Mississippi Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith vs. ‘transgender defender’ Scott Colom
by Pauline Park
On 3 November 2026, Republicans in Congress were swamped by the biggest ‘BlueWave’ since the post-Watergate mid-term election of 1974; one of the last races to be called was the Mississippi Senate contest between Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Scott Colom; it was not until Wednesday, November 11 — 11 days after the election — that the Associated press called the race for the Democratic Senate nominee — who won 49.2% of the vote to 48.7% for the incumbent and 2% for an independent candidate.
Colon became the first Democrat to win a US Senate seat from Mississippi since 1982 and the first African American elected to the US Senate from Mississippi since 1874; and since it was state legislatures that elected US Senators in 1874 and since Mississippi and the other Confederate states were under federal military occupation during the Reconstruction era, Colom is in fact the first popularly elected African American elected by the people of Mississippi to represent them in the US Senate in the state’s history.
Perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that Colom won despite his record of support for transgender rights — which prompted Hyde-Smith to dub him a ‘transgender defender’ — to which Colom responded by saying that he did not support sex reassignment surgery (SRS) for legal minors; he must know that SRS is almost never performed on legal minors in the United States or anyone else; (Alex Bollinger, “GOP senator blocked a judicial nominee for being pro-trans so he kicked her out of her Senate seat,” LGBTQ Nation, 12 November 2026).
In April 2023, Hyde-Smith blocked Joe Biden’s nomination of Colom to serve as US. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi over his support for transgender rights and the funding he had received from a political action committee (PAC) funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros (Ashton Pittman, “Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith Blocks Biden Judge Pick for Mississippi Over Trans Rights, Soros PAC,” Mississippi Free Press, 6 April 2023).
“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,” Hyde-Smith said during the campaign, reportedly in response to an open letter Scott signed onto in 2021 oppose “the ongoing efforts to criminalize transgender people and gender-affirming healthcare across the country.” Colom responded by saying that he supported “fairness” in girls’ and women’s sports — a carefully worded position that did not require him either to support full transgender inclusion or oppose it.
“The irony is that, had she not blocked his judicial nomination, he would likely not have run for Senate this past year,” Alex Bollinger wrote (ibid).
The election of Scott Colom in the face of Cindy Hyde-Smith’s transphobic attacks is yet another indication that transphobia is losing its salience as a weapon that can be used in electoral politics in the United States; the fact that Colom was elected in Mississippi is all the more remarkable: with the possible exceptions of Idaho, Utah and Wyoming, there is no ‘redder’ state in the country.
o which Colom responded that