- State
- Mississippi
- Office / race
- U.S. Senate
- Party
- Democratic
- Reviewed
- October 24, 2026
Career timeline
The Democratic Senate candidate
Scott Colom appears on Mississippi’s official November 3, 2026, Senate ballot as the Democratic opponent of Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith. Independent Ty Pinkins is also listed. Colom approaches the statewide contest from a career in courts and prosecution, asking voters to consider that experience for a legislative office with substantially different responsibilities.
Sources: Mississippi secretary of state: official sample ballot ↗
College and legal training
Colom graduated from Millsaps College in 2005 and earned his law degree at the University of Wisconsin in 2009. His early professional work included the Mississippi Center for Justice, followed by private practice. That sequence brought public-interest legal work and representation of individual clients into his background before he became a district attorney.
Local courts before the district attorney’s office
His legal chronology includes service as a Lowndes County justice-court judge, a municipal judge in Aberdeen and a part-time prosecutor in Columbus. These were separate positions within local government, not federal judgeships. They gave him experience on both sides of the courtroom’s institutional divide before the countywide and multicounty responsibilities of elected prosecution.
Winning an established prosecutor’s job
Colom defeated longtime district attorney Forrest Allgood in 2015 and took office in 2016. Alliance for Justice’s judicial-nomination profile describes his expansion of diversion options for nonviolent defendants, including treatment, job placement and education. It also records work involving restorative justice. The organization supported his nomination, so its assessment should be read as advocacy alongside the documented career chronology.
Sources: Alliance for Justice: Scott Colom judicial nomination ↗
A judicial nomination that did not advance
President Joe Biden nominated Colom for a federal district-court vacancy in 2022. Hyde-Smith opposed moving that nomination forward through the Senate’s customary consultation process, and he did not become a federal judge. The episode preceded their electoral contest and adds a distinct institutional history to the matchup, alongside their present differences over public policy.
Sources: Mississippi Free Press: Colom challenges senator who blocked nomination ↗
The platform he puts before voters
Colom’s campaign emphasizes hospital access, household costs and jobs. Its biography identifies him as a Columbus native and seventh-generation Mississippian, and describes coaching sports and a high-school mock-trial team. He says he would work with either party on state priorities. Those pledges describe the approach he proposes to take in Washington; his established professional record remains primarily in Mississippi’s justice system.
Prepared with AI assistance. Source-based reporting checked on October 24, 2026. This article does not update automatically. Read our editorial standards.
