Raman is poised to become the 44th mayor of the nation’s second-largest city.
Democrats won several key races in the high-stakes midterm elections -- with ABC News projecting that Democrats will take control of the Senate and the House.
With 96% of the expected vote reported in Mississippi as of 5 p.m. ET on Thursday, Democrat Scott Colom slightly leads with 49.0% of the vote (466,747 votes) followed by Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith with 48.9% of the vote (464,925 votes,) according to election data.
Colom only leads Hyde-Smith by 1,822 votes.
-ABC News' Oren Oppenheim
Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith's campaign said Thursday that it believes the Republican incumbent will still win reelection, while it remains prepared for potential legal challenges in the close race.
"Cindy Hyde-Smith is going to represent Mississippi in the United States Senate for the next six years. We believe thousands of votes remain to be counted from dozens of Republican counties, and we are confident those votes will reinforce her path to victory," the campaign wrote in a post on X.
-ABC News' Oren Oppenheim
The NAACP said on Thursday that it is sending "national legal, policy, and field staff to Mississippi, bolstering the capacity of the NAACP Mississippi State Conference to help voters navigate ballot cure requirements and ensure every eligible vote is counted and certified."
"We're working to ensure Black voters are heard and we won’t stop until their votes are certified," Derrick Johnson, the National NAACP President, wrote in a statement.
-ABC News' Oren Oppenheim
Democrat Scott Colom spoke with ABC News on Thursday at a diner in Jackson, Mississippi, as race between him and Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith remains tight -- with around 1,000 votes separating the two, according to the current vote count.
Colom tells ABC News that his campaign didn’t get much attention or resources outside of Mississippi until about a month ago because some in his party couldn’t fathom that Democrats could flip a Senate seat in deep-red Mississippi.
He says that forced him to build a ground game that took him to many areas of the state and put him face-to-face with a lot of voters. Many of those voters gravitated toward him, he says, because they were tired of broken promises in Washington.
"The voters were betrayed. That gave us an opportunity to compete everywhere," he said.
-ABC News' Faith Abubey, Oren Oppenheim and Brendon Baur
