Guest AuthorOn Tuesday, I watched a man that I have long admired, Thad Cochran, fight to hold his seat in the U.S. Senate.
With 99.5 percent of the votes counted, challenger Chris McDaniel and Cochran each have about 49 percent of the votes cast in this Mississippi Republican primary.
They likely will meet again in a run-off in three weeks because a candidate must garner 50 percent of the vote to win outright. Mississippi political wisdom says that any incumbent with less than a 20-point lead headed into a run-off is doomed.
The Tea Party and its array of conservative political action committees spent $3.5 million to defeat Cochran, who has served in the Senate since 1978. McDaniel blasted him for not being conservative enough and for being “soft” on President Obama. Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum both endorsed McDaniel. Thad Cochran represented the status quo; Chris McDaniel was the game changer.
Thirty-six years ago, Cochran was the game changer in a state dominated by the Democratic Party. The Ole Miss alumnus was fresh off two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and had a solid core of support in Jackson, the state’s largest city. He was seeking a seat that had been held for nearly 40 years by James Eastland, who had announced his retirement.
Cochran represented a break from the past. Much of the racial discrimination in my home state was done at the hands of Democrats. The GOP and this upstart represented a chance to move away from the past and put the state on a new course.
Cochran won the Republican primary by a wide margin, 69 percent to 31 percent. In the general election, he faced Democrat Maurice Dantin, a former District Attorney who was backed by Eastland, and Independent candidate Charles Evers, the mayor of Fayette and the brother of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
Evers split the Democratic vote, and Cochran won with a plurality, earning 45 percent to Dantin’s 32 percent and Evers’ 23 percent. Cochran became the first Republican to win a statewide election in Mississippi in a century.
Cochran has had a quiet, but effective career in the Senate. In 2005, he was appointed chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, making him the first Southern Republican to chair the committee. He was selected in 2006 by Time magazine as one of “America’s 10 Best Senators.” He is currently the ranking Republican on the Agriculture Committee.
The results of this week’s primary saddened me because Cochran has earned his place in Mississippi GOP history and deserves to go out under his own terms. The Tea Party may win this battle, but the state of Mississippi and the nation will be less because of it.
Rick Outzen is the publisher and owner of the Independent News in Pensacola, founded in 1999 to provide an independent voice on the issues facing Northwest Florida. Column courtesy of Context Florida.
