This post was supposed to go up Friday but well, fate intervened as everyone knows. Here is a round-up of stories from the national media about the election results. The Wall Street Journal delved into the Cochran's success in the black community in several stories. It published this chart:
Rest of article. The Journal reported:
Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's effort to reach out to African Americans and other Democratic-leaning groups in Mississippi to salvage his political career has drawn an angry response from his conservative opponent. But to some other Republicans, and to blacks who were courted by the Cochran campaign, the effort was a valuable base-broadening effort that could serve as a model for the party as a whole.
"What the Cochran campaign did was open up the tent," said Jackie Bland, an insurance agent from Madison who is African American and campaigned door-to-door for Mr. Cochran before the runoff election for the GOP Senate nomination. "I have formed a relationship and alliance with Republicans I never had before."....
But the Cochran strategy outraged Mr. McDaniel and his allies in the tea party movement, who argued that the senator's outreach to more-liberal voters confirmed the criticism that Mr. Cochran wasn't conservative enough to be the GOP nominee in the deep-red state.
Speaking to his supporters Tuesday night, Mr. McDaniel accused Mr. Cochran of betraying the party "by once again compromising, by once again reaching across the aisle, by once again abandoning the conservative movement."...
In 25 Mississippi counties, the African American population is above 50%. Mr. Cochran won 22 of those counties. Equally important, those counties saw an especially large uptick in voter turnout—a 39% increase—on Tuesday, compared with the June 3 election. In Hinds County alone, where the population is 68% African American, votes cast there were up by more than 8,200.
By contrast, voter turnout rose by 17% in the state's 57 other counties. Mr. McDaniel won a majority of votes in those counties, but the margin was far narrower than was Mr. Cochran's victory margins in the majority-black counties.
None of this proves that African American voters were a main force behind Mr. Cochran's victory. But in an election that came down to less than 7,000 votes, the higher turnout and improved margins for Mr. Cochran in the state's most-heavily black counties suggests that the African-American vote was a big factor.
Outreach to blacks and other Democratic-leaning groups was part the effort by the Cochran campaign and the national GOP establishment to retool the senator's lackadaisical pre-primary campaign strategy, which critics had said reflected complacency.
Henry Barbour, founder of a pro-Cochran political-action committee, launched a get-out-the-vote drive that focused first on rousing Republicans who supported Mr. Cochran but didn't vote on June 3 because they didn't think he was in trouble. But Mr. Barbour also to reached out to people, white and black, who never before had voted in a Republican primary.
"It's very good for our party, and very good for our state," said Mr. Barbour. "I want to have a bigger, broader Republican party but one that is grounded in conservative principles.''...
Here is a chart from another WSJ story:
Meanwhile, widely-respected political reporter John Fund wrote in National Review:
How far did the establishment GOP forces backing Senator Thad Cochran go in Mississippi this week? Too far, and their tactics are likely to leave permanent scars in a civil war with Tea Party forces that are out of all proportion to the importance the establishment placed on saving one 76-year-old senator’s ability to please Washington’s K Street lobbying interests.....
The key to Cochran’s surprising victory was a disproportionately high turnout in precincts with high Democratic registration. Mississippi law permits voters to cross party lines in primaries, but it prohibits members of one party who voted in their party’s primary to participate in a runoff of the other party. It also bars them from voting in the runoff unless they intend to support the resulting nominee in the November election — an unenforceable requirement, but one that showed that the intent of the election law was, in this case, to let Republicans determine their own nominee.
The tactics used to convince black Democrats to vote for Cochran included the same kind of race-baiting that Republicans have complained about for decades. “The Tea Party Intends To Prevent Blacks From Voting on Tuesday” was the headline on a flier....
Along with that unfounded incendiary message was a list of issue comparisons between Cochran and Chris McDaniel. Cochran was credited with such unconservative positions as support for federal pork projects and food-stamp funding. The flier carried no identification as to who produced it, a violation of federal law.
Curiously, another flier put out by the pro-Cochran Mississippi Conservatives PAC last week described Cochran’s positions in nearly identical language as the anonymous flier and even carried an identical photo of the senator. The slogan that Thad Cochran “Supports All Mississippians” is the same in both fliers....
But the Mississippi Conservatives PAC did engage in its own questionable tactics. A mysterious robo-call went out to thousands of Democratic households just before the June 23 vote. The female narrator’s message was as follows: “By not voting, you are saying ‘take away all of my government programs, such as food stamps, early breakfast and lunch programs, millions of dollars to our black universities . . . everything we and our families depend on that comes from Washington will be cut.”
As the Washington Examiner reported: “It turns out that former Republican Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s pro-Cochran Super PAC, Mississippi Conservatives, shelled out $44,000 for an offensive robo-call urging black Democrat voters to vote for Thad Cochran in the Republican primary Tuesday.”*
There has been much speculation about the offensive robo-call, which trashes the Tea Party for “their disrespectful treatment of the first African American president.” The female narrator claimed that Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel would cause “even more problems for President Obama.”
As I said, the wounds from all of this are likely to be long lasting.
However, leave it to the British press to provide some true flavor to the media coverage of this election. They boldly go where no newspaper has gone before. The Daily Mail (UK) actually published a tape of the radio ads aired on black radio stations as well as the push cards distributed in the black community:
Stay tuned. This thing has taken on a life of its own.
A series of three racially charged radio ads that ran in rural Mississippi on Election Day played a role in driving black Democrats to vote in a Republican primary run-off election. MailOnline has exclusively obtained audio of the ads.
They were broadcast 48 times in a 12-hour period Tuesday on WMGO-AM radio in the town of Canton, and urged black Mississippians to cross party lines and support GOP Sen. Thad Cochran in his smash-mouth contest against tea party insurgent Chris McDaniel.
Each carried a required acknowledgement stating that it was 'paid for by Citizens for Progress.' Clerks at the office of Mississippi's secretary of state told MailOnline that no such group is registered there as a political committee.
The Federal Election Commission also lacks any registration from a group with that name. Rest of article
*The Mississippi Conservatives PAC advertised on this website during the primary.
14 comments:
Those ads are shameful, but not nearly as shameful as the sheep ads
Good reports.
They did leave out McDaniel campaign's statement about sending his supporters to the Black precincts and the contributions to his campaign from those formerly associated with the Klan as well as rather incendiary comments made on blogs that got around the black community.
A smart thing to do would be to try to discover from current rolls, how many Republicans and Democrats still have a land line.
Whether it affected the predictions in this race or not, it certainly will in the future as fewer Mississippians have to rely on land lines for computer dial up, etc. And, the boomers will start to die in the coming decade.
WHY DID COCHRAN NOT COURT THE BLACK VOTE IN THE FIRST PRIMARY?
ONLY AFTER HE LOST THE FIRST ROUND DID HE DIG INTO HIS BAG OF TRICKS.
That lone county on the Mississippi-Alabama border with the exponential increase in voting in the 24June runoff, appears to be Ike Brown's 90% black-populated Noxubee county. Reconstruction redux allover again.
4:05 that's what I say. He didn't expect the LOSE the first primary however. He was just sitting back in his easy chair and thought he had this won. He scrambled before the run-off and actually started earning the vote (well what we think was a vote.....we are really not sure yet). It will be interesting to see how many votes were ILLEGAL (i.e., those that voted dem primary and voted REP. in the run-off). If they find that they are illegal, they need to be thrown out. And what happens if they find more than what it took Cochran to win? Well then they need to throw Cochran out... or ANYONE that does this! This is ILLEGAL and a disgrace to our vote! It does not matter to me WHO does it REP or DEM or TP, if votes are ILLEGAL then that candidate needs to be THROWN OUT OF OFFICE! It's DIRTY politics and LOW DOWN. But that's what happens when we don't have term limits....too much power and money and.....money talks.
I listened to Peter Perry running his mouth on Gallo's program Thursday or Friday, forget which.
Perry lied through his teeth when he told Gallo "I'm deeply offended by the fact that McDaniel doesn't want blacks in the Republican party". And when he claimed McDaniel's challenge was based on color.
Perry said three times that 'I am deeply offended'. Who cares whether this ignoramous is 'deeply offended'? I am deeply offended by Perry lying. McDaniel has never mentioned race or color, only that he is challenging illegal crossover of Democrats, regardless of color.
Gallo, in his typical biased style would not challenge Perry's lies. In fact he added gas to the fire by mumbling and stumbling over his non-interpretation of the law regarding illegal crossover voting. Gallo went off on a bizzare rabbit trail trying to explain (anthough he's totally ignorant of it) the law regarding who can or cannot vote which party in a runoff after having voted another way in the primary.
And to top off Perry's lies and Gallo's ignorance, Gallo would not take calls. He had Perez stalling and putting people on hold for twenty minutes while he rambled on about McDaniel and continued to tote the water and slop bucket for Cochran.
I realize fully that Gallo grew up on a Delta Farm and snorted a lot of DDT while he was shellin' peas, but how intelligent must one be to understand the simplicity of crossover voting illegality in Mississippi?
The run-off election is OVER!! COCHRAN WON!! Why are all of you TEA PARTY SORE LOSERS STILL WHINING? You sound like a bunch of two-year-olds that someone took your candy away!! GET OVER IT!!
Mississippi's 2014 primary election is the exemplary case supporting H. L. Mencken's addage that...
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Audio Ads from the rest of the article.
Does anyone have the scoop on Carol Stern at the Neo-Con think tank front, Citizens for Progress?
Everybody with half a brain knows that in Mississippi "liberal democrat" is a code word.
It would be interesting to compare the county by county percentages for Cochran in the runoff to the 1978 Republican primary when he ran against McDaniel's mentor, Charles Pickering. While the numbers are greater, the percentages break out about the same. No one accused Cochran of getting black votes in the Delta then, but he did run up high percentages.
Why can't the TP understand that crossover voting is legal?
They haven't provided proof of illegality.
Appealing to a crossover vote is common in open primary states and the Tea Party has used that tactic in run offs as well ( see Brat/Kantor).
If you don't like the law, try to change it. But, I will tell you that in a state with a population smaller than most cities, the open primary is popular. People like being able to crossover to vote for friends and relatives.
And, in the end you'd be cutting off your nose to spite your face!
Try to calm down and THINK!
IF you don't continue to self-destruct and become a viable party you will need crossover!
I try not to get myself in the pickle of listening to 'Phil Gallo'; however, again this morning he's been attempting to explain the voting rules. He can't seem to get past the idiotic comparisons and irrelevant paradigms.
If he continues to beat this horse, I would suggest he just read the rule on the air. That is if he can do it without rabbit trailing and stumbling off the edge of the table.
Crossover voting is not the issue, for the hundredth time...Voters that voted in the DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY could not, by law vote in the REPUBLICAN RUNOFF. This is the legal issue, not crossover voting. Two distinct issues, despite what local media tells you. One is an unenforceable law, the other is very enforceable.
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