Mississippi, Proving Liberals Wrong About Race and Voting, Poised To Elect First Black Senator Since Reconstruction

In a midterm election season of unlikely battleground states, the unlikeliest of all must be deep-red Mississippi. The Magnolia State appears poised, by a narrow margin, to elect a Democrat to the Senate for the first time since 1989 — and to send an African-American senator to Washington for the first time since Reconstruction in 1875. So far, 96 percent of the votes have been tallied, and the results may not be certified, per state law, for 10 days after the election. President Trump in 2024 won the state by a margin of 22.9 points.Yet the narrow lead held by former prosecutor Scott Colom over the incumbent Republican, Cindy Hyde-Smith, demonstrates, too, what was wrong about progressive criticism of the decision in April in Louisiana v. Callais. The Supreme Court ruled then that the Voting Rights Act did not require the Pelican State state to create an additional predominantly black congressional district. Liberal critics blasted the ruling, asserting it would harm black political representation. As the Brennan Center for Justice put it, “Minority voters will now be left with a diminished voice in American politics, rolling back half a century of steady progress toward racial equality in voting practices.” Mr. Colom, to be sure, could yet lose as the last few votes are counted. Yet his success underlines why the scenario mooted by the Brennan Center has proved clearly not to be the case — even in a state where the leading college football team is still called the Rebs and there remains a county named for Jefferson Davis.Progressives have been convinced that African-Americans could not win elections unless Congressional district lines, like those which the Court overturned in Callais, were drawn to scoop up black voters even if that required tortured gerrymandered districts, including one that stretched all across the state, defying the goal of geographical compactness.Yet the borders of the state of Mississippi have not changed, even as Mr. Colom leads Ms. Hyde-Smith by less than a percentage point. Progressives failed to acknowledge what they’ve been supposedly working toward for decades: racial progress. Simply put, Mr. Colom may rely on a core of black voters but he could not win without white votes — including those in predominantly white parts of the state.Crucial to know: even in the state with the highest-percentage black population in the nation, African-Americans comprise just 39 percent of registered voters. Not enough on their own, in other words, for a black candidate to win a statewide election without support from other groups.Mr. Colom relies, to be sure, on the predominantly black Mississippi Delta, where he rolled up huge majorities — including a 57-point margin at Coahoma County, the historic heart of the Delta (where, full disclosure, my son once lived and our family has friends.)In a majority-white state, though, black votes are not enough. Indeed, Mr. Colom leads in the vote count at six majority-white counties, including Lafayette, which is 69 percent white, and populous DeSoto, which is located in the Memphis metro area, and is 57 percent white. Overall, Mr. Colom drew 24 percent of the white vote, in the former heart of the Confederacy and Jim Crow at its worst.Simply put, Mr. Colom would not be the likely next senator from Mississippi without the support of white voters. An important related point: black votes mattered in predominantly white counties. Ms. Hyde-Smith’s margin at Tishimongo County stands at 64 points — nonetheless short of the 90 percent white population total. In other words, in Congressional elections, like those on which the Supreme Court focuses, a black candidate may not prevail but blacks can be key swing voters to whom white candidates have every reason to appeal.Yet Mississippi black voters, for their part, have also shown a willingness to look past race. The predominantly black Delta municipalities of Yazoo City, Greenville, and Indianola have all elected white mayors in this century, long past the era in which blacks were disenfranchised. In the Callais decision, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, wrote, in their concurrences, that the high court should never have interpreted section two of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to effectively give racial groups “an entitlement to roughly proportional representation.” The high court, by doing so, they wrote, encouraged legislatures and courts to “systematically divide the country into electoral districts along racial lines.” Or, as Justice Thomas wrote in a 1994 case, Holder v. Hall, black voters were “drawn into ‘black districts’ and given ‘black representatives’” while Hispanic voters were “drawn into Hispanic districts and given ‘Hispanic representatives’; and so on.” That interpretation, he wrote, was “repugnant to any nation that strives for the ideal of a color-blind Constitution.” The Callais decision, he wrote, “should largely put an end to this “disastrous misadventure” in voting-rights jurisprudence.”The Mississippi Senate election result shows that not only is it unconstitutional to draw Congressional districts along racial lines but, for those who want and hope for blacks to be represented and influential in our politics, it’s unnecessary.

Mississippi, Proving Liberals Wrong About Race and Voting, Poised To Elect First Black Senator Since Reconstruction

Mississippi, Proving Liberals Wrong About Race and Voting, Poised To Elect First Black Senator Since Reconstruction

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