For 10 months, I argued that Scott Colom could win a U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi. I said it on “The Weeknight” in January, repeated it after Mississippi was omitted from an August list of Senate races to watch, and kept believing.

On Wednesday night, Colom defeated Cindy Hyde-Smith. He became the first Black senator elected by Mississippi voters and the first Democrat the state has sent to the Senate since 1982.

Mississippi’s previous Black senators, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, were selected during Reconstruction. At that time, state legislators chose U.S. senators rather than voters.

Fannie Lou Hamer understood exactly why the power to choose mattered. In 1962, she lost her job after refusing a plantation owner’s demand that she withdraw her application to register to vote.

Two years later, Hamer challenged the all white Mississippi delegation at the Democratic National Convention. Her fight showed that representation depended upon political power, and that building such power required work.

What I saw in Colom’s race was a candidate who understood how to compete in Mississippi, backed by years of nonpartisan organizing that had prepared an electorate to listen. His campaign did not appear from nowhere.

Colom had won election as district attorney in a majority white district and then won reelection twice. President Joe Biden nominated him for a federal judgeship in 2022, with support from Mississippi’s senior Republican senator, Roger Wicker.

Cindy Hyde-Smith blocked that nomination through the Senate’s blue slip tradition. Colom responded this year by asking Mississippi voters to send him to the Senate in her place.

In July, Colom said he was pursuing young people, voters who had abandoned politics and people who previously voted Republican. He held five town halls in five days and visited Corinth, where people were waiting to attend President Donald Trump’s rally for Hyde-Smith.

By October, Colom was still discussing the costs of groceries, gas and healthcare. His message about Medicaid and hospitals in the Delta focused on whether residents could receive care close to home.

National Democratic support eventually arrived. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks campaigned with him in August, followed by Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

But Mississippi’s organizers believed before the national figures appeared. After Hurricane Katrina, current NAACP President Derrick Johnson founded One Voice, a nonprofit based in Jackson that trains Black Mississippians in civic engagement and develops local leaders.

When Democrats lost the state House in 2011, organizers continued building. Local groups used voter data, operated their own canvassing efforts and maintained relationships with residents between elections, long before a Senate campaign attracted national money.

In DeSoto County in 2019, Hester Jackson-McCray found newly arrived residents who had not registered and followed up to ensure they submitted their paperwork. She became the first Black person to represent DeSoto County in the Legislature.

Organizers and Black voters also challenged state Senate maps that diluted Black voting strength. Under court ordered maps, voters elected Theresa Gillespie Isom and Johnny DuPree, costing Republicans their supermajority and demonstrating what Mississippians could do with a fairer opportunity to choose representation.

The Democratic National Committee deserves credit for making a six figure investment in organizing before the 2025 special elections. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee showed far less urgency, announcing a $500,000 coordinated advertising purchase only six days before Election Day.

Colom’s victory does not end the struggle over political power in Mississippi. In May, the Supreme Court set aside the ruling that produced the state Senate maps, while lawmakers have held redistricting hearings and candidates begin qualifying in January.

Some Republicans are discussing dividing the majority Black congressional district represented by Bennie Thompson, Mississippi’s only Black member of the U.S. House delegation. Next year, voters will elect a governor and members of both legislative chambers.

National Democrats now have ample evidence that local organizations deserve sustained investment and a permanent voice in how resources are spent. Mississippi Republicans plainly see power in these communities, and Democrats should recognize it too.

This victory belongs to the young people brought into the election by Mississippi Votes, including many first time voters. It also belongs to Black women and canvassers who kept organizing when no Senate race offered them attention.

In 1964, Hamer asked the Democratic National Convention’s credentials committee, “Is this America?” Sixty two years later, Mississippians answered by believing in their own power before the rest of the country caught up.