Stuart Stevens of the Lincoln Project is urging Mississippi officials to call the state's U.S. Senate race, after the latest batch of votes from Hinds County added more than 700 votes to Democrat Scott Colom's total while Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) gained just 96.

MS NOW's election team now rates the contest as "leans Dem." With Colom holding a 4,404-vote lead, Hyde-Smith would need well over 60 percent of the ballots still outstanding to overtake him. The rating, however, stops short of an official call — a distinction that sits at the center of both Stevens's push and MS NOW's caution.

"Look, Ole Miss played Georgia Saturday night, and they were 42 to 7 behind with two minutes to go, and they had a better chance than Cindy Hyde-Smith to win. This thing is done," said Stevens, who is from Jackson. "It should be called. It's a disservice to the state not to call it, because he needs to be up in Washington doing all the briefings and orientation that senators do."

He added, deploying deliberate exaggeration: "If she were to win 90 percent of the ballots outstanding, she still would lose" — a figure meant as hyperbole, not an actual estimate.

"So, look, something remarkable has happened here," Stevens continued. "I think it's interesting to me that Scott's family hasn't gotten enough attention. You know, his grandmother was a civil rights worker in Ripley, Mississippi, and now her grandson is going to be the first African American [senator] since Reconstruction. His father was a Reagan guy who ran for state treasurer as a Republican in Mississippi in the 1980s, which is when I first met him."

Stevens noted that Colom's father helped co-found the Innocence Project with John Grisham, and that Colom's mother, Dorothy W. Colom, was the first Black person elected to a Mississippi Chancery Court judgeship.

"So, it's just a remarkable story, and I think Scott's going to be a tremendous senator," he said. As for why Hyde-Smith has stayed largely out of view, Stevens pointed to tepid support within her own party: "All my Republican friends in Mississippi — nobody wants to go to war for Cindy Hyde-Smith. She's sort of been a ghost. She's an accidental senator. She was first appointed. There's no passion there for her. And look, Scott's going to be a great Senator, I think."

Fewer than 15,000 ballots remain outstanding statewide, and it is not clear which counties they come from, because some counties are not reporting those specifics.

MS NOW Political Director Shawna Thomas said the outlet is being deliberately cautious about calling the race, precisely because so few ballots remain and their origins are unclear. That caution explains the gap between a rating and a call: "leans Dem" describes where the count stands, while a call would assert that the ballots left can no longer change the result — a judgment the team is withholding until it knows where those final ballots actually are.

From here, the markers to watch are whether the outstanding counties disclose their ballot breakdowns, and when either state officials or MS NOW move from rating the race to calling it.

A video of the interview is available on YouTube.