Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Scott Colom continued to express confidence Thursday morning during a breakfast appearance at Brent’s Drugs in Jackson, Mississippi. The Associated Press reports Colom’s lead over incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde Smith stands at 1,138 votes. Decision Desk HQ reports a bigger lead of 1,818 votes.

“People across the country are going be surprised, but I’m not going to be surprised. And the thing that people need to understand, it’s not about me. It’s about the people of Mississippi,” Colom said. “
They decided to go in a new direction. They volunteered. They knocked on doors. 
They donated to the campaign. There’s people here who told me, ‘I just went to the supermarket, and I just passed out literature,’ right? With the vote count, that mattered. 
Everything, everybody did mattered. The people in Mississippi deserve credit for this. And I’m so proud of my state.”

State Reporter Heather Harrison has won more than a dozen awards for her multi-media journalism work. At Mississippi State University, she studied public relations and broadcast journalism, earning her Communication degree in 2023. For three years, Heather worked at The Reflector student newspaper: first as a staff reporter, then as the news editor and finally, as the editor-in-chief. This is where her passion for politics and government reporting began.
Heather started working at the Mississippi Free Press three days after graduation in 2023. She also worked part time for Starkville Daily News after college covering the Board of Aldermen meetings.
In her free time, Heather likes to sit on the porch, read books and listen to Taylor Swift. A native of Hazlehurst, she now lives in Brandon with her wife and their Boston Terrier, Finley, and calico cat, Ravioli.