Dem
55
Ties
1
GOP
44
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) experienced a Colom blow yesterday, when the AP, CNN, NBC News and other outlets called the state's U.S. Senate race for Democrat Scott Colom. He has a lead of about 5,000 votes out of over 900,000 cast, with 99% of the votes reported. Hyde-Smith, who realizes the math can't work out for her, has already conceded.
In a bit of historical irony, Mississippi thus becomes the second U.S. state to have had three different Black U.S. Senators—following Illinois, which has been represented by Democrats Carol Moseley Braun, Barack Obama and Roland Burris. In the early years of Reconstruction, most white voters in Mississippi were disenfranchised, by virtue of having been, you know, traitors. That left Black voters, who elected a majority-Black legislature. And since senators were chosen by legislatures back then, the majority-Black legislature saw fit to choose Sens. Blanche K. Bruce and Hiram Revels (both R). Colom now joins that list. He will also be the 15th Black senator in U.S. history, meaning that just 4% of the states are responsible for 40% of the Black senators.
We were going to save this for tomorrow, but we might as well note it now: Hyde-Smith's fate is a reminder that sometimes, karma is a bit**. In October 2022, Joe Biden nominated Colom to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi. The Senator-elect would presumably be busy doing that job right now, if he had been confirmed. But, while Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) returned his blue slip, Hyde-Smith did not, thus single-handedly scuttling the nomination.
Hyde-Smith's very relevant reason was that Colom may once have expressed support for allowing trans girls to play
girls sports in high school. Because, as we all know, federal judges are constantly hearing cases about high school
girls' sports. Hyde-Smith also said she believed that Colom had accepted money from those conniving Jews George
Soros as part of his campaign for DA for the 16th Judicial District of Mississippi. She must have been watching too much
Fox "News" or something, because she could offer no actual evidence for either claim. Colom sent her a letter insisting
that he never said anything about high school sports and he never got any money from Soros, but she refused to change
course. The failure of the nomination left Colom with plenty of time to do other things, like... run for the United
States Senate. And we now know how that worked out.
Colom's victory means the Democrats and their two independent allies will control at least 55 seats in the next Senate, if you count Sen. John Fetterman (D-ish, PA). The Sen.-elect is going to be beholden substantially to Black voters and, on the whole, Black voters tend to be fiscally more liberal and socially more conservative. That is also a pretty good description of the voters that Sens.-elect James Talarico (D-TX), Adam Hamilton (D-KS), Annie Andrews (D-SC), Josh Turek (D-IA), Roy Cooper (D-NC) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will be representing as well. Mary Peltola (D-AK) too, if she is elected. For this reason, the new Democratic majority should have plenty of room to operate and get things done. There are plenty of economic/good governance issues to work on. And while it may make for good campaign talk (or maybe not, given how things worked out), a Democratic-controlled Senate was never going to do something like get involved in high school girls' sports, or funding gender-affirming surgery for 12 year olds.
Speaking of Peltola, there were some more vote totals released in Alaska yesterday. With 86% now reported, her lead shrunk slightly, from 4,250 votes to 3,975. That means that her lead is now smaller than the number of votes cast (4,100) for the other Dan Sullivan (R?). If she goes on to win, and the margin is less than 4,100, that will potentially lay the groundwork for lawsuits and much carping from the Trump administration. The lawsuits and carping won't achieve anything, but they will suck up a lot of oxygen for a week or two.
At this point, for the real (Sen.) Dan Sullivan (R-AK) to win outright, he would need to take about 56% of the remaining ballots. Not impossible, though considerably more than the 47% he's taken so far. Otherwise, he would be relying on the non-Peltola votes to break sharply in his favor (something like 90% of them) when the ranked choice processing happened. As we have noted before, a New York Times analysis of the exit polling says that most of the votes for the fake Dan Sullivan are actually Peltola votes. Media in Alaska agree. So, the real Dan Sullivan probably shouldn't sign a new lease in D.C.
When we last noted the Times' analysis, we expressed puzzlement as to why someone would vote for the fake Sullivan, who cannot possibly win, if Peltola was the candidate they wanted. Reader S.C. in Mountain View, CA, is acquainted with some RCV activists in Alaska, and contacted one of them. He noted that there was no apparent campaign to get people to rank the fake Sullivan (Dan J.) first and Peltola second, and who offered up this:
Based on discussions I've had with voters, I think there are three main reasons this would happen, and this likely happened naturally:
- Voters used RCV as intended—they liked the anti-incumbent messaging and ranked Dan J. first, then looked at the remaining candidates and felt that Peltola was a better choice than the current senator and the even more conservative Gerald Heikes. Remember, Dan J. had previously donated to Peltola. What is more surprising to me is that more than 1,000 Heikes voters ranked Peltola next. This just shows how complex voters are.
I'm reminded of the [Sen. Lisa] Murkowski race in 2022: Kelly Tshibaka (R) was the Trump-supported challenger and Patricia Chesbro (D) was the Democratic candidate. When Chesbro was eliminated, most of her votes (20,571) went to the more moderate Murkowski, but more than 2,000 voters ranked Tshibaka second, which was very perplexing to pundits. I found one of those voters and he said he voted for Chesbro because she came from the same community and he respected her and wanted to support someone from his community, but when we had to choose between Murkowski and Tshibaka, both of whom were unknown to him, he chose the person who most aligned politically.- Voters supported Peltola but were unhappy with the manipulation of the system and ranked Dan J. first to send that message.
- Voters wanted to replace Dan S., but weren't excited about Peltola as a candidate. This reasoning would also apply to the write-in votes that went to Peltola.
We also heard from many other readers who had thoughts. Here are some of those letters:
S.E. in Cleveland, OH: It's called trolling and it's hilarious. Real Sullivan was probably assuming every vote for fake Sullivan would rank him second. Imagine his face when he found out a plurality of the fake Sullivan's second-choice votes went to Peltola.
Besides the extremely unlikely chance that fake Sullivan garners 50%, there's no downside.
R.H. in Los Angeles, CA: Sometimes your age really comes through in your writing. I expected most of the fake Sullivan votes to be for Peltola. People did this because it's funny and they wanted to reward the fake Sullivan for also being funny. Fake Sullivan never mattered in a ranked choice state. It was a joke from the beginning and should have been covered as that from the beginning.
D.S. in Lakewood, OH: They are independents or Democrats who didn't want to help Republicans, but wanted to send a message to Democrats not to try those shenanigans again. The protest without wasting their vote makes clear they know exactly how ranked choice works and knew they weren't throwing their vote away. I don't put it past them; Alaskans seem to be more savvy about voting than the lower 48 rabble.
I.K. in Easton, CT: It occurred to me that a number of people are just uncomfortable voting for a Democrat. So some of them put down fake Sullivan, because it felt better, with Peltola #2.
B.B. in Anchorage, AK: I thought I might clear up your confusion on folks that voted for the wrong Sullivan #1 and Peltola #2 in Alaska. Many of my friends did so. They figured the wrong Sullivan would be eliminated, and their second choice would be counted. And they were pissed at the threats of lawsuits and other bullsh** coming from the Republicans. They wanted to make it clear that they weren't confused. Luckily, the incumbent won't get to 50%, so this dangerous strategy will likely work the way it was intended.
People contain multitudes, we suppose. In any event, thanks to everyone who wrote in! In theory, there should be another fairly large release of ballots in Alaska today. That said, we have to assume that nobody's going to call the race until the ranked choice processing takes place, which is supposed to happen next Wednesday.
Thought for today: If Democrats can win Senate races in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas, that is, all over the South, what is to become of the Republican Party? They are going to have to do some hard thinking about that. (Z)