The United States Senate Republican primary election in Mississippi took place on June 3, 2014. Incumbent
Republican Senator
Thad Cochran, who had served in the position since 1978, ran for reelection to a seventh term. Controversially, Cochran's campaign invited Democrats to vote in the runoff, and Cochran-affiliated
super PACs used
racist themes in their primary ads, particularly the super-PAC All Citizens for Mississippi, which was funded (according to F.E.C. filings) by a super-PAC affiliated with former governor
Haley Barbour.
Primary campaign Chris McDaniel declared his candidacy on October 17, 2013. He was immediately endorsed by the
Club for Growth and
Jim DeMint's
Senate Conservatives Fund. McDaniel was initially thought to have no chance of beating Cochran in the primary, Republican lobbyist
Henry Barbour, the nephew of former
governor Haley Barbour, said: "I think he will get his head handed to him, and that will be what he deserves. [But] it's a free country." Rather, McDaniel was believed to have declared his candidacy in the hope that Cochran wouldn't run, so that he could get "first crack" at the support of Tea Party groups and donors ahead of a competitive primary. The race was considered a marquee establishment-versus-Tea Party fight and significant because Mississippi is the poorest state and Cochran's seniority and appropriating skills contrasted with the junior status of the rest of the state's congressional delegation. McDaniel was endorsed by politicians including
Sarah Palin and
Rick Santorum and organizations including
Citizens United,
Club for Growth,
FreedomWorks, Madison Project,
National Association for Gun Rights,
Senate Conservatives Fund and
Tea Party Express. By contrast, the Republican establishment rallied around Cochran, who was endorsed by the
NRA Political Victory Fund and
National Right to Life. The race was described as "nasty" McDaniel's campaign attacked Cochran for being "an out-of-touch, big-spending Washington insider" and Cochran's replied that "McDaniel's voting record in the state Senate does not match his conservative rhetoric." Each side accused the other of distortions and outright lies. Cochran ran on his incumbency, seniority and the fact that he would become the Chairman of the
Senate Appropriations Committee if the Republicans retook control of the Senate. In addition to ideological differences, the race also highlighted geographic divides in the state Republican Party.
Tea Party blogger scandal In May 2014, a scandal emerged when Clayton Thomas Kelly, a McDaniel supporter, allegedly entered a nursing home where Cochran's bedridden wife was living and took pictures of her. Four people were arrested in connection with the incident. In response, McDaniel said, "the violation of the privacy of Mrs. Cochran [was] out of bounds for politics and reprehensible."
Racism scandal A second scandal emerged during the primary when pro-Cochran ads appealed to African American voters by suggesting that Tea Party efforts to prevent Democrats from voting were racially motivated. Charges first surfaced that a small group of elderly Democratic women activists calling themselves Citizens for Progress were behind the controversy, but later facts as well as
money trails show that money exchanged hands multiple times between Citizens for Progress and Mississippi Conservatives PAC. After the fallout of the primary election,
Missouri Republican Party chairman
Ed Martin wrote an op-ed calling for the censure of Henry Barbour for his role in the funding of racist advertisements. He also called for Barbour's censure at an RNC summer meeting in Chicago. Senator
Ted Cruz appeared on the
Mark Levin Show to discuss the Mississippi primary. He called for an investigation, saying, "the ads they ran were racially charged false attacks".
Primary election results The presence of a third candidate, Thomas Carey, opened the possibility that neither Cochran nor McDaniel would win a majority. Indeed, no candidate did, so a runoff between McDaniel and Cochran was required, and was held on June 24. The runoff was generally seen as advantageous to McDaniel. After the election, the Hinds County Sheriff's Office announced it was investigating three McDaniel supporters who were locked inside the local courthouse, where primary ballots were held, on election night. It was later reported that the supporters would face no criminal charges.
Runoff election The runoff was scheduled for June 24, three weeks after the primary. Despite trailing in most of the polls, Cochran won with 51% of the vote to McDaniel's 49%. McDaniel once again won big in his native
Pine Belt and in the heavily populated suburban Memphis
DeSoto County, but Cochran got a surge in votes from African Americans who took advantage of the
mixed primary. Many credited Cochran's win to the increase in black voters. Cochran won by 3,532 votes in the most Democratic, African-American precincts in
Hinds County (the state's largest county, and home to
Jackson). These precincts made up nearly half of Cochran's margin of victory.
Endorsements == Democratic primary ==