Democrat Scott Colom defeated Republican Sen. Hyde-Smith in Mississippi's U.S. Senate race, winning 49.2% of the vote to her 48.7%, according to figures from CBS. An independent candidate received 2.1%.
Colom, a 43-year-old local prosecutor, is the first Black person from Mississippi elected to the Senate in more than 140 years. The narrow victory adds to Democratic midterm gains as President Donald Trump's party suffers a series of defeats.
A spokesman for Hyde-Smith confirmed that she called Colom to concede. She congratulated him in a video posted on X on Wednesday evening and wished him well.
Results showed strong turnout in the Mississippi Delta and its concentration of majority-Black counties. Colom campaigned in all 82 of the state's counties, drawing on Mississippi's large Black population, discontent with the economy and Hyde-Smith's missteps as she sought a second full term.
Nearly all of the state moved leftwards from the 2024 election, when Trump carried Mississippi by nearly 23 points. Trump won the state by double digits in each of his three presidential contests.
The win breaks a long pattern in a state controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations. The last time Mississippi chose a new Democratic senator was 1947, and the winner then was a staunch segregationist.
During the extended count, Colom acknowledged the historic nature of doing what Espy could not. He said he could represent all of Mississippi, where racial divisions have long defined politics and society, and that he saw his place more in other Mississippians, especially the state's youngest residents, than in his own story.
"They actually deserve a senator that will listen to them, that actually cares about what they think, actually cares about what they're going through,"Colom said in the campaign's closing stretch.
Phil Bryant first appointed Hyde-Smith, then state agriculture commissioner, to the Senate in 2018 when Cochran resigned. She later blocked Colom's confirmation to a federal judicial post under the Senate tradition that lets members spike a president's choices for positions in their home state. Colom said his Senate bid was never about getting even with her.