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Tag: 2014 mississippi elections
Conservative Groups Search For Fraud In Mississippi Runoff

Conservative Groups Search For Fraud In Mississippi Runoff

Some conservatives have a problem with the fact that Democrats were the reason that Mississippi senator Thad Cochran beat Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel in the Mississippi Republican primary runoff — so they’re doing everything they can to call the results fraudulent.

True the Vote, a group that works to hunt down any evidence of voter fraud — even though it’s very rare — has filed suit with the state of Mississippi so the group can gain access to election records. True the Vote clearly leans Republican, and its directors also run King Street Patriots, a Tea Party group. True the Vote has also worked to stop the recall of Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and supported the Florida voter purge. Its record of uncovering actual fraud is weak, at best.

The group claims that it already has evidence of voters who illegally voted in both the Democratic primary and the Republican runoff. Mississippi has an open primary system, but voters cannot vote in both elections.

“True the Vote has been inundated with reports from voters across Mississippi who are outraged to see the integrity of this election being undermined so that politicos can get back to business as usual. Enough is enough,” True the Vote president Catherine Engelbrecht said in a statement.

“This isn’t about personality, party, or politics. Senators come and go.” she continued. “What must withstand the test of time is the integrity of the process by which we elect our representatives and establish our government. No candidate or party should ever be allowed to twist election laws or subvert voters’ rights in the interest of political ambition.”

True the Vote cites the “unusual voter patterns” in the runoff as one of the reasons why there must have been voter fraud, as they don’t think Mississippi Democrats should have anything to do with electing Republican candidates.

Chris McDaniel is also doing what he can to emphasize that he would have won the election if Democrats weren’t involved. In an email to supporters, he wrote, “On June 24th, we won the Republican primary election. As you might have heard, we’re not quite done. We are in the process of trying to ensure a fair and accurate election took place on Tuesday.”

The McDaniel campaign is currently searching through election books in a futile attempt to find enough irregular votes to invalidate Cochran’s win. So far, they claim that they’ve found more than 3,300 suspicious votes after examining less than half of Mississippi’s counties.

The Cochran campaign dismissed these numbers. “Their numbers are wildly exaggerated,” Cochran campaign spokesman Jordan Russell told the Sun Herald. “For instance, in one county where they say they found 200 illegal votes, only 37 Democrats voted on June 3.”

But the McDaniel campaign’s strategy isn’t just to prove that there was voter fraud — it’s to create enough of a frenzy to force yet another runoff election.

“We don’t have to prove that we have 7,000 [invalid] votes … all there needs to be is enough doubt about the election, and we’re confident about that,” Noel Fritsch, McDaniel’s press aide, said to Fox News.

So conservative groups are trying their best to create that atmosphere of “doubt.” The Mississippi Tea Party says that it found at least 800 illegal votes in heavily Democratic Hinds County (where McDaniel’s campaign says it’s found 1,500 such votes).

Tea Party group FreedomWorks is calling on the Department of Justice and the FBI to investigate the Cochran campaign after RedState.com released an interview with a reverend who says that Cochran’s campaign paid him to give black voters $15 to vote for Cochran. However, the reverend was paid to do the interview, and the Cochran campaign called his allegations “baseless and false.”

Meanwhile, the far right’s vendetta against Cochran and Mississippi Democrats will likely serve to continue to alienate minority voters.

AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan

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Chris McDaniel May Fight Mississippi GOP Senate Primary Loss In Court

Chris McDaniel May Fight Mississippi GOP Senate Primary Loss In Court

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Sen. Thad Cochran’s comeback victory in Mississippi’s Republican Senate primary hardened the differences between the GOP’s Tea Party and establishment wings Wednesday, raising the threat that the bitterness of the last several months of campaigning could extend into the fall’s general election.

Cochran’s Tea Party challenger, Chris McDaniel, has refused to concede and in a statement Wednesday afternoon did not rule out the possibility of taking his case to court.

McDaniel and many of his supporters are incensed that Cochran achieved his victory in part by winning votes from Democrats, who were able to take part in the contest because of the state’s open primary law.

Turnout in Tuesday’s runoff was 67,000 votes higher than in the first round of voting earlier this month — a rare occurrence. Some of the biggest increases came in heavily black — and Democratic — areas, particularly in and around Jackson, the capital, and in smaller communities in the state’s Delta region.

“If our party and our conservative movement are to coexist, it is paramount that we ensure the sanctity of the election process is upheld,” McDaniel’s statement said. “We must be absolutely certain that our Republican primary was won by Republican voters.

“In the coming days, our team will look into the irregularities to determine whether a challenge is warranted,” the statement said. “After we’ve examined the data, we will make a decision about whether and how to (proceed).”

Establishment GOP figures praised Cochran’s victory as an indication of an inclusive campaign. One of the architects of the strategy, Henry Barbour, the nephew of former Mississippi governor and Republican Party Chairman Haley Barbour, said Cochran’s outreach to Democrats was “good for the party” — a way to broaden the GOP’s shrinking base of older, white voters.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), noted that “receiving African-American votes in the Republican primary is no easy thing” and said that “Republicans should celebrate the fact that African-Americans felt good enough about a Republican to think he’s a fair man.”

“If we start making that a bad thing, we’ll be the authors of our own doom,” Graham said.

But Tea Party activists derided the tactic as a sellout of conservative principles.

“This might be the moment the establishment GOP … died,” said Adam Brandon, executive vice president of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks, which had dozens of volunteers in Mississippi.

“Our base is like, ‘Seriously? You turned to Democrats to win?'”

Willie Simmons, a black Democratic state senator who stumped for votes for Cochran in his Delta-area district, said it was unclear whether the Democrats who helped propel Cochran to victory this week would vote for him again in the fall.

“Many of the individuals who voted for Sen. Cochran yesterday had good intentions, wanting to make sure he survived this particular fight,” Simmons said.

Cochran’s long history of supporting community health centers, Head Start preschool programs, and a historically black college in the Delta made his appeal an easier sell to Democratic voters, he said.

But, Simmons added, “you will find many individuals who supported him yesterday will go back home, do an assessment, look at the two candidates, will very well go back for the Democratic nominee.”

Some figures in both parties have suggested that the GOP’s internal division could give the Democratic Senate candidate, Travis Childers, a chance at winning the general election in November.

“The math’s in our favor,” said Rickey L. Cole, chairman of the Mississippi Democratic Party.

But establishment Republicans dismissed that idea, saying that they expect cooler heads would prevail once Tea Party activists recovered from the sting of the loss and returned their attention to the GOP’s main goal of taking control of the Senate from Democrats this fall.
Childers, a conservative former congressman, has struggled to raise campaign funds and is running in a state that has not elected a Democratic senator since 1982.

“It’ll take a while for us to heal the wounds from a very spirited primary, and we’ll do that,” said Mississippi’s other Republican senator, Roger Wicker.

But McDaniel so far has shown no sign of backing away from the angry stand he took on election night.

“There are millions of people who feel like strangers in their own party,” McDaniel said in a speech Tuesday in which he refused to concede the race. “So much for principle.”

AFP Photo/Justin Sullivan

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Mississippi’s GOP Senate Primary Race Stays Bitter To The End

Mississippi’s GOP Senate Primary Race Stays Bitter To The End

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Downright dirty politics is one way to describe Mississippi’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, which has shaped up as the most brutally competitive of the season. And it’s likely to be a nail-biter until the bitter end.

Senator Thad Cochran, the stately 74-year-old incumbent seeking a seventh term, is in the fight of his political life Tuesday against Chris McDaniel, a conservative upstart nearly half his age, in what has become a proxy campaign for the future of the GOP.

More than $12 million has been dropped into this poor state pitting the GOP establishment — Cochran is backed by party elders, including the still-popular former Governor Haley Barbour and almost every statewide elected Republican — against the tea party newcomers. Sarah Palin rallied over the weekend for McDaniel as the hard right sees a major victory within reach.

The race has been punctuated by hardball, oddball tactics, most notably the arrest of McDaniel supporters on suspicion of videotaping the senator’s ailing wife in her Mississippi nursing home.

As voters cast their ballots Tuesday the outcome remained too close to call, according to polling.

“I’ve always tried to make you proud,” Cochran wrote in a note to supporters, asking for their votes.

The white-haired senator defended a record of pork-barrel spending — made possible by his seniority as the GOP’s chief appropriator — that supporters say has propped up a state that has struggled to provide for itself.

But the Republican Party has veered dramatically from the one that sent him to Washington as Mississippi’s first GOP senator since Reconstruction. These days conservatives reject federal aid as wasteful.

McDaniel, a state senator from the most conservative wing of the Legislature, initially wavered over whether he would have voted for Hurricane Katrina relief, and has asked repeatedly what Mississippi has to show for all the years of Cochran’s prowess, since the state still ranks at the bottom of many measures of economic success.

The charismatic challenger catapulted within striking distance thanks to cash funneled to the state from outside groups, particularly Club for Growth, in what would be their trophy victory of the primary season.

Tea party campaigns have largely fizzled elsewhere this primary season, but the conservative South provides a key opportunity for their agenda. McDaniel crisscrossed the state on a bus tour that continued during the final days of the campaign.

The state is heavily Republican, making the winner of Tuesday’s primary the favorite to take the seat in November. But as Democrats fight to retain control of the Senate, they have suggested the Magnolia State could be in play if GOP voters choose a more extreme candidate.

Travis Childers, the top Democrat, was expected to easily clear his primary Tuesday.

Portrait via Wikimedia Commons

Arrest Of Blogger Further Roils Bitter Mississippi Senate Primary

Arrest Of Blogger Further Roils Bitter Mississippi Senate Primary

By Michael A. Memoli, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The arrest of a conservative blogger who authorities say posted a video showing the ill wife of Senator Thad Cochran threatens to upend Mississippi’s already bitterly contested Republican Senate primary as it draws to a close.

Clayton Kelly, who authors the “Constitutional Clayton” blog and has written in support of Cochran’s tea party-backed challenger, Chris McDaniel, was charged over the weekend with exploitation of a vulnerable adult. He is accused of entering Rose Cochran’s room at a Madison, Mississippi, nursing home and taking photos that were eventually put together and posted briefly to YouTube last month.

Rose Cochran, the senator’s wife of nearly 50 years, suffers from dementia and has resided at the home for more than a decade. The Madison Police Department said it received information about the incident last Thursday and, after an investigation, arrested Kelly, 28. He is being held on $100,000 bond.

McDaniel’s campaign issued a statement denouncing Kelly’s behavior, and said the candidate had reached out to express his regret to Cochran personally. In the same statement, the campaign said it was unaware that Kelly had gained access to Rose Cochran’s nursing home room until a local political blog posted about the arrest Friday night, and maintained that it was “unconscionable” for the senator’s campaign or the media to try to connect McDaniel to Kelly’s actions.

But the Cochran campaign has questioned the consistency of the McDaniel campaign’s statements about the situation. It released to a local television station portions of a voicemail message from McDaniel’s campaign manager saying first that campaign officials had “no idea” who Kelly was, but later that they had previously been aware he was “doing some insane stuff online,” and tasked volunteers to track the source of “ugly rumors.”

“We wanted it squashed,” Melanie Sojourner, McDaniel’s campaign manager and a fellow state senator, is heard saying on the message.

Breitbart News reported Monday that after the video was posted in late April, McDaniel’s campaign “sent out a wide call to aides and volunteers to find the person who posted it and get them to take it down.” The video was apparently spurred by discussions about Cochran’s relationship with a longtime aide, an issue that began attracting broader attention as the primary date neared.

In a year in which tea party challenges against GOP incumbents are largely fizzling, McDaniel has run a competitive race against Cochran, who is seeking his seventh term. Conservatives are targeting Cochran, a former chairman of the Appropriations Committee,as the “No.1 pooh-bah of pork.”Cochran has defended his efforts to steer federal dollars to Mississippi, particularly after Hurricane Katrina battered the state’s Gulf Coast.

The state’s GOP establishment, including former Gov. Haley Barbour, has rallied to Cochran’s defense in the run-up to the June 3 contest. McDaniel, meanwhile, has had to explain controversial statements he made as a radio host about minority groups.

Portrait via Wikimedia Commons
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