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Local election officials on Thursday continued processing thousands of outstanding absentee and affidavit ballots as the nation watched to see who will win Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race.  

The razor-thin margin between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom has already shocked many across the nation, but it remained too close to call on Thursday. Colom led by 1,764 votes with nearly 1 million cast.

A likely legal fight over the count also continued brewing on Thursday.

Colom’s campaign said he is clearly on track to win, and the voting rights organization Fair Fight said the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic election attorneys from Elias Law Group have deployed hundreds of volunteers and local lawyers across all 82 counties to oversee the final rounds of counting. 

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

The National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a letter on Thursday to county election commissioners and circuit clerks in Mississippi, demanding they separate and preserve all affidavit ballots cast. 

“As the democratic process continues to play out, we are committed to ensuring that every single lawful ballot is accurately counted and the voices of all Mississippians are heard,” said NRSC Regional Press Secretary Samantha Cantrell. 

The letter demands that election officials preserve a wide range of records, pointing to future litigation.  

The state Republican Party was set to address reporters in a press conference in Jackson later on Thursday.

How many votes are left to count?

Secretary of State Michael Watson on Wednesday said that 3,600 outstanding mail-in absentee ballots could be processed, though realistically not all of these ballots will reach local election workers by the statutory Nov. 10 deadline. 

Between 14,000 and 18,000 affidavit ballots remain outstanding throughout the state, according to Lisa Ross, a local voting rights attorney who is leading the effort to monitor election officials processing the remaining ballots. 

Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Mike Hurst told reporters on Thursday afternoon that Republicans believe there could be as many 20,000 outstanding ballots, including mail-ins, absentees and affadavits. He said the election wasn’t over, and Republicans were deploying resources across the state.

Election attorneys, voting rights advocates and national reporters have descended on Mississippi over the past 48 hours, scrambling to make sense of what remaining ballots are out, when they would be counted and how Colom found himself in striking distance of pulling off a victory in a state that hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in decades.  

At a breakfast event in Jackson on Thursday morning, Colom greeted a throng of jubilant volunteers and said he had little doubt the race was breaking in his direction. 

“Anybody out there that does an analysis knows where this is going. The affidavit (vote) is always moving in Democratic favor in Mississippi,” Colom said. “You look at the ballots that are left, it’s going in our favor, absolutely.”

Spokespeople for Hyde-Smith’s campaign did not immediately offer a comment about where the number stood on Thursday. 

The Associated Press showed about 10% of the vote remained uncounted in Hinds County, the most populous area of the state and a Democratic stronghold. Election officials in Hinds County have said they expect the review of remaining ballots, most of which are absentee and affidavit ballots, to take days. 

Ballots also remained uncounted in areas along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and in the Jackson suburb of Rankin County, both areas Hyde-Smith won. 

Colom did not speculate how long it would take for the remaining ballots to be counted, but said he is confident “Mississippi has decided to go in a new direction.” 

“I’m proud of the lawyers that we’ve got, the organizers we have that are on the ground making sure the law is followed, and that you know we do what we can,” Colom said. “I’m very excited where we are.”  

Election lawyers descend on Mississippi

Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight’s CEO, said in a statement that “Mississippians turned out in historic numbers” and that the organization would work to “defend the will of the people.” 

“Right now, Scott Colom is ahead, and we are confident that when the votes are tallied, he will be Mississippi’s next U.S. Senator.”

Semafor congressional reporter Nicholas Wu reported on Thursday that the U.S. House Black Caucus’ political arm is “aggressively fundraising for recounts in Mississippi” and a congressional race in North Carolina. 

Mississippi has no automatic recount law. A recount would happen only if a court ordered it. For that to happen, a campaign or political party would have to file a lawsuit against a county or county election commission. 

A state judge would likely hear the case on an expedited basis, and the lower court’s decision would be appealable to the Mississippi Supreme Court. 

After election results are certified, campaigns can conduct ballot box examinations, which can be used as evidence in a lawsuit. The dispute over which affidavit ballots are accepted and rejected would likely be the subject of litigation. 

If a court fight ensued, it could be a disjointed, chaotic process. Mississippi law does not establish a system for challenging ballots on a statewide scale, only on a county-by-county basis. 

How Democrat Colom pulled ahead of a GOP senator

The razor-thin margin has national pundits wondering how a Democrat is on the cusp of managing a stunning upset in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat in over four decades or elected a Black person to the chamber since Reconstruction. 

Colom managed to crack the GOP’s iron grip on the state by turning out large numbers of Black voters, flipping several crucial swing counties blue and convincing Republicans to cross over and vote for him. 

The most surprising feat was Colom winning DeSoto County, a reliably Republican stronghold in a Memphis suburb, by seven percentage points, something Democrats would have viewed as unthinkable last year. 

In 2020, Hyde-Smith won the county with 56% of the vote, while Democrat Mike Espy got 40%. Now Colom has flipped the script and carried the county by 51%, while Hyde-Smith trails at 45%. 

Colom also tempered his losses in Harrison County, a populous coast county that has swamped statewide Democratic candidates over the last decade and become a red firewall for the state GOP. 

In 2020, Hyde-Smith trounced Espy in Harrison County by 17 percentage points. This year, only four percentage points separate Hyde-Smith and Colom. 

The Democratic nominee also managed to flip Lafayette and Madison counties, two majority-white, affluent areas of the state that have become swing areas in recent elections. Brandon Presley, the Democratic nominee for governor in 2023, lost those two areas, but Colom narrowly won them 

Colom said he dramatically overperformed a “generic Democrat” in counties across the state and believed Hyde-Smith’s negative ads had backfired because he visited so many voters in person. 

A federal judge sentenced former Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens to 41 months and former Jackson City Councilmember Aaron Banks to 45 months on Thursday, nearly two years to the day after federal prosecutors brought bribery charges against the two and Jackson’s mayor at the time, Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

As he handed down Owens’ sentence, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III described his decision as “somber” but said Owens still had a bright future. 

“I actually think the future you have in front of you is better than the one that you were going down,” said the judge, who also ordered Owens to pay a $100,000 fine.

Jordan called Owens the “ringleader” of a bribery scheme spawned by an undercover FBI operation in Jackson in 2023.

Owens told the judge he had tarnished his family name. 

“When a case says ‘United States versus Jody Owens,’ what I want you to know is my son is Jody Owens, my father is Jody Owens, my great-grandfather is Jody Moncure,” he said. 

Owens apologized to his parents, his wife, his children, his former employees in the Hinds DA’s office and to the court. He did not offer an apology to the people of Hinds County. 

As the president of the Jackson City Council, Banks said he had a responsibility to protect the public trust. 

“The people of Jackson deserved better from me,” he said. 

Other Jacksonians ensnared in the case have yet to be sentenced, including former Jackson City Councilmember Angelique Lee and Owens’ cousin, Sherik “Marve” Smith.

The proceedings began with lengthy arguments from Lumumba and Banks over their presentencing reports, which judges use to help determine what punishment a defendant gets.

Owens, Banks, Lumumba and their attorneys sat together on the right side of the courtroom. The gallery was sparse, and Lumumba’s supporters left shortly after the judge took the former mayor’s objections to the presentencing report.

Lumumba, who attended Thursday’s hearing, contested the government’s recommended prison time, which Jordan will consider when he sentences the former mayor on Nov. 20. The judge foreshadowed that hearing when he said on Thursday that Lumumba could face between 37 and 46 months in prison.

Federal prosecutors indicted Owens, Lumumba and Banks on Nov. 7, 2024, after years of investigating suspected wrongdoing in Jackson. Mississippi Today previously reported that the capital city caught the attention of federal authorities during a yearslong conflict between Lumumba and the Jackson City Council over the selection of a garbage collection vendor. 

No charges ever arose from that matter. Instead, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a sting operation in 2023 and deployed two undercover FBI agents to pose as out-of-state real estate developers seeking to build a convention center hotel in downtown Jackson. 

Owens wound up going into business with them, serving as an intermediary to Lumumba, Banks and other Jackson officials, according to the federal indictment. 

The DA was a registered agent for the developers’ company in Mississippi, organized a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, fundraiser for Lumumba on their behalf, and used his campaign account to pay off Lee’s campaign debt to a local printing company, allegedly in exchange for her future vote.

Owens also gave Banks a $10,000 bribe and hired Banks’ daughter for an internship at the DA’s office that prosecutors asserted was funded by the purported developers.

The three former Jackson officials and a federal prosecutor appeared at times to relitigate the nature of the scheme. 

As Jordan evaluated Lumumba’s objections, the judge noted the mayor had taken a $50,000 bribe from Owens in exchange for moving up the city’s bid deadline. 

“The ask was to move the date of the RFQ,” Jordan said, referring to so-called requests for quotations, which is part of the project bidding process. 

Not so, responded Dave Fulcher, the federal prosecutor leading the case. 

“That is a strawman that has been set up by Lumumba’s counsel,” he said. “The bribery scheme was not, ‘We need him to move the RFQ.’ The bribery scheme was, ‘We need him involved.’” 

Owens was elected district attorney in 2019. His family has helped develop parts of southern Hinds County. 

Gary Kohlman, an out-of-state attorney representing Owens, called the portrayal of Owens in the presentencing report “unsettling” and asked the judge to consider that Owens was a complex person as evidenced by the dozens of supportive letters written by his family and friends. 

“It can’t be, in other words, that he led some complete double life for 40-something years doing all the work he did,” Kohlman said. 

“I totally accept that and agree,” Jordan responded. “Almost every defendant that comes in here, I can find something good in them.” 

But the judge noted that Owens discussed a bribery scheme with the faux developers the very first time he met them in person. 

“This happened before any jets, before any liquor was bought or any other entertainment was provided,” the judge said. “And during this meeting, he never said, ‘This was wrong, we can’t do this, I’m the DA.’ But he did tell the agents ‘if you want it, it’s yours.’” 

Banks, who was deemed indigent by the federal judge, represented Ward 6 in south Jackson from 2017 to 2025. A political organizer, he started working for the city during Lumumba’s father’s mayoral administration in 2013.

In the months before being drawn into the scheme, Banks told the judge, he was in the throes of “a season of personal desperation.” 

He said he had gone into debt assisting residents during the Jackson water crisis in 2022 and was stressed about raising money to run for mayor. 

“He was blindly motivated by his desire to become mayor of Jackson and unseat Lumumba,” said his court-appointed attorney, Carlos Tanner. “And that’s incredibly unfortunate.”

Banks and some of his family members cried as he walked out of the courtroom. He received a longer sentence than Owens in part because he had previously been convicted of two DUIs. He must also pay a $15,000 fine.

Tanner argued this was unfair, asserting that Banks played a smaller role in the bribery scheme than other participants, some of whom he asserted have not faced criminal prosecution. 

“The number of crimes that were committed in this episode are astounding,” he said.

Jordan said it would be hard to overstate the extent of the corruption in this case but that he would spare the public the most salacious details.

Before sentencing Banks, the judge suggested broader wrongdoing that might not yet be public. He referred to an incident, detailed in a presentencing report, in which Banks apparently promised to help an unknown person with city business if sent money by CashApp.

“I don’t think this is a one-time event based on what I’ve seen and read,” he said.

UPDATE, 11/5/2026: Added more photos, information about sentencing of Jackson City Councilmember Aaron Banks and more details from court hearing.

Tens of thousands of Mississippians covered by Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance will face higher premiums and fewer options during this year’s open enrollment period, experts say. 

This is the second consecutive year of double-digit premium increases nationally. The average benchmark premium will rise 23% in Mississippi in 2027, according to KFF data. Last year the state saw a 37% increase in the average premium. 

Many marketplace customers are eligible for income-based subsidies that are expected to help shield them from premium increases. In 2027, the income range for a single person to qualify is roughly $16,000 to $64,000 annually. 

But even those that qualify already face significant premium increases after enhanced subsidies that made insurance more affordable for more than 22 million Americans expired in December 2025. A large share of Mississippians switched to plans with higher out-of-pocket-costs last year after those subsidies expired. 

“It’s the same story we had last year,” said Michael Minor, who leads the Hernando-based Get Covered Mississippi, a statewide, faith-based coalition that helps connect Mississippians to health insurance options. “People are already struggling.”

Open enrollment began Sunday and will continue through Jan. 15. 

Nationally, average premiums will increase 13%. Health insurance plans across the board are seeing rates rise due to inflation and increasing healthcare costs, said Matthew McGough, a policy analyst at KFF. 

Marketplace premium costs are also affected by the downstream effects of the expiration of subsidies that made health insurance more affordable for customers, McGough said. Because more enrollees, and especially healthier people, dropped their coverage, the remaining group of people is smaller, sicker and more costly to insure. 

McGough said he expects marketplace enrollment to continue to decline into 2027. 

“To what extent, I think that remains to be seen,” he said. 

Mississippians will also see fewer options when they shop for plans. Two insurers previously offering plans on the state’s marketplace will not offer plans in 2027: Cigna Healthcare and Molina Healthcare. Three plans, UnitedHealthcare, Oscar Health and Ambetter from Magnolia Health, will continue offering coverage. 

The more limited options for coverage comes at the same time as a temporary freeze on new broker registrations as a part of a federal anti-fraud crackdown and decreased funding for navigators who provide assistance to people shopping for and enrolling in health coverage through the marketplace.

“Together, consumers are potentially going to have less choice and a more difficult time finding avenues to sign up,” McGough said.

Some lawfully present immigrants will lose eligibility for federal financial assistance for marketplace plans in 2027, including refugees and asylees without a green card and people on work visas, among others. Others, including lawful permanent residents, or “green card” holders, will still be eligible for subsidies. 

Declining marketplace enrollment in Mississippi

When Congress first authorized expanded subsidies for marketplace plans in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mississippi was one of the states that benefitted the most from the increased federal support, in part because state lawmakers, for over a decade, have chosen not to expand Medicaid. 

Marketplace enrollment peaked in 2025 with over 300,000 people enrolled in plans statewide. 

With the enhanced subsidies, marketplace premiums for people renewing their coverage in 2026 more than doubled on average, according to KFF. Mississippi saw one of the steepest declines in coverage. 

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said enrollments have since dropped by half. He said as of Oct. 28, enrollments fell to 135,000 people among the three insurers that will continue to offer plans next year. He said the two plans leaving the marketplace next year have few remaining beneficiaries.

Mississippi’s declining marketplace rolls may also have been impacted by federal efforts to eliminate fraud. 

The Trump administration in September cancelled 315,000 “unauthorized” policies covering more than 760,000 people nationwide, claiming fraud and improper enrollment. A small number of people were errantly disenrolled and later reinstated. 

Marketplace insurers reported that over 2,500 members were disenrolled in Mississippi, said Beth Reiss, communications director for the Mississippi Insurance Department.

Efforts to revoke the charter of a Canton school are on pause for at least a month.

On Monday, Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Tametrice Hodges-Linzey granted SR1 College Preparatory and STEM Academy a temporary restraining order against the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board. School leadership requested the order on Oct. 30, four days after the board voted to revoke its charter for severe financial mismanagement.

This is the first time the state is revoking a school’s charter — and navigating an appeal of that decision — since 2013, when Mississippi’s charter school law went into effect.

SR1 school leadership is appealing the board’s decision and filed its restraining order request in Hinds County chancery court because the authorizer board is based in Jackson. Jamie Travis, the school’s attorney, argued in the recent court filing that authorizer board staff should not be allowed to start the process of revoking the school’s charter while an appeal is pending. 

The board voted on Oct. 26 to revoke the school’s charter. The authorizer board mandated that the school cease operations by the end of the year. 

Read more: Dysfunction put Canton school’s charter at risk

Travis contended in the Oct. 30 court filing that authorizer board members did not adequately prove mismanagement. He said the board was unwilling to wait on the school’s latest audit, which came out Oct. 7. Instead, the board held a hearing in May to determine whether to revoke the school’s charter. The audit lacked serious findings and would clear up concerns about the schools’ finances, Travis said. Travis also argued that the authorizer board did not provide enough technical support to charter school leaders.

Travis also argued in the court filings that the authorizer board is driving away students and staff before an appeal can be heard. He described an Oct. 28 incident as an example of interference by the board. 

That day, Lisa Karmacharya, the authorizer board’s executive director, showed up at the school during an internal staff meeting. Tamu Green, the school’s chief executive officer, opened the door for Karmacharya, but she had not been invited, Travis said. 

Authorizer board policy mandates close-out procedures start within a day of the vote to revoke a school’s charter, and board staff must hold meetings to close out school finances and provide information to parents and staff. State law and agency policy also allows authorizer board staff to conduct on-site inspections of schools. In an interview Wednesday with Mississippi Today, Travis disputed whether state law supports unannounced on-site visits.

School officials must also secure financial records and schedule time for school finance team members and charter authorizer board staff to review the closed-out records. There must be a separate meeting between staff of the authorizer board and school to discuss the details of the school’s operating status.

School officials must also provide contact information for parents and staff so the authorizer board can notify them about the school’s operating status. Board policy requires notifying parents and staff within five and 10 days, respectively. However, SR1 charter school officials did not provide the necessary contact information by the agency’s deadline, according to Karmacharya. 

Karmacharya told Mississippi Today on Wednesday she felt it was important that school staff gain clarity about the authorizer board’s decision to revoke the school’s charter.

Dorlisa Hutton, the school’s vice president, did not respond to a request for comment. She hung up the phone when Mississippi Today contacted her Wednesday. Green did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hodges-Linzey will need to rule on whether to overturn the authorizer board’s decision to revoke the school’s charter.

Appeals of agency decisions made after administrative hearings, or judicial reviews, are limited to certain criteria in Mississippi. Travis, on behalf of SR1 CPSA, must prove that the authorizer board’s decision was arbitrary, capricious, unsupported by fact, exceeded the agency’s authority or violated the school’s constitutional rights.

Lawmakers on Wednesday considered steps to further restrict kratom, a debate reignited by the recent deaths of two University of Mississippi students who were found near suspected kratom derivatives.

Members of the House Drug Policy Committee, led by Rep. Beth Waldo, a Republican from Pontotoc, heard testimony from state health officials, law enforcement officers and doctors as well as Mississippians who have used kratom. Several health and law enforcement officials advised legislators to classify all forms of kratom and its synthetic derivatives as controlled substances. 

In doing so, they echoed the mother of Robert Strang, one of the two University of Mississippi students who died in September. She blamed her son’s death on failed enforcement of federal drug regulations and implored lawmakers to ban the substances. 

“My position is clear. All kratom products need to be banned,” Rebecca Strang of Atlanta told lawmakers Wednesday. 

Over 5 million Americans have used a kratom product in their lifetime, according to a recent study from the Journal of Addiction Medicine. Derived from a tropical evergreen tree native to Southeast Asia, kratom leaf herbal products and concentrated or synthetic kratom-derived products are widely sold in gas stations and tobacco or vape shops.

Critics of kratom argue that it is a highly addictive and dangerous drug that produces stimulant- and opioid-like effects, and that synthetic kratom products are difficult to regulate. But advocates argue it can be an effective tool for treating opioid use disorder, chronic pain and depression.

In August, the Department of Justice announced the temporary emergency scheduling of some potent kratom-related compounds. The action did not apply to traditional botanical kratom. 

As of January, 30 states had laws regulating kratom or its components. Six states, including Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana, classify the substance’s primary chemical compounds as controlled substances, resulting in kratom products being banned. 

More than 30 counties and cities in Mississippi have restricted or banned the product.

Mississippi restricted kratom purchases to people ages 21 and older and prohibited sales for potent kratom extracts in 2025. The bill, authored by Rep. Lee Yancey, a Republican from Brandon, and signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves, instituted fines for people under 21 who buy or possess kratom and retailers that sell it to them.

But several speakers on Wednesday told House members the law did not go far enough to protect the public. 

Oxford Police Chief Jeff McCutchen, who also serves as the president of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, said the law was not sufficient because it sets low fines — up to $1,000 for selling a restricted product — and requires law enforcement officers to test products for compliance.

“The law is set up for us to fail,” McCutchen said. 

Col. Phillip Pope, the director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, agreed, adding that to enforce the law, officials must buy the products from gas stations and send them to laboratories for testing using taxpayer dollars. 

State health officials, including State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney, who has a subspecialty board certification in addiction medicine, and Dr. Tom Recore, the Department of Mental Health’s medical director, have recommended scheduling kratom as a controlled substance. 

Philip Chamblee, the executive director of the Mississippi Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores Association, said the organization’s board voted unanimously last week to support a statewide ban on the sale of all kratom products. 

Some speakers argued that lawmakers should consider the distinction between natural forms of kratom and more potent synthetic derivatives. 

Sheldon Bradshaw, an attorney representing Botanicals for Better Health and Wellness and former chief counsel for the Food and Drug Administration, said natural forms of kratom have been unfairly associated with the University of Mississippi student deaths. 

He said synthetic kratom derivatives often market themselves to suggest they are natural products. 

“The snake oil salesmen want people to believe they’re kratom, but they’re not kratom,” Bradshaw said. 

During the hearing, Sherry Owings, 63, of Mississippi, said she began using kratom after struggling with chronic pain and the side effects of prescription medications. She said kratom has improved her quality of life. 

“I don’t want to go backwards,” she said, advocating regulation and transparency about the ingredients in kratom but urging lawmakers not to restrict natural forms of the substance.  

Officials said more Mississippians are seeking help for kratom addiction.

Wendy Bailey, the executive director of the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, said the agency’s helpline has received a sharp increase in calls over the last two months from callers experiencing addiction to kratom.

Among those calls, she described one man struggling to manage withdrawal symptoms and a nurse who began taking kratom for fatigue before losing her job due to her addiction. 

“I think we have the opportunity to approach this from a public policy perspective,” Bailey said.

Five Black governors will serve at the same time for the first time in America’s history. Hours after Black governors-elect on opposite sides of the political spectrum became firsts, two more wins followed, and an incumbent won reelection. 

Georgia Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms became the first Black woman elected governor in American history. Republican Byron Donalds has become Florida’s first Black governor in his state. Democrats David Crowley in Wisconsin and Aaron Ford became the first Black governors of their states. And Wes Moore easily won a second term as Maryland’s governor. 

Before Tuesday night, only three Black candidates had been elected governor – and they’d all been Black men and Democrats. 

This year’s gubernatorial pool was politically diverse, and all the candidates wanted the focus to be on their policies, not their identities, as they made history.

Incumbent Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who was reelected Tuesday, joined the ranks of Black governors in 2022, following in the footsteps of Virginia’s Doug Wilder and Massachusetts’ Deval Patrick. Wilder was elected Virginia’s first Black governor in 1989. Patrick was elected in Massachusetts in 2006 and reelected in 2010.  

Earlier this year in response to the redistricting battles across the country, Moore told Capital B, “It’s the greatest form of political redlining we’ve seen in generations, where we are intentionally trying to disenfranchise Black voters and trying to minimize Black leadership in a way that frankly we have not seen since Reconstruction.”

After Democrats made history in several states and retook Congress, from the Mid-Atlantic to the South to even the West Coast, five of the eight Black gubernatorial candidates will head to the governor’s mansion in 2027.

Republicans

Byron Donalds in Florida

U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds was elected Tuesday to replace outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“We have won a massive victory,” Donalds told supporters at an election night event after The Associated Press called the race in the GOP primary in August.

Donalds defeated David Jolly, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat. The Brooklyn, New York, native has represented Florida’s 19th District in the state’s southwest since 2021. 

Florida A&M students grilled the gubernatorial candidate during a town hall meeting. He has referenced his time at the HBCU from 1996 to 1999, even though he didn’t graduate from the school. Donald’s campaign focused on the economy, healthcare, law and order, education and affordability.

Lisa Demuth in Minnesota

Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar defeated Republican state House Speaker Demuth in a race shaped by a widespread fraud scandal in state government, according to The Associated Press. Demuth was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2018. It was the first all-woman major-party race for governor in Minnesota history. In September, Demuth joined a growing number of Republican candidates calling an end to the war in Iran. 

Demuth’s campaign has focused on education, affordability, public safety and fraud prevention. Despite frequent portrayals of Minnesota as unique or among the worst in the nation at preventing fraud from government programs in recent years, data shows otherwise.

John James in Michigan

The Republican congressman had called himself the “only candidate for governor who is a true outsider to Lansing,” the state’s capital city. Early Wednesday, AP projected he’d been defeated by Democrat Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state.

James became the first Black Republican elected to Congress when he was elected to represent the state’s 10th Congressional District in 2022. He voted to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and anti-abortion legislation. He’s also co-sponsored bipartisan legislation that supports the Great Lakes and nuclear prevention. James continues to face ethical complaints from constituents who allege he misused taxpayer money to fund his gubernatorial campaign. In 2026 the claims were dismissed, finding “no reasonable justification.”

Democrats

Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia

The former Atlanta mayor defeated wealthy Republican businessman Rick Jackson on Tuesday. A recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll had Jackson and Bottoms in a statistical dead heat. Bottoms was the second Black woman in state history to run for governor on a major party ticket. Stacey Abrams became the first in 2018 when she launched the first of her two historic bids. 

In recent ads from Jackson’s campaign, Bottoms has been accused of abandoning Atlanta, but she served her full term and chose not to seek a second term to focus on her family. She campaigned on education, housing, healthcare, and helping farmers and small businesses.

David Crowley in Wisconsin

Democrat Crowley defeated Republican Congressman Tom Tiffany, according to AP. Crowley’s campaign focused on “lowering costs for working families” and bringing more jobs to Wisconsin. The county executive’s win over Trump loyalist Tiffany marks the first time in Wisconsin’s 178-year history that Democrats will hold the governor’s office for more than eight consecutive years. 

“Because of you all, a boy facing eviction will now live in the governor’s mansion,” Crowley told cheering supporters in Milwaukee, just a couple of miles from where he grew up.

Aaron Ford in Nevada

The Democratic attorney general defeated Republican incumbent Joe Lombardo in the key battleground state. Nevada will play a critical role in the next presidential election.

Ford has served as the state’s top prosecutor since 2019. Throughout his campaign, he described growing up in poverty and going to school hungry. He explained how he became a math teacher before earning his law degree, and highlighted efforts to fight the Trump administration.

“This campaign didn’t happen by accident,” Ford said at a watch party on Tuesday, AP reported. “It happened because of faith, because of family, because of hard work, and because the people of Nevada decided that our best days are still ahead of us.”

Jermaine Johnson in South Carolina

Johnson, a representative in the South Carolina House, was defeated by Republican Alan Wilson, who is the state’s attorney general.

His campaign has focused on his work advocating for better infrastructure, broadband access, and medical access for rural communities, among other issues.

Wes Moore in Maryland

The incumbent won a second term. Most polls showed him with a considerable lead over Republican Dan Cox. Cox had been critical of Moore’s support for changing the state constitution, which currently requires congressional districts to be contiguous and follow natural boundaries.

“This is outrageous. This is not democracy. Marylanders should not surrender their protection of community boundaries under our own state constitution,” Cox said. 

In an interview with Capital B about redistricting earlier this year, Moore said, “I will never move on from fighting for our democracy, and it is something that I know is going to be a long-term fight.”

Capital B is a local and national nonprofit news organization that produces in-depth journalism on topics of crucial importance to Black people across the country, such as politics, health, criminal justice, the environment, and rural issues. 

WASHINGTON — Just a handful of races for Senate and governor have not yet been called by The Associated Press as of noon Eastern time on Wednesday.

The narrow margins come as Democrats flipped seats in places Republicans comfortably won two years ago, securing control of both chambers of Congress.

In the House, 59 races where party control of the seat is at stake have yet to be called.

The AP does not make projections and will only declare a winner when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap.

In Mississippi’s Senate race, Democrat Scott Colom has a lead of few dozen votes over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Mississippi does not have an automatic recount process, but a challenger can seek a court order for one.

LIVE: 2026 Mississippi election results

The Associated Press has also not called Alaska’s Senate contest between incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan and Democrat Mary Peltola, who has a 626-vote lead over Sullivan with an estimated 74% of votes counted. Under Alaska law, if neither candidate gets more than 50% of the vote then it goes to ranked-choice tabulation.

Also in Alaska, Democrat Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins has a 20 percentage point lead over Republican Bernadette Wilson in Alaska’s governor’s race. Kreiss-Tomkins had 49.2% of the vote with an estimated 74% of the ballots counted.

Like the Senate contest, the governor’s election advances to another round if no candidate gets more than 50% of the votes.

In Kansas, Democrat Cindy Holscher has less than a percentage point lead over Republican Ty Masterson in the Kansas governor’s race. Holscher’s 5,557 vote lead with an estimated 98% of votes counted comes after Democrat Adam Hamilton became the first member of his party to win a Senate seat in nearly a century.

Both Holscher and Masterson serve in the state Senate, where the Republican serves as its president.

Both Mississippi Senate candidates on Wednesday vowed to have people closely monitor final vote counting after neither was declared a victor on Election Day.

Legal challenges are possible, which would put Mississippi’s courts into uncharted territory and prolong a process that could take more than a week even without litigation to determine a winner.

2026 Mississippi midterm election results

And all eyes are on Mississippi to see if Democrat Scott Colom will pull off an historic upset over Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, and have the Magnolia State join a blue wave that swept out Republicans nationwide on Tuesday.

By Wednesday afternoon, Colom, a Democratic district attorney in north Mississippi, led incumbent Hyde-Smith, a cattle farmer from Brookhaven, by fewer than 100 votes in incomplete and unofficial results.

Many pundits are expecting a fierce legal battle over the final Mississippi vote count, whichever way it breaks. But this would be an unprecedented challenge. Mississippi has no automatic recount law or process for a candidate to request one. A recount would happen only if a court ordered it. 

But the gap in the law goes further than recounts. State law contains no mechanism for contesting a U.S. Senate general election. The election code allows challenges to primary elections, including Senate primaries, but speaks only to countywide contests for general elections.

Colom said at a press conference Wednesday morning that his campaign had deployed attorneys across the state to monitor local election officials counting the remaining ballots and processing affidavit and absentee ballots that could arrive over the next week. 

“We will protect the process of this election,” Colom said. “We will protect the integrity of this election.” 

Ballots remained uncounted in Hinds County, the most populous area of the state and a Democratic stronghold, and in counties along the Coast where Hyde-Smith has maintained an edge. Thousands of affidavit and mail-in ballots also remain to be counted.

Secretary of State Michael Watson said in a statement that there are around 3,600 outstanding mail-in absentee ballots that could be processed over the next five business days and an unknown number of affidavit ballots.

An affidavit ballot is Mississippi’s version of a provisional ballot, which is a vote cast by someone whose eligibility can’t be confirmed at the polls, such as when they lack photo ID or don’t appear on the voter rolls. These are set aside and counted only after election officials verify the voter’s eligibility.

Kelcy Higgins, a Mississippi-based political operative and community organizer and director of the Magnolia Project, called for volunteers to help with Election Day fallout.

“The work of the 2026 election is not over,” Higgins said. “Affidavit ballots remain to be reviewed and counted across Mississippi’s precincts, and we must ensure that every eligible vote is properly counted. Mississippi needs election protection volunteers now to help protect the process and make sure every eligible vote is counted and no voter’s voice is left out.”

Marc Elias, a prominent longtime Democratic election lawyer, also declared on Wednesday morning that he was “leading the legal effort” to ensure Colom would emerge victorious from the legal fight.  

It could be a week before a winner is declared. State law allows for local election workers to receive and count mail-in absentee ballots until Nov. 10, as long as the ballots were postmarked by Election Day. 

Voters also have until Nov. 10 to return to their local election officials to complete casting an affidavit ballot, which is a vote cast by someone whose eligibility can’t be confirmed at the polls because they lack photo ID or don’t appear on the voter rolls. 

At a watch party on Tuesday evening, Hyde-Smith had all but declared victory.

“I assure you I will continue to be your U.S. senator.”

That was before Colom took a late-night lead. 

By late morning on Wednesday, shortly after Colom addressed reporters, her campaign manager Jake Monssen issued a statement thanking supporters and pointing out that thousands of ballots remained uncounted. 

“With the vast majority of Election Day ballots reported, the margin is measured in just dozens of votes,” Monssen said. “We have thousands of outstanding ballots, including affidavit and absentee ballots, which still must be processed and verified under Mississippi law. Our campaign is closely monitoring the remaining count. We remain confident that when every legally cast vote is fully and accurately counted, Mississippians will have reelected Cindy Hyde-Smith.”

Colom has not declared victory, but he said he believes the numbers show he’s on a path to winning. He also responded to Hyde-Smith’s near declaration of victory the evening before.

“Bless her heart,” Colom said.  

When asked if he was worried about Hyde-Smith and the GOP launching election lawsuits, Colom said he hopes that she “would understand the people of Mississippi have spoken.”  

“We have to accept the will of the voters,” Colom said. “It’s very clear that we’re going in a new direction. We’re prepared to litigate, though. We were prepared for this for months. We have an army of lawyers.”

The narrow margin in and of itself reflected what some onlookers called a “bluenami,” with Democrats notching stunning victories in Republican strongholds such as South Carolina and Texas.

Most forecasters had rated the Mississippi Senate race as safely Republican. But as results came in, it became clear the race would be anything but safe for the GOP, with Colom overperforming in many counties compared to Democrats in other recent races. 

A trove of national Democrats visited the state to stump for Colom in hopes that Mississippi could flip blue for the first time in over four decades. These included former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigeig and around a dozen U.S. senators. 

U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington was at Colom’s election night party and said she had been an early believer in Colom’s campaign. 

“He has focused this race on the things that people in Mississippi need to be successful,” Cantwell said. “Access to health care, affordable products like groceries and fuel. And he’s talked about Mississippi mattering on a larger scale. I’m excited for him.” 

Democrats have been dreaming of a political upset in Mississippi for years and seemed almost in disbelief at Colom’s watch party at the early election returns.

After having narrowly lost the governor’s race in 2019 and 2023, several Mississippi Democrats thought they would have a repeat of those races. But after Colom led in several bellwether areas like DeSoto, Lafayette and Madison counties, the room started to buzz. 

Wil Colom, Scott Colom’s father, approached Charles Taylor, the Mississippi NAACP chapter president, with a smile on his face and asked if he thought his son was trending in the right direction. 

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Taylor told the elder Colom with a grin. 

Less than six months before a scheduled retrial, attorneys for a north Mississippi man acquitted by a judge in 2023 for stabbing a customer in the neck at a New Albany restaurant are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to look at double jeopardy issues in the case. 

Attorneys for Lane Mitchell argue that another trial for attempted first-degree murder would violate the Fifth Amendment clause protecting defendants from being tried twice for the same crime. 

The legal team argues that Mitchell’s case is the proper vehicle for the high court to provide clarification and uniformity about a fundamental tenet of constitutional law. The Mississippi Court of Appeals issued a 5-4 ruling in July 2025 allowing Mitchell to be retried, which also found the acquittal was not based on the evidence.

“Clarification on this question is necessary to ensure that the constitutional finality of an acquittal does not vary with the vocabulary of the trial judge or the characterization supplied by a reviewing state court,” Mitchell’s attorneys wrote in the 93-page petition.  

The state waived its right to respond to Mitchell’s petition. 

The Supreme Court justices are set to consider Mitchell’s case at a Nov. 13 conference, a private meeting in which they vote whether to take on a case for review. Only a small fraction of certiorari writs are accepted by the court. 

Mitchell is set to be retried in March in Union County Circuit Court.

His attorneys ask whether the double jeopardy clause permits a second trial after the following circumstances unfolded during Mitchell’s trial:

• A jury was sworn in.
• Both sides rested their case.
• The trial judge entered a judgment of acquittal based on constitutional violations determined by facts established at trial. 
• The trial judge didn’t separately state the prosecution’s evidence was legally insufficient.

The victim, Tennessee resident Russell Rogers, was not present at trial. The week leading up to trial, attorneys from the defense and prosecution sent subpoenas to Rogers to come to court. 

Rogers’ father, who was appointed as his conservator after the stabbing, obtained an order from the Tennessee probate court to block the defense’s subpoena, stating that Rogers’ mental health from the attack made him incapable of testifying. 

 In court records, the defense team and Union County Circuit Judge Kent Smith said Rogers “appear(ed) to be intentionally unavailable” to testify at trial because of the conservator, who the court deemed part of the prosecution. 

The prosecution proceeded with the belief that Rogers would testify, even though he did not. Mitchell testified in his defense, and both sides rested. 

Before the case went to the jury for deliberation, Smith removed the case from the group, issuing an acquittal and dismissing the charge against Mitchell. The judge cited violations of his constitutional rights, including the Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment right to confront an accuser: Rogers.  

“This procedural posture matters,” Mitchell’s attorneys wrote in the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The attorneys argue also that the Mississippi Court of Appeals decision conflicts with how the U.S. Supreme Court, constitutional text, history and tradition consider acquittals final. 

After Smith dismissed Mitchell’s charge, prosecutors appealed. Before trial, the Mississippi attorney general’s office appointed prosecutors because the local district attorney recused himself. Those prosecutors argued that Mitchell’s acquittal would set a precedent of dismissing “every criminal cause when a recalcitrant victim refuses to appear at trial.”

The Mississippi Court of Appeals considered the trial court’s ruling a dismissal based on violation of the compulsory process rather than an acquittal that determined guilt or innocence, which got around double jeopardy concerns. A slim majority said the state had the right to appeal and Smith was incorrect to dismiss the charge, leading the court to reverse the acquittal and return the case to Union County for a new trial. 

From that ruling, Mitchell appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing the state couldn’t appeal and retrial would violate double jeopardy protections. The court initially agreed to review the appeal, but this year the justices dismissed that review.

The case dates back to a Feb. 9, 2019, stabbing at the Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurant in New Albany. 

Rogers, a regular customer of the restaurant, had been there for several hours when then-18 year-old Mitchell arrived and joined his parents and their friends in the bar area. Witnesses testified about Rogers’ behavior earlier in the day and how he seemed to make a young waitress feel uncomfortable. 

Video of the incident presented in court and included in court records shows Mitchell taking a knife from the bar and holding it behind his back as Rogers talked to a waitress. Mitchell’s father, who worked at the restaurant, talked with Rogers, who moved toward him. That prompted Mitchell to approach Rogers from behind and stab him in the neck three times. 

Mitchell testified at trial and argued in court filings that he believed Rogers had a gun and was going to harm his father. A gun was not found in Rogers’ possession.

Rogers’ injuries nearly killed him and resulted in a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and mental issues, which months later led to the appointment of a conservator, his father Bob Rogers. 

A civil lawsuit filed in 2020 led to years of litigation revolving around access to Rogers’ medical records related to the stabbing that were contained in the lawsuit. The lawsuit was settled the same year and a protective order was issued, directing confidential information and copies to be returned or destroyed. 

In the upcoming 2027 session, the Mississippi Legislature will have an additional $266 million to spend, an increase of 3.5% from last year’s estimate partially driven by changes in tax collections, wage growth and inflation.

Wednesday’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee meeting was just the latest step in the state budget process. The committee, which consists of state House and Senate members, and Gov. Tate Reeves adopted a revenue estimate of $7.8 billion for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1. The bulk of the money comes from state taxes, such as sales and income taxes. 

The revenue estimate, presented by Corey Miller, the state economist, is based on tax collections to date and state and national economic conditions. The estimate may be adjusted based on new data. Miller said the growth is good, given the inflation rate, which is about 3.4% this year.

Mississippi takes a conservative approach when it comes to budget estimates and in recent years has collected more than it estimated. 

Ahead of the upcoming session, the Legislature and the governor will each develop a proposed budget based on the revenue estimate for how to divide the money between state agencies. The Legislature will then pass a final budget during the session. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the state saw an increase in actual revenue collections of about 24% from 2020 to 2023. However, over the last few years revenue collections have barely changed, hovering around $7.6 billion, even as many agencies are requesting more funds.The approximately $5.65 billion collected in 2017 adjusted for inflation would be worth about $7.68 billion in 2026 dollars – a little more than last fiscal year’s revenue estimate of $7.53 billion.

The Legislature may need the additional revenue projected to be collected to offset budget pressures during the 2027 legislative session, which begins in January. The Division of Medicaid requested around $179 million more than last year, about a 15% increase year over year as it faces a budget deficit. The Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, which governs the state’s public universities, asked for an additional $93 million, although lawmakers discussed keeping the funding level at a recent budget meeting.

State revenue represents a portion of the state’s overall budget, which was about $28 billion last year. Mississippi is consistently one of the top 10 states most reliant on federal funding. Last year, over 40% of the state’s budget came from the federal government.

Miller said the revenue estimate was driven by expected growth in sales, corporate income and use tax revenues, as well as a slower than expected rate of decline in income tax collections. Historically, close to 70% of the state’s revenue comes from sales and income taxes. 

Sales taxes generate the most revenue for the state and are expected to make up around 40% of all state revenue this year. The state expects to collect more in sales taxes next year due to inflation – higher prices means the state collects more in sales taxes and continued wage growth. 

Personal income in Mississippi has grown by around 5% annually for the past three years, with a projected average of about a 3.8% annual increase over the next three years. 

This wage growth and larger number of people working in the state have resulted in a slower than expected decline in income tax revenue. In 2025, Mississippi voted to gradually eliminate the income tax, which used to make up about a third of the state’s revenue. Gov. Tate Reeves cautioned that this trend will not continue but remained optimistic about the state’s financial future.

“As the individual income tax rate continues to decline, the total dollars collected in income revenue, at some point we’ll roll over and we will start seeing declines there. But the good news is we were $5.8 billion total revenue seven years ago, we’re $7.8 billion in total revenue now,” Reeves said.

Reeves said that, by allowing more people to “keep more of their own money,” the state’s economy has grown resulting in more jobs and higher wages.

“I think Mississippi’s future is bright, and I think we can continue this economic growth,” Reeves said.