Seventy-four year old incumbent U.S. Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) eked out a win in the hotly contested Mississippi U.S. Senate GOP runoff election Tuesday night.
The Associated Press reported that unofficial returns showed Cochran, a 76-year-old first elected to Congress in 1972, with a lead of just over 6,000 votes, holding 50.8 percent of the vote to McDaniel’s 49.2 percent with 99.9 percent of precincts reporting.A defiant McDaniel offered no explicit concession when he spoke to his supporters in Hattiesburg, but instead complained of “dozens of irregularities” that he implied were due to Cochran courting Democrats and independents.
“We are not prone to surrender, we Mississippians,” McDaniel told his backers. “Before this race is over we have to be absolutely certain the Republican primary was won by Republican voters.”
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McDaniel was referring to reports that Cochran’s campaign targeted black Democrat voters through a combination of paying for votes and heinous race-bating tactics to have them vote for the incumbent Senator in the runoff.
Mississippi election laws are vague to non-existent when it comes to recounts and challenges. McDaniel is expected to explore all legal options in the coming days.
