Mississippi Sen.-elect Scott Colom isn’t heading to Washington to play nice with Democratic leadership if it means leaving the South behind again.
Fresh off his historic victory over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, Colom joined SiriusXM’s “The Karen Hunter Show” with a message for his own party: Southern voters delivered, and now it’s time to pay up.
“For too long we’ve been written off. We’ve been told there’s no way we can win,” Colom told Hunter. “This election shows that Mississippi matters.”
Colom, who will become Mississippi’s first Black U.S. senator since Reconstruction, wants Southern Democrats to receive influential committee assignments and a greater voice in Washington.
“We’ve been neglecting the South for too long,” he said. “Now, it’s time to make sure the people that got elected in the South have the voice in DC to deliver for the voters.”
Hunter pressed him about Mississippi’s struggling infrastructure, neglected communities and what residents could expect immediately.
“The first thing we got to do is get the cost down,” Colom responded, calling for lower tariffs and a higher minimum wage.
He also took aim at the national media’s treatment of his campaign.
“Most national news, most corporate media totally ignore my campaign,” he said.
Instead, Colom put in the real work and took his message directly to voters, holding more than 60 town halls and visiting housing projects and music festivals. Hunter offered him a monthly platform to report directly to listeners about his work in Congress.
“I’m happy to be held accountable,” Colom replied.
But he warned that Democrats cannot afford to squander their victories.
“The backlash for what we just did is going to be tremendous,” he said. “Now we got to make sure that vote delivers because otherwise we’ll be back in this situation again.”
Listen to the entire exchange below.
