged, so she kept her job for eight more years. Now she’s out, replaced by a district attorney from Columbus who won by about three thousand votes while the president’s DOJ was busy suing Alaska to stop another Democrat from being seated. Three thousand votes in Mississippi. That’s the margin between “it’ll never happen here” and it happening anyway.
Nobody handed this to anyone. Colom won it in a state that fights you for it.