Posted on 06/28/2014 3:41:52 AM PDT by OldRanchHand
JACKSON, MISS. — Chris McDaniel supporters vowed to keep up the fight after the primary runoff was called for Sen. Thad Cochran Tuesday night, but by Wednesday afternoon several outside groups and one prominent Mississippi Republican threw cold water on talk of an official challenge.
“My understanding is that is not going to happen,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) from Washington. “I kind of heard it through the grapevine at lunch.”
Wicker supported Cochran’s reelection and was intimately involved in his fundraising operation for the runoff.
The Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Fund — two of McDaniel’s biggest national allies — characterized the race as a loss.
“We are proud of the effort we made in Mississippi’s Senate race and we congratulate the winner,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola in a statement. “We expect that Senator Cochran and others gained a new appreciation of voter frustration about the threats to economic freedom and national solvency. In light of our experience of the last ten years, we move forward even more confidently than we did the day after the 2004 Pennsylvania primary.”
McDaniel and his allies cried foul over Cochran’s move to woo Democratic and black voters.
McDaniel gave a defiant speech Tuesday night after the final election results came in and did not formally concede the race. On Wednesday McDaniel preserved his right to challenge his loss in Tuesday’s Mississippi GOP Senate runoff.
“In the coming days, our team will look into the irregularities to determine whether a challenge is warranted,” McDaniel said in a statement late today. “After we’ve examined the data, we will make a decision about whether and how to procede (sic).”
McDaniel’s camp is examining the possibility of a challenge based on ballots cast by people who voted in the June 3 Democratic primary and also in the runoff Tuesday. His spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
Mississippi State GOP Chairman Joe Nosef said it remains to be seen how McDaniel and his supporters will handle Cochran’s apparent win.
“We’ve got people talking about challenges and all kinds of things … I saw the McDaniel speech and he seemed certainly disappointed and upset and I certainly understand that. He ran a hard campaign and put a lot into it,” Nosef said. Asked if it was time to move on, the chairman answered: “I certainly have that sense … I don’t know.”
Still, some groups here are contemplating their options. Mississippi Tea Party Chair Laura Van Overschelde said they are in the process of gathering evidence to show how Cochran’s camp misused the political system.
“We are looking at our options right now,” Van Overschelde said.
Christian Adams, a former Bush Justice Department official, also said that he was reviewing hundreds of pages of potential irregularities.
Why don’t you go back to DU, Karl?
You mean the Club For Growth is not going to spend money in MS?
Roger Wicker has been snorting too much Cochran and Cornyn.
Roger Wicker is for amnesty.
‘Five hundred [calls] yesterday, and right now, they’re just ringing non-stop,’ said an upset staffer at the office of Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who has voted on both sides of the dispute.
https://twitter.com/joenosef/status/482401132749127681
The @MSGOP had obviously no role in tactics of either campaign but somehow is a target for upset supporters; we need to get this behind us
They are PACs, not a bunch of lawyers. It is not their job to spend money investigating Haley Barbour.
According to U.S News & World Reports, Club for Growth spent more than $3 million on the McDaniel campaign.
Yes or no.
It’s a Troll.
I feelz a zzzzot comin’ on TROLL
Why would Club For Growth be spending more money going into the future on a race that has already taken place?
From Cochran allies via Politico. Equals garbage.
Yes I am. You win an election by getting more votes than the other fellow. Under Mississippi law, anyone who did not vote in the Democratic primary was eligible to vote in the Republican runoff. In fact, it was smart politics to reach out to Democrats and anyone else who didn’t vote the first go round. Were there an handful of illegal votes? Probably, just as there are in an election in an state for any office.
No...Just someone who enjoys seeing Tea Partiers work themselves into a frenzy trying to justify another ass whipping at the polls. Not everyone on FR subscribes to the Tea Party. Some of us want to win elections instead of debating who’s the most conservative of the losing candidates.
Well it is Pyrrhic to win an election at the cost of becoming total mush.
Thank you for the straight up answer. Good luck on the survival thing.
So YOU support RomneyCARE, RomneyMarriage,
Romney statism, and the new Polygamy,
and now beastiality of the GOP?
Or do YOU support the protection of Obama
afforded by the complicit GOP?
or do YOU support the EXEMPT GOP?
Yes. Yes. Yes, it seems.
Because the Tea Party says No. No. No.
Nice try, won't work.
Since GOPe have shown themselves to be the conservative's enemy, maybe we should start treating them like one.
LOL Ranch it was no ass whipping.
The primary was won by McDaniel. Did you forget? And there was chicanery in that election too.
This MS thing stinks as bad as the IRS thing. And you stink at your job as bad as the defenders of “not a smidgeon of corruption”.
zot
The old guard GOP is really going all out now to tamp down the anger. God forbid they should be helping defeat any Democrats, especially the one who is going to be the next Senator from MS.
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