Chris McDaniel to Challenge Election Results

Photo Credit: APState Sen. Chris McDaniel will challenge the results of the Tuesday runoff election, in which 41-year incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran won by about 6,400 votes, McDaniel announced to a room of supporters here at his victory party at the Hattiesburg Convention Center late Tuesday evening.

“I want to be very, very clear: There is nothing dangerous or extreme about wanting to balance a budget,” McDaniel said in a fiery speech to supporters. There is nothing dangerous or extreme about defending the Constitution or the civil liberties therein. There is nothing strange at all about standing as people of faith for a country that we built, that we believe in. But there is something a bit strange, there is something a bit unusual, about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats.”

McDaniel said Cochran’s decision to seek Democrats to vote for him in the Republican primary runoff was un-Republican.

“So much for bold colors,” McDaniel said. “So much for principle. I guess they can take some consolation in the fact that they did something tonight by once again compromising, by once again reaching across the aisle, by once again abandoning the conservative movement. I would like to know which part of that strategy today our Republican friends endorse. I would like to know which part of that strategy today our statewide officials endorse. This is not the party of Reagan, but we’re not done fighting and when we’re done it will be.”

McDaniel said that Cochran’s actions mean the “conservative movement took a backseat to liberal Democrats” in Mississippi on Tuesday, something he argued can’t be allowed to stand as precedent. “In the most conservative state in the republic this happened and if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere—and that’s why we will never stop fighting,” McDaniel said.

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