Cindy Hyde-Smith and Scott Colom
- The Democrat is now ahead of the Republican incumbent by 1,138 votes in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race.
Scott Colom extended his lead over incumbent U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith late Wednesday night.
The Democrat is now ahead of the Republican incumbent by 1,138 votes in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race.
According to the Secretary of State’s office, nearly 3,600 mail-in absentee ballots are outstanding. In addition, unconfirmed reports of upwards of 18,000 affidavit ballots remain to be cured around the state.
Colom held a brief press conference Wednesday morning expressing confidence in his campaign’s path to victory.
“We’re going to make sure that the process follows the law, and we have integrity,” Colom said. “Now, I think that anybody who can look at the math should be able to know where this is going. It’s going to Scott Colom as the next United States Senator.”
If Colom wins, he would be the first Democrat elected to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since 1982 and the first black Senator from Mississippi since Republican Blanche Bruce in 1881.
PunchBowlNews reported Wednesday that soon to be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called Colom “and is sending resources (legal and otherwise) down to Mississippi via the DSCC to help with the remaining vote-counting process there.”
As the outlet noted, Colom is a Schumer recruit, noting that “Schumer has long been fixated on flipping Mississippi.”
As for Hyde-Smith’s campaign, manager Jake Monssen released a statement saying, “Mississippians turned out in strong numbers yesterday, and the race for U.S. Senate remains extremely close as counting continues.”
“With the vast majority of Election Day ballots reported, the margin is measured in just dozens of votes. We have thousands of outstanding ballots, including affidavit and absentee ballots, which still must be processed and verified under Mississippi law,” said Monssen. “Our campaign is closely monitoring the remaining count. We remain confident that when every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted, Mississippians will have reelected Cindy Hyde-Smith.”
Governor Tate Reeves (R) weighed in on the race Wednesday, telling WLBT that he was confident Hyde-Smith would win.
“The reality is, it was only two short years ago when President Trump won every swing state and so, in today’s world, political cycles can change very quickly and we as a state and we as a party are gonna have to certainly analyze what led to this moment and improve and get better which is always the case,” Reeves said.
The Independent candidate in the Senate race on Wednesday as well, appearing on CNN and claiming that he played spoiler to Hyde-Smith rather than Colom as Democrats feared.
“I think what we did in this race as an independent campaign we did the opposite of a spoiler [for Colom],” Ty Pinkins told CNN. “If you look at the data coming out of this race, 77% of our votes came from traditionally Republican counties in Mississippi. Twelve of the top 13 vote getting counties we got were red counties.”
READ MORE: Pinkins says he played spoiler to Hyde-Smith, not Colom
Pinkins said polling mid-year showed 70% of those voting for him as an independent were traditional Republican voters.
“What we were thinking when we were going into that race, we saw the same thing,” he said, adding, “70% of my voters were Republicans and that would benefit Scott Colom and that’s what you see now.”
