Democrat Scott Colom’s lead over incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith has now grown to 1,764 votes as counties continue to count ballots to determine the winner of Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race. Thousands of votes remain to be counted, many of them in majority-Black Hinds County, and Colom’s campaign has said they are confident that the remaining vote will only pad his lead.
Award-winning News Editor Ashton Pittman, a native of the South Mississippi Pine Belt, studied journalism and political science at the University of Southern Mississippi. Previously the state reporter at the Jackson Free Press, he drove national headlines and conversations with award-winning reporting about segregation academies. He has won numerous awards, including Outstanding New Journalist in the South, for his work covering immigration raids, abortion battles and even former Gov. Phil Bryant’s unusual work with “The Bad Boys of Brexit" at the Jackson Free Press. In 2021, as a Mississippi Free Press reporter, he was named the Diamond Journalist of the Year for seven southern U.S. states in the Society of Professional Journalists Diamond Awards. A trained photojournalist, Ashton lives in South Mississippi with his husband, William, and their two pit bulls, Dorothy and Dru.
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