Cochran won by appealing to Republicans and liberal Democrats.
Just two days before the Mississippi runoff, an African-American state senator from the state’s 13th district, Willie Simmons, sent a letter to his constituents. Simmons himself, according to a report by the Associated Press, had voted in the state’s June 3 Democratic primary and was therefore prohibited from voting in Tuesday’s Republican runoff, but he wrote to urge his constituents to cast their ballots for Republican senator Thad Cochran in Tuesday’s runoff. He touted the “millions of dollars” in appropriations Cochran had secured for Mississippi’s Head Start programs and his support for “Food Stamps programs.”
A mailer distributed in heavily African-American precincts struck similar notes, advertising Cochran’s support for Mississippi’s public schools and his tea-party opponent’s opposition to food-stamps programs. The headline: “The Tea Party intends to prevent blacks from voting.”
“I don’t know who put it out,” former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour says of the fliers. “I can’t imagine the Cochran campaign did that.” Barbour says that support for Cochran among Democrats bubbled up organically and that the six-term senator, who first won a seat in Congress in 1972, has always had bipartisan appeal. “Within a week of the first primary some black churches in Hattiesburg started running ads on the radio in Hattiesburg by raising the money themselves,” he says.
But Cochran’s opponent, state senator Chris McDaniel, and many of his supporters smell a rat. In the midst of the non-concession speech McDaniel delivered Tuesday evening, he argued, “There is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats.” In Hattiesburg, where a crowd of McDaniel supporters had gathered for what most expected to be his victory party, the candidate was seething, not celebrating: “So much for principle,” he said from the podium.
Less than 24 hours after Cochran seized victory by a little more than one percentage point, his campaign’s decision to woo Democrats is exacerbating the intra-Republican battle between the grassroots and the establishment.
Chris Chocola, the president of the Club for Growth, which spent over $3 million in its attempt to oust Cochran, came out swinging against the powers that be in the GOP. “They say they believe in pro-growth policy,” he says, “but when it comes time to take action, here it’s revealed, probably more powerfully than it’s ever been, that they care more about the preservation of political power and the status quo.”
In Mississippi, Chocola says, the establishment fought for a candidate whose message was “Vote for me and I’ll give you more government.” Throughout the primary and the runoff, Cochran campaigned on his ability to funnel federal dollars to Mississippi, a poor state that has long depended on Washington’s largesse.