Sen.-elect Scott Colom, D-Miss., emphasized on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that Democrats need to invest more in Southern states like Mississippi, where he flipped a seat blue for the first time in decades.
“What we need to do now as a Democratic Party is understand we can’t continue to allow that lack of investment to occur,” he said Sunday.
Colom’s projected win this month brought Democrats to a 55-seat majority in the Senate, with Alaska’s Senate race yet to be called. His victory over Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican, marked a seismic political shift in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate 44 years ago and has not had a Black senator since the Reconstruction period.
Colom has been vocal in calling for Democrats to focus more on states like Mississippi, a view he emphasized again on Sunday.
“We need to put senators like myself in positions where we can deliver for the rural South, where we can be leaders in ways that show the voters in rural America that we care about them, the voters in the Deep South that we want them to be successful,” Colom said.
“And if we do that, I think we can have a competitive elections every cycle and put ourselves in positions where we can have a durable majority,” he continued.
In the same interview, Colom identified reshaping tariff policies as his top priority to reduce prices.
“We’ve got to fight for low tariffs to lower costs that helps our farmers, because they lost customers as a result of these tariffs, and we need to do everything in our power to help them get those customers back,” Colom said.
He also called for raising the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 per hour, and it has not been raised since 2009.
NBC News exit polls indicated that the cost of living was a top priority for voters. NBC’s exit polls showed that 89% of voters considered the cost of living “crucial” or a “major factor” in thinking about their vote for Congress. The same exit polls found that 66% of voters believed Trump’s tariff policies hurt the national economy.
Colom was also asked on “Meet the Press” about whether he would vote to restore nationwide rights to abortion. The Mississippi senator-elect has said he is “personally pro-life because I’m a Christian” and that he does not “believe in late-term abortions.” He also said he does not believe that victims of rape or incest should be “forced” to “have that child.”
“I’ll study what’s right for my values and for Mississippi and try to represent those values in D.C. to the best of my abilities,” he said.
One of the tasks remaining for Congress this year is for Democrats to select their party leadership. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., announced last week that he would challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for the Senate majority leader position.
Asked whom he planned to support, Colom said he was “in listening mode” and did not commit to either candidate.
“I don’t know either one of them that well, so I’m going to listen to what other people tell me about them, and I’m going to figure out what are the things that people are doing well in leadership, what are the things they’re not doing well, and find out how we can work together to achieve results,” Colom said.
