Mississippi Senate Race: Colom's Lead Reaches 2,498 Votes - and the Twin Brother in Detroit Who Wrote the Ads Everyone Saw
The count in Mississippi moved again Friday evening: Scott Colom 467,846 votes to Cindy Hyde-Smith's 465,348, a lead of 2,498 with 97 percent counted and the race still uncalled. Behind the campaign that broke through nationally stands the candidate's twin brother Andrew, a Detroit developer who storyboarded, wrote and starred in its viral ads.
Mississippi's Senate race ended Friday where it has lived all week - uncalled, and inching. The Associated Press count as of Friday afternoon put Democrat Scott Colom at 467,846 votes to Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's 465,348: a lead of 2,498 votes, up from 2,129 in this station's afternoon file, with 97 percent of the vote counted, every precinct reporting, and no call. Counties certify by November 13, Mississippi law offers no recount, and the affidavit and late-arriving mail ballots remain the paper that will settle it.
What Friday added was the story behind the campaign the whole country saw. Colom's two viral ads - 'pick another protein?', in which Mississippians say they would rather pick another senator than follow Hyde-Smith's suggestion to just not buy beef at steep prices, and the 'Sinator' ad, a 'Sinners' parody in which the candidate and his twin fend off a Hyde-Smith facsimile - came together in part thanks to that twin: Andrew Colom, who has lived in Detroit for 12 years, the Detroit Free Press reports. Andrew storyboarded the protein ad, wrote and produced 'Sinator' and the campaign theme song, and starred alongside his brother. 'We were like a small ship of pirates, and what we stole was the story. We made it ours, so we were getting free press,' he said.
Speaking by phone on Friday, Andrew Colom framed his brother's showing in family terms. 'I feel like he took generations of our family, the Colom name ... I think he took that name and he cemented the honor on it that was always appropriate to be there,' he told the Free Press. Scott Colom thanked him publicly on X for the 'Sinator' ad - 'My twin brother, Andrew Robert Colom ... wrote, directed, and produced this ad, and starred alongside me in it. (He's not AI),' he posted, with a laughing emoji. Andrew, a Columbus, Mississippi native and Columbia graduate who founded the Detroit development firm Century Partners, said he believes his brother will 'look out for working people' alongside Michigan's senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed.
The history at stake is unchanged, and still only at stake. If the lead holds through certification, Scott Colom would become the first Democratic US senator elected in Mississippi in more than 40 years and the first Black Democratic senator the state has ever sent to Washington - and would give Democrats a 55th Senate seat in a chamber they have already clinched. None of that is decided. What Friday decided is narrower: the margin grew a little, the ads' author got his credit, and the last Senate race in America goes into the weekend exactly as close as it came out of Election Night.
