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Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.) first heard about Scott Colom through her former campaign adviser Gerard Henderson, who would become Colom’s campaign manager.
“He said, ‘You know what? I’m having a little trouble attracting attention to Mississippi,’” and I promised him I was coming,” Alsobrooks told The Political Spectrum.
The freshman senator’s leadership political action committee would also send Colom $2,500 in September 2025 and give him $7,500 more throughout the campaign. She would also be the first Democratic senator to campaign for him in Jackson.
“And so I was the first senator to actually go campaign with him, and to host co-host events with him, discover what an amazing person he was, what an incredible candidate he was,” she said. “But also discovered that the people of Mississippi just had a belief problem.”
Colom’s campaign would ultimately prove the doubt was unwarranted on Wednesday when he pulled off a miracle and became the first Black senator from Mississippi since Blanche K. Bruce during Reconstruction.
Democrats flipped three other Senate seats in the former Confederacy this cycle, including North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. In addition, Sen. Jon Ossoff won re-election in Georgia.
And Black Democrats want Colom’s send a message to their party’s leaders: Invest in the South and in Black candidates.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) campaigned with Colom in Gulfport in October in the final weeks of the campaign. His leadership PAC, Purpose PAC, also sent $5,000 to him in September of last year for the primary and $5,000 for the general election in March.
“Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana. These are southern states that have made sense for a long time,” Booker told The Political Spectrum. “I think the Democratic Party has made a mistake by not investing in them. Scott is an epic candidate and somebody I saw the talent and the promise of early on.”
Booker called the overwhelming victories or near-misses in Southern states a rebuke against the Southern Strategy, the infamous plan by Richard Nixon to persuade white southern voters who historically voted Democratic, to vote for the Republican Party.
Specifically, Booker said Colom’s victory “really announces the end of the cynical, bigoted Southern strategy of Richard Nixon, this is finally, I think, the final end to that.”
And it was not just the places where Democrats won. In Alabama, Everett Wess, who is Black, only lost to Sen.-elect Barry Moore. by 9.4 points in a state that Donald Trump won by 30 points in 2024. In Florida, Angie Nixon, a Black female member of the Democratic Socialists of America, got within three points of Republican Sen. Ashley Moody. In Louisiana, Jamie Davis, who is also Black, got within two points of Sen.-elect Julia Letlow, Trump’s preferred candidate.
“I’ll say what I’ve said from day one that I was elected in the House, but I’m here to represent every single person from my district and now the state, and I want them to have a voice,” Letlow told The Political Spectrum this week.
Black voter turnout surged after the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision that significantly weakened the 1965 Voting Rights Act. But some Democrats feel frustrated that Black candidates were not adequately supported. Colom posted on X as votes trickled in after the election that political prognosticators like the Cook Political Report.
“They made it much more difficult to fundraise and are part of the reason the South has been neglected for so long,” he said. “They’re only a reflection of the past and mysteriously avoid any accountability when they’re wrong.”
Many Democrats of all stripes have criticized the lack of support for Nixon, given the fact she got so close. But Alsobrooks and Delaware Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s leadership PACs sent money to Nixon.
“I thought every seat was important,” she said. “Angie Nixon was obviously also a really amazing candidate, ran a terrific race. As you saw, she got close to four million votes. So I gave money. I went to Florida to try to help her as well.”
Alsobrooks praised Nixon, and many progressives criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for not supporting her.
“I think that they both did exceptionally well,” Alsobrooks said of Colom and Nixon. “And I think Angie can do it in the future.”
In 2028, Democrats will have a chance to invest in the South again as Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) runs for re-election. Budd previously beat Cheri Beasley, a former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice and a Black woman. Moody, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis nominated to replace Sen. Marco Rubio, will also be running for full term. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) will also be up for re-election.
And Democrats need only look at Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), a Black minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King. Jr. preached, to see what a long-term investment in the South could create.
Like Alsobrooks, Warnock’s leadership PAC also sent money to Colom’s campaign in September of last year. Warnock compared Colom’s victory to his own win in 2021.
“I looked at what was happening in Mississippi, and it reminded me of Georgia,” Warnock told The Political Spectrum. “I’ve been frustrated that our party hasn’t leaned in enough, in my view, in the South. I supported him because I thought he could win. Turns out I was right about it.”
Warnock said the win in Mississippi should send a message to his party.
“Not just the South, but absolutely the road to a sustainable democratic majority runs right through the South,” he said.
To borrow from another famous Black Georgian: “The South got something to say.”
What I’m reading: Arvin Alaigh on Richard John Neuhaus in Commonweal Magazine. Our good friend Jonathan Martin at Politico Magazine talked to Scott Colom before his win. Heidi N. Moore Amir Tibon in The Atlantic on how Benjamin Netanyahu’s embracing the language of January 6. Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times, not surprisingly, has a better analysis of the new Democratic South than I do. Our friend Andrew Donaldson rightly says to ignore the 2028 noise and pay attention to the South Carolina primary.
Your regular Bam Bam post:
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