Scott Colom said Wednesday morning that he is “confident” he is on track to becoming the first Black senator from Mississippi in well over a century, with the race extremely tight and votes still being counted.
“I am very happy with where we stand. I’m confident. I’m confident once the process lays out where we are, where the ballots are, we’re gonna win,” Colom said at a press conference, surrounded by supporters.
Colom leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by just 65votes out of more than 940,000 counted by Wednesday afternoon, with about 4% of the vote outstanding, according to The Associated Press. It might take days if not weeks to determine the outcome of the race.
Hyde-Smith also suggested Tuesday she had won the election, to which Colom responded: “Bless her heart.”
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The state does not have a recount mechanism in place, making it harder for a losing candidate to challenge the results. The only path in such a case would be “to challenge decisions to exclude or to include certain ballots in the tabulation under state or federal law,” according to Election Law Blog.
On top of that, a number of voters in Mississippi voted through an affidavit ballot because they did not have an ID, giving them until next Tuesday to address any issues if they arise. Mississippi also allows mail-in ballots to arrive and be counted five business days after polls have closed if the ballots were postmarked by Election Day — a law the Supreme Court upheld in June, against Republicans’ effort to eliminate it.
Colom said at the press conference that his campaign had been preparing for this moment for months and that hundreds of volunteers and local lawyers would be in “each county” to “protect the integrity of this election.”
“There are no runoffs,” Colom said as he urged voters to seek help if they need to address their affidavit ballots. “I want to make sure people know we’re going to protect the process. We got lawyers who are ready to make sure the law is followed.”
Top Democrats are sending officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to Mississippi, sources told The Washington Sun.
They’ll be on the ground, along with the Elias Law Group, leading the party’s efforts to ensure all votes are counted, the sources said.
Democrats are trying to pad the Senate majority they’ve already secured. The party has flipped Republican seats in Texas, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Kansas and Iowa.
Colom and Hyde-Smith go way back. In 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Colom to become a federal judge, but his nomination was ultimately blocked by Hyde-Smith in 2023.
“I blocked Scott Colom from being a federal judge, and you blocked him from being a U.S. senator,” Hyde-Smith said Tuesday night.
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