Mississippi: McDaniel Insurgency Enters Week Four

The plaintiff in a recent Supreme Court decision negating federal candidate contribution limits is backing Chris McDaniel’s insurgency, which continues three weeks after the Mississippi primary challenger lost his US Senate primary runoff election to incumbent Thad Cochran. Sean McCutcheon, a coal baron and tea party activist, is the latest high-profile Republican to demand the secretary of state nullify the will of voters and investigate specious accusations of fraud.

McCutcheon’s complaint includes allegations from some of the same plaintiffs in True The Vote’s ridiculous lawsuit, and the contact email address belongs to DB Capitol Strategies. Dan Backer’s high-powered law firm is the entity behind an entire constellation of political action committees as well as the Supreme Court decision bearing McCutcheon’s name.

Meanwhile, McDaniel is suing the Harrison County Circuit Clerk, alleging Gayle Parker and her deputy clerks refused to give his staff access to all election materials from the runoff election. In fact, Parker’s staff turned over their records to McDaniel’s campaign, but he’s demanding the voter birth dates that they had carefully redacted. To put this in further context, Harrison was Cochran’s second-strongest county in the original June 3rd primary election, and he won it by some 3,848 votes in the runoff, so even with complete records it’s highly unlikely that McDaniel could change the outcome.

As we told you last week, True The Vote re-filed their ridiculous lawsuit in the Southern District. Yesterday, US District Judge Henry Wingate recused himself from the case, citing his close friendship with Thad Cochran, who also nominated him for the bench. Jackson Jambalaya has the order of recusal as well as some speculation on who will hear the case.

Now entering their fourth week of angry denial, McDaniel’s supporters show no sign of ‘coming to their senses‘ to accept the disappointing outcome. In fact, Mark Mayfield, the Jackson attorney who was arrested in connection with the nursing home break-in and photographic exploitation of Rose Cochran and committed suicide three days after the runoff, had a reputation for being “the reasonable one” in the Mississippi tea party.