A prominent Republican strategist is warning his party not to underestimate Scott Colom, the Mississippi Democrat on the verge of one of the biggest upsets of the midterms.
“Absolutely! No one should underestimate soon-to-be Senator-elect Colom,” Shermichael Singleton wrote on social media on Saturday. “This man is one of the most impressive political leaders I’ve ever seen.”
Singleton was responding to Fox News host Lawrence Jones, who wrote: “The biggest threat to the GOP in 2028 is Scott Colom not AOC.”
Colom, a district attorney, leads Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in a race that remains too close to call. As of Friday, his lead had grown to more than 2,000 votes, according to the Associated Press. If he wins, he would be Mississippi’s first Democrat elected to the Senate since 1982 and its first Black senator elected since Reconstruction.
Singleton also shared a clip of Colom describing his family background. In it, Colom said his father “was a Republican who worked for Ronald Reagan.”
“I had no clue his dad worked for Reagan,” Singleton wrote.
Singleton’s praise is notable given what Colom has been through. In 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked then-President Joe Biden’s nomination of Colom to a federal judgeship, citing his views on transgender athletes. Mississippi Free Press news editor Ashton Pittman has noted that if Hyde-Smith loses, she “will have helped set her own defeat in motion.”
Republicans have challenged the count. The National Republican Senatorial Committee demanded that county officials segregate affidavit ballots ahead of a potential legal challenge. Colom’s campaign called that “a desperate stunt.”