Mississippi’s two statewide nonprofit news outlets led the way this morning in reporting on Scott Colom’s historic victory. Colom, a Black Democrat, was declared the winner of that state’s Senate seat Wednesday, defeating Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.
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The Mississippi Free Press has a lively account by reporter Nick Judin that’s rich with context and history. Here’s his lead:
Scott Colom, a Democrat, will be Mississippi’s next U.S. senator and the first Black senator to represent the state in the U.S. Capitol since 1881. His historic feat comes just six years after Mississippi retired its old Confederate-themed state flag.
Judin also observes that the last Democrat to represent Mississippi in the Senate was John Stennis, a segregationist, who once told Joe Biden — according to a 2006 interview with Biden by Free Press editor Donna Ladd — that he had come to realize the success of the Civil Rights Movement had “freed my soul.”
Although Mississippi had two Black senators during Reconstruction, Judin notes that Colom will be the state’s first elected Black senator since senators were chosen by state legislatures until the 17th Amendment was passed in 1913.
Over at Mississippi Today, reporters Taylor Vance and Michael Goldberg weigh in with a straight-news lead:
Democrat Scott Colom has won a hard-fought U.S. Senate race in Mississippi, breaking Republicans’ dominance of statewide offices, ousting one of the state’s sitting senators for the first time since the 1940s and becoming the state’s first Black senator since post-Civil War Reconstruction.
Today also observes that Colom, a district attorney, had previously been nominated for a federal judgeship by President Biden — a nomination that was nixed by Hyde-Smith herself, using her home-state “blue slip” privilege. “Had Hyde-Smith not blocked Colom’s nomination,” Vance and Goldberg write, “he likely would have served on the federal judiciary for the rest of his life and never run for the Senate.”
Mississippi has a number of media outlets serving the Black community. Two prominent examples: the Jackson Advocate and The Mississippi Link. The Advocate this morning offers a huge headline along with a photo gallery by Joshua Martin from Colom’s victory rally Wednesday night at Tougaloo College. As of this morning, the Link had not yet been updated, running with a story by Dr. Edelia J. Carthan reporting that Colom “held a narrow lead.”
Mississippi’s most prominent daily newspaper, the Clarion Ledger of Jackson, leads with a story by reporter Bea Anhuci taking note of Colom’s victory that begins: “Many drops of water will make an ocean. Many Mississippi ballots will make a senator.” But print customers of the paper, which is part of the USA Today Co. chain, were greeted this morning with a top headline that says “Colom blames Secretary of State for delay” (via Today’s Front Pages). Yikes.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting’s news homepage is incoherent. Among the rotating headlines that appear at the top of the page is a story from Nov. 4 (!) by reporter Elise Catrion Gregg that reads “Results in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race won’t be ready any time soon.” Below the carousel, though, is a small Associated Press story by Bill Barrow and Sophie Bates on Colom’s win.
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