GOP Senator Blocked Judicial Appointment For Being Pro Trans~ He Kicked Her out of The Senate
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| Left: Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith speaks at Crossroads Arena in Corinth, Mississippi on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026. Right: Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom speaks at Columbus High School in Columbus, Miss., on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026. | Jamar Coach/The Jackson Sun and Lauren Witte/Clarion Ledger of the USA TODAY Network / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images |
District Attorney Scott Colom (D) was declared the winner last night in the US Senate race in Mississippi, marking the first time a Black person has won a US Senate seat in Mississippi since 1874 and the first time a Democrat has won since 1982.
The AP called the election on Wednesday, with Colom receiving 49.2% of the vote with 99% of votes counted. The incumbent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), got 48.7% of the vote and an independent candidate got just over 2%.
“You need faith, and I’ll tell you, throughout this campaign, there were many times where I had to have faith,” Scott said in his victory speech. “There were times that I couldn’t get donors to answer the phone. They did not believe a moment like this was possible. But I kept the faith.”
The chain of events that led to Colom beating Hyde-Smith began in 2022, when former President Joe Biden nominated Colom to a US District Court seat in Mississippi. There is a Senate tradition that allows the two senators from a state to reject a judicial appointment in their state, and Hyde-Smith used that to block Colom’s nomination even though Democrats controlled the Senate.
Hyde-Smith said in a statement still available on her website that he’s “smart and well liked in his district” but too supportive of trans people’s rights.
“However, there are a number of concerns I have regarding his record,” she wrote. “As someone with a strong interest in protecting the rights of girls and women, I am concerned about Scott Colom’s opposition to legislation to protect female athletes.” She also claimed that Jewish philanthropist George Soros was funding Colom’s campaign. Soros is often featured in right-wing conspiracy theories.
She may have been referring to a letter from the organization “Fair and Just Prosecution”that Scott signed in 2021 opposing “the ongoing efforts to criminalize transgender people and gender-affirming healthcare across the country.”
“Unfortunately, the full and equal protection of the law has consistently been denied to transgender people living in this country. Transgender individuals endure unconscionably high rates of violent victimization,” the letter stated.
“Rather than working to remedy these harms, many state legislatures have instead intensified their efforts to isolate, discriminate against, and criminalize transgender people,” the letter continued, citing the hundreds of bills filed across the country that year in state legislatures attacking trans people’s rights. “We are committed to ending this deeply disturbing and destructive criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare and transgender people.”
The irony is that, had she not blocked his judicial nomination, he would likely not have run for Senate this past year.
Colom drew national attention this past year with his “pick another senator” ad, which attacked Hyde-Smith for saying consumers should “pick another protein” if the price of beef is too high. Hyde-Smith was the Agriculture Commissioner of Mississippi before she was a senator.
The last Democrat to win a US Senate seat in Mississippi was John Cornelius Stennis, who was first elected in 1947 in a special election. At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, he was one of only two senators to back a “rebellion” against party leadership over the party’s endorsement of racial integration and civil rights. He voted against an anti-poll tax measure in the Senate that year and remained a supporter of segregation throughout his 41 years in office, although he did vote for extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and campaigned for a Black Congressman in 1986.
The last Black person to win a US Senate seat in Mississippi was Blanche Bruce, who was born into slavery in the 1840s in Virginia and became a wealthy landowner after the Civil War when he bought a plantation in the Mississippi Delta. He won several local elections before successfully running for Senate in 1874, becoming the second Black US senator in history and the first to ever preside over the Senate.
In 1880, a couple of years after Reconstruction ended, therefore limiting his chances of winning reelection in Mississippi, he ran for vice president and became the first Black person to win any votes for national office in a major party, though he ultimately lost that election. He was then appointed to positions in the US Treasury and other federal offices until he died in 1898.
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