by Sydney Carruth | Nov 12, 2026 | Congress, elections, News
In perhaps the most stunning upset of the 2026 midterm cycle, Democrat Scott Colom has defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith in Mississippi’s closely contested Senate race.
Colom’s historic win marks the eighth Senate seat Democrats were able to flip from Republican control this cycle, giving the party a total of 55 seats in the chamber. If Democrats win the still-undecided Alaska Senate race, their majority will grow to 56-44.
Hyde-Smith called Colom to concede around 6 p.m. ET, two sources close to the Colom campaign told MS NOW. The GOP senator posted a video to X moments later, saying, “I respect the decision of Mississippi voters. I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
He also received congratulatory phone calls Wednesday night from former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, both of whom endorsed Colom, a campaign spokesman told MS NOW.
Colom will become Mississippi’s first Black senator since Reconstruction and the first Democrat to win a Senate seat in the Southern GOP stronghold since 1982. His surprise victory underscores the seismic shift toward the Democratic Party, even in the Deep South.
Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, hailed the victory for Colom and for Black voters whose political power was curtailed by the Supreme Court and threatened by the Trump administration.
“Black voters once again demonstrated the power of civic engagement and the strength of our democracy,” Johnson said. “Even in the face of efforts to remove voters from the rolls, attempts to intimidate voters and election officials, and bids to create fear around the electoral process, Mississippi voters showed up.”
The
by Symone D. Sanders Townsend | Nov 12, 2026 | 2026 election, Congress, elections, Opinion
I tried to tell you all. In January, I said on “The Weeknight” that Scott Colom could be a convincing candidate for the U.S. Senate. In August, when our list of 12 Senate races to watch left Mississippi off, I told viewers to pay attention anyway. I believed he could win.
Wednesday night, it became official: Colom defeated Cindy Hyde-Smith, becoming the first Black senator elected by Mississippi voters and the first Democrat the state has sent to the Senate since 1982. The last Black senators chosen to represent Mississippi, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, were selected during Reconstruction, a time when all U.S. senators were picked by state legislators and not voters.
In 1962, Fannie Lou Hamer went to the courthouse in Indianola to try to register to vote. The plantation owner she worked for told her to withdraw her application. She refused and lost her job. Two years later, she went to the Democratic National Convention to challenge an all-white delegation that claimed to represent Mississippi. Hamer understood that representation depended on who had the power to choose and that building that power took work.
People keep asking me what I saw in this race.
People keep asking me what I saw in this race. I saw a candidate who knew how to compete in Mississippi, and years of nonpartisan organizing that helped build an electorate ready to hear him.
Start with Colom himself. He had already won election as district attorney in a majority-white district and been re-elected twice. In 2022, President Joe Biden nominated him for a federal judgeship. Mississippi’s senior Republican senator, Roger Wicker, supported the nomination. Sen. Cindy
by Steve Benen | Nov 11, 2026 | Congress, elections, Maddowblog
Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* As Sen. John Fetterman’s support among Pennsylvania Democrats collapses to embarrassing depths, the question about whether he would face primary rivals became a foregone conclusion months ago. The better question is how many primary rivals the senator is likely to face.
Earlier this week, Ahmed Moor, a Philadelphia-based writer and entrepreneur, helped get the ball rolling, kicking off his 2028 Senate race, though he’s likely to have plenty of company. Democratic Rep. Madeleine Dean acknowledged Tuesday that she’s considering a Senate run of her own, and Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio said he’s giving the race “serious thought.”
* The Senate Republicans’ leadership for the next Congress was elected Tuesday in a closed-door meeting, and outgoing Senate Majority Leader John Thune was easily chosen to serve as the next Senate minority leader. He will be joined by Wyoming’s John Barrasso, who will be the Republicans’ minority whip; Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, who will serve as the GOP conference chair; West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito, who will serve as the Republicans’ policy committee chair; and Oklahoma’s James Lankford, who will be the GOP conference vice chair.
* As for the party’s campaign committees, the National Republican Senatorial Committee will be led by Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, while Rep. Brian Jack of Georgia will chair the National Republican Congressional Committee.
* The incoming Senate Democratic majority’s leadership appears increasingly murky: While it was widely assumed that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer would continue in his role, MS NOW reported that Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen has begun reaching out to his Democratic colleagues about a possible challenge.
*
by Taya Graham | Nov 11, 2026 | Article, elections, midterms, Pennsylvania, Politics and Movements: US
In 2018, covering our first midterm election, we followed the ultimately unsuccessful campaign of an electoral upstart named Jess King.
King was a progressive candidate touting ideas like Medicare for All and a higher minimum wage in Pennsylvania’s deep-red 11th District. Her campaign seemed improbable at the time.
Her opponent, conservative Republican Lloyd Smucker, had won his previous race by roughly 10 points. In 2018, the district was gerrymandered to be even more Republican.
Despite the long odds, King made an argument we hadn’t heard before. Even though she was running as a Democrat, her pitch to voters was not exclusively partisan.
“I think what we see is that voters aren’t necessarily on the left-right spectrum as much as they are on a bottom-to-top spectrum,” King told us at a campaign event. “We need to talk more about two political parties that have sold out to special interests.”
Call it the inequality proposition or a power-to-the-people mantra, King made it clear that viewing politics through the prism of party was not only outdated, but destructive.
Ultimately, her pitch fell short. She lost to Smucker.
But the 2026 election may have proved that King was simply ahead of the curve. Alongside historic wins for Democrats, her message re-emerged with new potency among an electorate increasingly angry with the status quo, regardless of party.
“You hear people talking about this top-down message instead of this left-right message,” said Pennsylvania state Representative-elect Ce-Ce Gerlach. Gerlach won with the help of the Working Families Party and the progressive group Lehigh Valley Stands Up.
She said her message of economic populism trumped party politics.
“People are struggling. People don’t want to hear all this rhetoric
by Ebony Davis | Nov 11, 2026 | elections, News
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that Democrats’ sweeping midterm victories had lifted a “poisonous cloud” that had hung over the country for a decade, expressing optimism about the party’s return to power.
“I feel it’s been a long time coming, but it’s as though the blue wave has washed away the poisonous cloud that we’ve been living under for 10 years,” Clinton said. “And we can finally get back to trying our best to form that more perfect union by fighting back.”
Clinton made the remarks while moderating a discussion with MS NOW host Rachel Maddow at the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center in New York City during an event promoting Maddow’s new book, “Department of Fate.”
The former Democratic presidential nominee said the election results exceeded her expectations and praised the incoming class of Democratic lawmakers and state officials.
“They came in with the intention of fighting back and to try to right the ship of state,” Clinton said.
She pointed to government corruption and the cost of living as major voter concerns, arguing that Democratic candidates successfully linked rising household expenses to decisions made by political leaders.
The conversation also turned to concerns about potential interference with certifying election results and seating newly elected lawmakers, including in Mississippi, where Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s closely contested re-election race against Democrat Scott Colom remains unresolved.
Asked by Maddow whether she worried about challenges to certification, Clinton said she was “much less” concerned because of the scale of Democrats’ victories and the work of election officials, organizers and attorneys.
Clinton credited election workers and officials from both parties with resisting pressure to alter election outcomes, drawing parallels
by Qassam Muaddi | Nov 11, 2026 | Benjamin Netanyahu, elections, Gadi Eisenkot, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Joint List, News Analysis, Occupation, Palestine, Palestinians, settlers, west bank
Israel might be coming closer to resolving its political impasse following last month’s elections, as Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog officially tasked Gadi Eisenkot, the main rival of Benjamin Netanyahu, with forming a government. Netanyahu, who ran with the hopes of staying in power, lost seven of the 54 seats won by the camp under his leadership. On Thursday, the Ashkenazi Haredi ultra…
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