On Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” State Sen. 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 some within 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 over the edge. And Tuesday evening the Republican primary in Mississippi was not decided by Republican voters. It was decided by 35,000-40,000 Democrats. That’s unprecedented and extraordinarily unusual.”
He also claimed he had evidence of more than 1,000 voting irregularities in just one county and pointed to the desperate tactics Cochran employed to get Democrats out to vote for him.
“It’s not so much a recount,” McDaniel continued. “We’re looking to the issue of whether or not people who participated in if June 3 Democrat Primary crossed over into the Republican Primary this Tuesday night. We’ve found more than 1,000 examples of that in one county alone. So, we’ve found widespread irregularities of ineligible voters. They should not have been there in the first place. And they were pushed there. This is what’s shocking, Sean. They were pushed there be an overt action, an aggressive action on the part of Sen. Cochran’s campaign that was filled with race-baiting, lies, distortions. He literally ran the latter three weeks on food stamps. He ran on voter suppression and he ran on pork. Mississippi is a conservative state and one would think that our party was a conservative party. This proves otherwise.”
As far as the tactics themselves, McDaniel condemned them and said that was his justification for pursuing further action questioning the outcome.
“It’s absolutely despicable,” he added. “They did everything in their power to embrace liberal Democrats. But think about that for a second. If we have an agenda as conserve conservatives, which is to fight with principle … to be strong open courageous and they say they’re going to fight the liberals in Washington but they embraced the liberals in Mississippi just to win the election. It’s the worst style of politicking I can imagine. They did it. They’ve gotten away with it so far. That’s why we’re looking at voter irregularities.”
McDaniel went on to add that he did not know if he would support Cochran in the November general election.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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