Defiant

Defiant Chris McDaniel declines to concede in speech to supporters

By ANNA PALMER

A defiant Chris McDaniel walked up to the podium at his election night headquarters Tuesday night 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.”

The crowd at the McDaniel event was equally fired up after the loss, capping off a bitter extended primary fight that pitted the insurgent tea partier against long-time establishment candidate Cochran.

Cochran is credited with winning by pumping up turnout for Tuesday’s runoff beyond the initial primary. In the final days of campaigning, he appealed to voters who don’t typically participate in Republican primaries, including those who traditionally vote Democrat, like blacks. Mississippi voting rules allow anyone to participate in a primary runoff.

The tea party-backed McDaniel camp cried foul, sending in poll monitors and questioning the final outcome of the race.

The more than 200 supporters gathered in the Hattiesburg Lake Terrace Convention Center were just as angry as McDaniel about the loss to Cochran, which virtually assures the 76-year-old an easy win toward a seventh term in the general election.

They cheered his defiance and chanted “Write Chris In!” as he took the stage and calling out “It’s not over Chris” and “We’re not going with Thad.”

McDaniel supporters quickly moved to consider legal challenges based on reported voting irregularities.
Senate Conservatives Fund’s Ken Cuccinelli hung up on a POLITICO reporter when asked if they would consider challenging the result in court.

McDaniel said that Republicans must find their “backbone again” and called out voting irregularities at polling operations.

Cochran’s win was a major victory for the GOP Republican establishment that included heavy investment by the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

McDaniel had tried to position Cochran as a Washington insider with a history of pork barrel projects. His loss was the second major tea party defeat of the evening: Rep. James Lankford bested opponent T.W. Shannon in the Oklahoma Senate GOP primary.

It’s a major loss for national tea party groups, who had hoped to capitalize on Dave Brat’s upset in Virginia of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor earlier this month. FreedomWorks put an aggressive ground game together, holding rallies and blanketing the state with yard signs. Club for Growth also put in financial resources during the run-off for an ad buy, following about $2.5 million the group dumped into Mississippi to aid McDaniel and attack Cochran before the June 3 primary.

Still, playing Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” over the loudspeaker system as McDaniel closed the gap within a few thousand votes wasn’t enough to put the tea party favorite over the top.

The mood quickly soured as word that Cochran had bested McDaniel in the run-off. Some hugged, others shook their heads while yet others headed for the exits before McDaniel even took the stage to address the crowd.

What had started as a confident evening with McDaniel supporters predicting a victory quickly turned into a vent session over dirty politics.

“This is such a perverting of a fair election system that we are outraged the Secretary of State hasn’t stepped in,” said Ray Nicholson, the founding and past chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party. “I think it is going to badly hurt the Republican Party in Mississippi.”

Barry Neyrey, chairman of the South Mississippi Tea Party on the Gulf Coast, blamed Cochran’s move to try and expand the electorate and increase Democratic turnout in the primary as “dirty politics.”

“That is corruption, that is Washington corruption on full display and that is what Chris McDaniel was trying to fight, is trying to fight against, the corruption of Washington,” Neyrey said.

The political activist said McDaniel’s loss is making him rethink his involvement.

“It makes you want to quit being involved. I never believed a third party would work, maybe that’s the only way to get rid of the corruption of Washington, the corruption of the Democratic Party, the corruption of the Republican Party,” Neyrey said. “These people do not exist to serve the public, they exist to serve themselves and each other.”

—Alexander Burns contributed to this report.