Free Republic

A black Mississippi pastor has emerged to claim Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) campaign paid “thousands” of Democrats $15 each to vote in the June 24 GOP runoff – and that he was part of the scheme. Rev. Stevie Fielder, an associate pastor at First Union Missionary Baptist Church in Meridan, Mississippi, says Cochran's campaign “told me to offer blacks $15 each and to vote for Thad.” Fielder, who was paid by freelance journalist Charles C. Johnson for the story, provided a new outlet launched by Johnson—GotNews.com—with four text messages from a person purporting to be Cochran campaign staffer Saleem Baird....

Last Tuesday’s GOP primary runoff in Mississippi is turning out to be the most revealing incident in the protracted fight between the conservative grassroots and the GOP establishment. The GOP party leadership has been exposed for their true motives in front of all the party faithful. Over the past few years, we have been told by some of the inside-the-beltway “conservatives” that the GOP schism is overblown, that it is merely a disagreement over strategy. We have also been told that the grassroots have been too purist in their expectations of how Republicans can govern when they only control the...

An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats. Before I get into the weeds of what is in the audio interview and transcript, which are both below, let me...

<p>A black reverend stiffed by the Cochran campaign has exposed an alleged criminal conspiracy by Cochran staffers to commit massive voter fraud ahead of Tuesday's controversial U.S. Senate Republican runoff election in Mississippi.</p> <p>Reverend Stevie Fielder, associate pastor at historic First Union Missionary Baptist Church and former official at Meridian's redevelopment agency, says he delivered "hundreds or even thousands," of blacks to the polls after being offer money and being assured by a Cochran campaign operative that Chris McDaniel was a racist. "They [the Cochran campaign] told me to offer blacks fifteen dollars each and to vote for Thad."</p>

Thad Cochran won a primary runoff by turning out the black vote. Now they are asking — what are you going to do for us? Already the members of the Congressional Black Caucus are talking about what they want Cochran to do. The wish list is filling up with ideas like maintaining funding for food stamps, beefing up programs that help poor blacks in Mississippi and even supporting the Voting Rights Act. “Absolutely we have expectations,’’ Rep Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio), said in an interview. And while Cochran beat back a tea party challenger by reminding voters, particularly black voters, that...

Stars are aligning for a big Republican victory this November – solidifying and expanding the GOP’s majority in the House and perhaps gaining one in the Senate. This is a best-case scenario, and any majority in the Senate would be a slim one. But the importance of removing Harry Reid as majority leader cannot be overstated. That’s why Democrats will pull every dirty trick in their deep bag to hold the Senate, and sadly many Republicans will help them in that quest. President Obama will have two years left to wreak havoc on the country after the next election, but...

Irritating phrases and words are not confined to political circles, or solely to Washington, although here in the nation’s capital they burrow in and proliferate like obsolete, but entrenched, government programs. This is a call to arms to fight them—but only metaphorically.15: “WAR ON [FILL IN THE BLANK]” Syria’s civil war has produced 2.5 million refugees and a death toll of 160,000, a tragedy that has galvanized neither major political party into action. So next time a Democrat brays about the so-called Republican “war on women” or a Republican trumpets the Obama administration’s “war on coal,” tell them you’ve...

The Republican Party continues to enjoy a vibrant battle between its establishment stronghold and small-government insurgents sometimes described as the Tea Party. Republican establishment political strategist Karl Rove responded to older-than-Methuselah, longtime-incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran’s runoff victory in Mississippi this week with a Wall Street Journal column about how Tea Party groups had “taken a beating” this primary season. The column explained that entrenched incumbents with huge war chests and the backing of the party establishment have won more often than challengers, which is undoubtedly true. It is worth noting that Rove did not mention the tremendous victory local and...

Breaking– The Chris McDaniel campaign identified multiple Mississippi counties in which enough improper ballots were cast that a legal challenge to the outcome of the election is warranted. This comes after 25,000-35,000 Democrat votes helped push Thad Cochran to victory over Chris McDaniel (by 6,880 votes) in the June 24 runoff. The McDaniel campaign has already found 1,000 examples in one county of Democrats who voted in the June 3rd primary as Democrats and then crossed over into the Republican primary this week. This is illegal and their votes should not be counted. Update—– Lindsay Krout, an independent contractor working...

Chris McDaniel, the Republican candidate in last Tuesday’s GOP primary that fell just shy of defeating long-time incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), reacted to the outcome. McDaniel laid out his Republican credentials and questioned why his state’s Republican Party had gone to such lengths to for Cochran. “It was shocking,” McDaniel said. “I’m a two-term state senator. I’ve been a Republican since I was 13-years old. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve gone door to door. I’ve given money. I considered these men and woman to be my friends and colleagues. But desperation and the quest for power pushed them somewhat...

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul doesn’t have a problem with Democrats heavily influencing Republican primaries. Paul, a likely contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, refused to criticize Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran’s campaign efforts to lure Democrats to the polls with race-baiting ads and promises of government handouts. ”I’m for more people voting, not less people voting. I think the people of Mississippi spoke and I think Thad Cochran has done a lot of good things for Mississippi,” Paul told reporters on Wednesday.What kinds of “good things”? A Tax Foundation study found that Mississippi ranks first in the amount of federal...

National Republican leaders trying to appeal to non-white voters are cringing over Senate candidate Chris McDaniel’s complaints that Democrats — most of whom are black in Mississippi — voted in the state’s GOP Senate runoff and helped six-term incumbent Thad Cochran capture the party nomination. “The more the tea party complains about how black voters vote for Republicans, I think they look racist and stupid,” said John Feehery, a GOP consultant in Washington. “We’re trying to get black voters. Now that one of our candidates got black voters, we should be happy about it.”... When reporters in Washington asked Sen....

"The McDaniel team made a huge strategic and tactical error in announcing they were sending poll watchers to blanket the majority-black precincts. Its one thing to use poll watchers to stop election day shenanigans. That is just good tough politics. However, it is a different matter to announce you are doing so and then just doing it in the black precincts. I've covered enough black politics and know enough black politicians to where I can comfortably say that announcing that poll watchers are going just to the black precincts is almost a declaration of war against the black community and...

As we pointed out last week, there were several potentially illegal political games afoot in Mississippi to motivate Democrat voters to "switch" over to the GOP for a day to help save a 42 year Republican member of Congress. On top of that, millions of dollars from out of state liberal billionaires like Mike Bloomberg poured in at the last minute on that same incumbent’s behalf. You have to ask yourself why? When a primary election is lost fairly, I am all for unifying behind the victor and joining forces to fight in November. When an election is questionable, with...

The Chris McDaniel camp is crying foul over the Cochran campaign's outreach to Democrats in the state, and even the incumbent's advisors admit the cross over votes from Democrats made the difference.But as this Politico autopsy on the race shows, Cochran was able to eke out a narrow victory thanks to a truly massive effort in both Washington and Mississippi involving millions of dollars and thousands of volunteers: Dogged ahead of the primary by complaints about a lackluster field program and an unfocused campaign message (and candidate), Cochran’s campaign moved swiftly to reorient its operations for a second election on...

Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-Miss.) primary challenger Chris McDaniel is looking into possible legal routes to challenge Cochran’s runoff win. Multiple sources tell The Hill that the campaign is evaluating their options after Cochran orchestrated an improbable win over McDaniel on Tuesday night, defeating the challenger by about 6,300 votes. The campaign’s concerns hinge on heavily African-American Hinds County, which includes the state capital of Jackson and where nearly 70 percent of the residents are black and the voting population is more Democratic than most counties in the state. Cochran netted about 7,000 more votes there in the runoff than the...

Politico Defiant Chris McDaniel declines to concede in speech to supporters By ANNA PALMER | 6/25/14 12:24 AM EDT HATTIESBURG, MISS. — A defiant Chris McDaniel walked up to the podium at his election night headquarters here after the Republican runoff was called for his opponent Sen. Thad Cochran — and then he didn't concede. "We had a dream and the dream is still with us," said McDaniel to an increasingly vocal crowd, telling them that the fight is not over. "Today the conservative movement took a backseat to liberal Democrats in Mississippi." Cochran's strategy Tuesday was to expand...

Vanity

BILOXI, Mississippi — A staffer for Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-MS) re-election campaign was fired after he was arrested and accused by police of stealing campaign signs for Cochran's primary opponent, state senator Chris McDaniel. Lee Ellis Blair, a member of the DeSoto County GOP executive committee and Cochran campaign staffer, was arrested late Sunday and charged with “malicious mischief,” according to a partially redacted copy of the police report provided to Breitbart News. “He's fired. Unlike Chris McDaniel, we don't tolerate that type of behavior,” said Cochran's spokesman, Jordan Russell, in an email. The police report alleged Blair “did willfully,...