The Democrats pull off an historic victory in Mississippi

Justin Webb (0:00)

Hello, it's Justin here, and hello to all the new listeners to Americast. There are quite a few of you at the moment, so if you do enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way, you will never miss an episode. Now, on with this one.

Scott Colom (0:14)

And I'll tell you, throughout this campaign, there were many times where I had to have faith.

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.

Sarah Smith (0:30)

That was Scott Colom, the senator-elect from Mississippi for the Democratic Party, who has only just been declared the winner because this race was so tight, the counting went on right until Wednesday and he was just declared the winner in the evening.

He now becomes the first African American to represent Mississippi in the Senate for nearly 150 years. This is an astonishing achievement for Democrats to win in Mississippi at all. And for Scott Colom to be the man who is going to the Senate. So the big question now is, is this a fundamental change where Democrats are competitive in southern states where they never imagined they could be? Or is Mississippi a one-off? Welcome to Americast.

Marianna Spring (1:14)

Americast from BBC News.

SPEAKER_6 (1:16)

Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league.

SPEAKER_7 (1:22)

The tide is coming. And this time, we intend to win it all.

SPEAKER_8 (1:29)

See, he doesn't want to do the job.

He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar. When I'm not around, you're going to be broke.

Marianna Spring (1:42)

There's not going to be anybody to report on.

SPEAKER_6 (1:45)

Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

Sarah Smith (1:52)

Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau.

Justin Webb (1:55)

And it's Justin on holiday or a holiday of sorts in Savannah, Georgia.

Marianna Spring (1:58)

And it is Marianna in the worldwide headquarters of Americast in London.

Sarah Smith (2:02)

And we've got big news from the South, Justin, haven't we, now that we finally have a result from the Senate race in Mississippi. Scott Colom triumphing there by something like 5,000 votes or so out of about a million, which is, I mean, it's really astonishing. And no wonder it's taken quite so long to count it. It's difficult to describe, I think, Justin, just quite how deeply conservative and how incredibly Republican Mississippi is and therefore, what a huge surprise it is that it could have returned a Democratic senator and an African American one at that.

Justin Webb (2:35)

Yeah. I mean, Mississippi is ground central of all the kind of bad things that they used to be in the South, isn't it? You think of Mississippi and you think of the repression, you think of the Jim Crow laws, you think of all the things that have repressed black people in particular, and I think the Democratic Party thought this as well. You think, well, it's better, but it's got an awful long way to go in the future. There has been a Democratic senator relatively recently. There was one elected in 1982, but he basically was a segregationist.

So the thing is, when we talk about revolutions and earthquakes and all the rest of it, if you just focus down on this one state, because we've talked a lot about that, haven't we, Sarah, for the whole of the rest of this last election, but if you just focus on one state, on Mississippi, it is just, well, lots of people would not have believed it in even the days going up to the event.

Sarah Smith (3:34)

Well, and that's why the Democratic Party wasn't targeting it, wasn't putting many resources in there.

And as the polls started to show it was looking closer and closer, there were complaints from Scott Colom's team that they weren't getting the backup that they needed, and maybe they could just take Mississippi if only they had a few more resources put in there. And of course, now they've managed to do it with that. Well, I mean, the Democratic Party came in late there. Had they just missed it, I think there would have been a hell of a postmortem to be conducted on this. But as it was, they did indeed triumph. In a campaign where I don't think very much was made about race, though. I mean, every time you think of Mississippi, you do think of racial politics. But the fact that he is not only a Democratic but an African American candidate wasn't a particularly big deal, I don't think.