00:02Democratic candidate Scott Cologne has won the U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi after a prolonged ballot counting process,
00:09making him the first black senator from the southern state in more than 140 years.
00:16Cologne defeated Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith with a margin of less than 5,000 votes,
00:22adding to a decisive midterm rebuke of President Donald Trump, whose party suffered defeats in several Republican-controlled states.
00:29I pointed out that people were going to give me too much credit for it because it's not something that
00:38I did, y'all.
00:39It's something that we did. All I did was have the courage to imagine a night like this.
00:54I have the courage to believe in Mississippi. I have the courage to understand that we can show the country
01:02that Mississippi matters.
01:05Cologne's narrow victory is a seismic shift in Mississippi, which has been controlled mostly by white conservatives for generations,
01:12despite having the largest share of black residents of any U.S. state.
01:17Cologne said during the campaign that he would represent all of Mississippi, a state where racial divisions have longed to
01:23find its politics and society,
01:25and he repeated that pledge after his victory.
