In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz reacted to Tuesday night’s outcome of the Mississippi Republican senatorial runoff between incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) and State Sen. Chris McDaniel, with Cochran coming out as the victor by two points.
Cruz questioned the outcome, noting the circumstances behind Cochran’s win, but congratulated the incumbent for his victory, as well as Oklahoma’s Republican senatorial primary victory Rep. James Lankford.
“Well, I didn’t have a position in the Mississippi race,” Cruz said. “From the beginning this year have stayed out of all incumbent races. But I do think it’s striking that the race was so close that it took — you saw the Washington Republican establishment put millions of dollars in that race to preserve an incumbent and they encouraged an awful lot of Democrats to vote in that race and won a razor-thin race. I think that demonstrates that there is a lot of hunger for change. People are frustrated with Washington. And they’re hungry for leaders who will stand up and make the case we need to go a different path. I congratulate my colleague, Thad. I congratulate James Lankford on their wins and I’m hopeful that we’ll see every Republican in Washington standing together to stand up to this failed Obama agenda that has taken the country in the wrong direction.”
Later, Cruz was asked to reiterate his view by “Fox & Friends” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Mississippi and the crossover voters from the Democratic side participating in Tuesday’s runoff, to which Cruz attributed to being “part of politics.”
“Well look, it appears clear that there were thousands or tens of thousands of Democrats who voted in the Republican primary,” he continued. “Listen, this is nothing new. We see mischief where you have people from the other party vote in your primary because they think that a particular candidate is more vulnerable, more attractive to them for whatever reason. That’s part of politics.”
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