Sen.-elect Scott Colom said Sunday that Democrats need to invest more resources in Mississippi so that his surprise election to the Senate doesn’t prove to be a one-time event.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Colom said, “We didn’t have a bunch of resources. There wasn’t a bunch of campaign money spent to win Mississippi, compared to other states. But that meant we did it the Mississippi way, and I’m proud of that. What we need to do now, as a Democratic Party, is understand we can’t continue to allow that lack of investment to occur.”
Colom defeated Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in one of 2026’s most surprising elections. Democrats, at this point, have also picked up Senate seats in Iowa, Kansas, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina and Texas, and may still win the seat in Alaska.
He added: “We need to put senators like myself in position where we can deliver for the rural South, where we can be leaders in ways that show the voters in rural America that we care about them, the voters in the Deep South that we want them to be successful.”
Colom will be the first Black senator to serve from Mississippi since Hiram Revels (1870-71) and Blanche Kelso Bruce (1875-81) in the Reconstruction era. During the 20th century, Mississippi elected a number of the most avowedly segregationist lawmakers in Washington, including Sens. James Vardaman, Theodore G. Bilbo and James Eastland.
In an interview with host Kristen Welker, Colom spoke of the things he hoped to accomplish in the Senate, including raising the minimum wage, pushing for affordable health care, and putting Congress back in charge of tariff policy instead of the president.
“What we have to understand is the Constitution’s clear. Tariffs are supposed to be determined in Congress. And I’ll tell you, as I, you know, talk to more and more of the new Democratic senators and the ones that are currently in the Senate, everybody’s in agreement that we’ve got to get the tariff policy back,” Colom said.
He declined to say whether he would support New York’s Chuck Schumer, the current minority leader, or Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen for Senate majority leader.
“I’ve got to be honest with you,” Colom told Welker, “I don’t know either one of them that well. So, I’m going to listen to what other people tell me about them and I’m going to figure out what are the things that people are doing well in leadership, what are the things they’re not doing well, and find out how we can work together to achieve results.”
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