Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican of Mississippi, conceded to Scott Colom, a Democrat, in a video posted to social media on Wednesday evening.
“While this is not the outcome we worked for or hoped for, I respect the decision of Mississippi voters,” Ms. Hyde-Smith said in the video. “I want to congratulate Scott Colom and wish him well as he takes on the tremendous responsibility of representing our great state.”
Ms. Hyde-Smith said that her campaign “worked tirelessly to ensure every legally cast vote was counted, and that the people of Mississippi received a fair and transparent election.”
Mr. Colom defeated Ms. Hyde-Smith by a narrow margin, according to The Associated Press. He will become the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since Reconstruction.
Mr. Colom’s win means Democrats will hold at least 55 Senate seats at the start of the next Congress. The contest in Alaska, in which the Democrat Mary Peltola has a narrow lead, is the last remaining Senate race in which a winner has not been declared.
Ms. Hyde-Smith, the first woman to represent Mississippi in Congress, was first appointed to the Senate to fill a vacancy in April 2018. She had previously served as Mississippi’s commissioner of agriculture from 2012 to 2018.
The Republican senator also spent more than a decade in the Mississippi State Senate, starting as a conservative Democrat in 2000 and converting to the Republican Party in 2010.
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