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Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi - New York Times

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Politics |Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi



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Cochran and McDaniel Address Supporters



Cochran and McDaniel Address Supporters


Senator Thad Cochran and State Senator Chris McDaniel delivered remarks to their supporters after the Republican primary.



June 25, 2014













HATTIESBURG, Miss. — With an unusual assist from African-American voters and other Democrats who feared his opponent, Senator Thad Cochran on Tuesday beat back a spirited challenge from State Senator Chris McDaniel, triumphing in a Republican runoff and defeating the Tea Party in the state where the movement’s hopes were bright.


“We all have a right to be proud of our state tonight,” Mr. Cochran said at his victory party in Jackson, Miss. “This is your victory.”


Mr. McDaniel, speaking in Hattiesburg, was angry, and he did not hesitate to say so. “There is something a bit strange, there is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats,” he said.


He accused Mr. Cochran of abandoning the conservative movement. “So much for principles,” he said.


Mr. McDaniel, an uncompromising conservative, relied on the muscle of outside groups and the enthusiasm of conservative voters who are weary of Mr. Cochran’s old-school Washington ways.



Related Coverage







  • Voting during the Mississippi primary on June 3, which was so close it required a runoff.

    Midterm Calculus: How Mississippi’s Runoff Defies Conventional WisdomJUNE 23, 2014




  • Senator Thad Cochran and Senator John McCain at a Cochran event in Jackson on Monday.

    Mississippi Race Points to Appeal of PartisanshipJUNE 23, 2014




  • Senator Thad Cochran, left, with George Flaggs, the mayor of Vicksburg, Miss., during a campaign stop.

    G.O.P. Senator Courts Blacks in Mississippi Primary RaceJUNE 20, 2014




The 76-year-old senator ran a largely sleepy campaign until the primary on June 3, when he was edged out by Mr. McDaniel but won enough votes to keep his opponent from outright victory. Mr. Cochran, who is seeking his seventh term, used the past three weeks to turn out Democratic voters — especially African-Americans — to make up that deficit.




Thad Cochran celebrated his victory with supporters after the primary. Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

A surge of voters showed up on Tuesday in African-American precincts and in Mr. Cochran’s other strongholds to surprise Mr. McDaniel, 41, who just Monday night declared his campaign had gone from impossible to improbable to unstoppable. Early Wednesday, with all but one precinct reporting, Mr. Cochran’s lead over Mr. McDaniel was a little more than 6,000 votes. Recounts are not required under Mississippi law, although Mr. McDaniel could seek to challenge the results through the courts.


Mr. Cochran’s victory was powered in part by African-Americans in areas of north Jackson whose turnout shattered that seen in those precincts in the primary. Turnout jumped fivefold at New Hope Baptist Church, and sevenfold at Green Elementary School, where only 14 voters came out on June 3 but about 100 showed up on Tuesday.



Their high numbers came despite pledges by conservative political action committees to monitor turnout in Democratic areas targeted by Mr. Cochran’s campaign. Both the N.A.A.C.P. — which sent its own poll watchers — and the United States Justice Department expressed concerns about the possible intimidation of black Democrats, but no irregularities were reported to Mississippi election officials. The state has no party registration, and anyone could vote in the Republican runoff who had not voted in the Democratic primary, which was won by former Representative Travis Childers, 56.


It was an extraordinary end to a wild campaign, with a Republican standing up for the rights of black Democrats, and with Tea Party groups from the North, especially the Senate Conservatives Fund, crying foul.


Also sure to inflame the right: a center-right super PAC, Defending Main Street, which contributed over $150,000 to Mr. Cochran during the runoff, received $250,000 from Michael Bloomberg in the same period, according to a source close to the former New York City mayor.



Mississippi – U.S. Senate



Mr. Bloomberg also contributed $250,000 to Mr Cochran’s super PAC, Mississippi Conservatives, before the primary.


For months, the contest between Mr. Cochran and Mr. McDaniel was viewed as this year’s main event in the six-year clash between conservative activists and Republican incumbents. Money and celebrities poured into Mississippi from all over the country, with the establishment determined to make the state a Tea Party Waterloo. For their part, conservative groups were hoping for one major victory for the season.


But after the surprise primary defeat this month of Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, the Mississippi contest took on greater significance. Outside conservative groups hoped to emerge with a second victory that would propel challenges in Tennessee, where Senator Lamar Alexander was widely expected to win, and perhaps in Kansas, where Senator Pat Roberts appeared to have recovered from an early stumble over whether he lived in Kansas or the Washington area.


Instead, establishment Republicans and a surprisingly high number of Democrats helped deliver a come-from-behind victory for a senator known for his soft-spoken patrician air and his ability to bring home millions in dollars of federal spending.


Mr. Cochran shifted his campaign message from polishing his conservative credentials to extolling his record of keeping Mississippi flush with federal cash. He also attacked Mr. McDaniel for his vows of austerity, especially in education.




Senator Thad Cochran addressed supporters after winning Tuesday's primary election. Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

Those attacks seemed to work with voters — at least enough to spook Democrats, and even some Republicans, who are accustomed to the protection and seniority of a long line of Congress members going back almost 100 years, including Senators John C. Stennis, James Eastland and Trent Lott and Representatives Sonny Montgomery and Jamie L. Whitten.


Jeanie Munn, who lives in Hattiesburg, said Mr. McDaniel “represents a threat to the state.” She cited a vote he cast in the State Senate against a new nursing school building at the University of Southern Mississippi.


Roger Smith, a black Democrat who said he was being paid to organize for Mr. Cochran, said, “I don’t know too much about McDaniel other than what McDaniel’s saying: that he’s Tea Party, he’s against Obama, he don’t like black people.”


“You’re going to get one of the white guys in there,” he said. “You got to make a choice.”


In downtown Hattiesburg, Democratic voters trickled out of the Court Street United Methodist Church, saying they had voted for a Republican for the first time in their lives — Mr. Cochran. Heath Kleinke, 38, held his 4-month-old baby and said he wanted her to get a good education in Mississippi, something he believed would be made more difficult if Mr. McDaniel were to make good on his proposal to cut federal funding.



“The fact that he openly criticizes Thad Cochran for talking to Democrats riled me up from the beginning,” added Mr. Kleinke, a graphic designer.


Kay Tyler, an African-American who works for the Jackson public school system, said Mr. Cochran simply never asked for her vote — until now. “He should have,” Ms. Tyler said.



White Democrats also turned out for the senator. Dorothy McGehee, 88, a lifelong Democrat who registered blacks to vote in the civil rights era, found herself putting out Cochran yard signs in Meadville, Miss., and begging her friends to vote.


Kino Sintee, 17, and three black friends waved “Thad” signs on a street corner in a black Hattiesburg neighborhood. They said the preacher from Mount Olive Baptist Church asked them to help out.


“They’re talking about taking everything away from us,” he said. “People still need stuff.”




For months, the contest between Mr. Cochran and Mr. McDaniel was viewed as this year’s main event in the six-year clash between conservative activists and Republican incumbents. William Widmer for The New York Times

Michael Davis, 44, said it was his “duty” to stop Mr. McDaniel. “If anyone wants to tell me I’m stealing the election or something ludicrous like that, it doesn’t work that way,” he said.


In Tupelo, Miss., John Armistead, 73, a die-hard Democrat, and his wife, Sandra, 69, a Republican, put aside their differences on Tuesday, and both voted for Mr. Cochran.


“Even though he votes with the Republicans on virtually everything, I’ve never seen Cochran as being so partisan,” Mr. Armistead said. “As a Democrat, that’s important to me. McDaniel is very partisan and will align himself with the right-wing, partisan-type people.”


Those crossover votes from Democrats left many of Mr. McDaniel’s supporters seething.


“Our whole system is corrupt,” said a glum Alicia Holloman of George County as the last results trickled into the McDaniel party at the Hattiesburg Convention Center. “We deserve to be called the most corrupt state in the nation.”


Her husband, Michael, was more circumspect.


“You should be able to vote the way you want to vote. It’s fair,” he said. “But when you’re on the losing side, it stinks.”




Theodore Schleifer contributed reporting from Jackson, Miss.; Ellen Ann Fentress from Greenwood, Miss.; and Lacey Russell from Tupelo, Miss. Jonathan Martin also contributed reporting.



A version of this article appears in print on June 25, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Cochran Holds Off Tea Party Challenger in Mississippi.




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