Google News: Tea Party Primary Challenge in Mississippi Goes to the Wire

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Politics |Tea Party Primary Challenge in Mississippi Goes to the Wire

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Politics |â€‹â€‹NYT Now

WASHINGTON â€” There was no clear winner early Wednesday in the most hard-fought Republican Senate primary race this year, with the six-term incumbent Thad Cochran of Mississippi and his Tea Party-backed challenger, State Senator Chris McDaniel, running neck and neck after a night of lead changes.

At 2 a.m., with 98 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Cochran and Mr. McDaniel each had about 49 percent, with a third candidate pulling in less than 2 percent. Campaign officials said it might take until Thursday for final results in order to count absentee votes and to sort through contested ballots.

Mr. McDaniel sounded confident in an address about 12:30 a.m. â€œFor too long we let them have their way with us,â€ he said. â€œTonight in Mississippi, they heard us.â€ At that point, Mr. Cochran had still not made an appearance before his supporters.

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The senatorâ€™s backers were deeply concerned going into the balloting on Tuesday about the possibility of a runoff, fearing that Mr. McDanielâ€™s Tea Party supporters would be more likely to show up at the polls again. Any runoff would be held on June 24.

Mississippi â€“ U.S. Senate

Conservative hard-liners were hoping that Mr. McDaniel would give them their first major victory over an establishment candidate this year. Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Pat Roberts of Kansas still face primary opponents, but the challengers in those states are underfunded and little-known. Tea Party-backed candidates have already lost in Kentucky, North Carolina and Georgia.

In Mississippi, though, Republican leaders expressed anxiety even before the polls closed about just how much money and effort Democrats may put behind their Senate candidate, former Representative Travis Childers, should Mr. McDaniel be the Republican nominee. And in Washington, top Republicans planning a runoff strategy will have to consider how aggressively they want to target Mr. McDaniel â€” a man who could be their standard-bearer in Mississippi in three weeks.

Mississippi was one of eight states where voters went to the polls on Tuesday, four of which were nominating Republican Senate candidates for races that could decide who controls the chamber next year.

Chris McDaniel, a hard-right state senator backed by Tea Party groups, is challenging Senator Thad Cochran. George Clark/Associated Press

In Iowa, state party officials were heartened by the victory of State Senator Joni Ernst. Winning support from both mainline Republicans and the partyâ€™s more conservative voters, Ms. Ernst took more than 50 percent of the total against four opponents. She only needed 35 percent to avoid having the nomination settled at a state convention.

Among all the Republican Senate races this year, Mr. Cochran, 76, was the most vulnerable old-guard Republican, and Tea Party groups spent more than $5.2 million against him, flooding the state with anti-Cochran advertisements.

That had been a successful strategy in the 2012 primaries, when Tea Party groups helped unseat Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, only to watch his seat fall to the Democrats that November. Supporters of Mr. Cochran, hoping to motivate Republicans, openly expressed their fear that Mr. McDaniel, too, could lose the general election.

In all the Republican Senate races this year, Mr. Cochran, 76, was the most vulnerable old-guard Republican. Joe Ellis/The Clarion-Ledger, via Associated Press

The race between Mr. Cochran, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee who was first elected to Congress in 1972, and Mr. McDaniel, 41, was fought along generational and ideological lines. Mr. McDaniel, a hard-charging lawyer from the Hattiesburg area, accused Mr. Cochran of being insufficiently conservative and not aggressive enough in confronting President Obama, a deeply unpopular figure among Mississippi Republicans.

Mr. Cochran, a personification of the courtly Southern senator, often seemed out of place campaigning in the ideologically charged Tea Party era. Conservatives, seeing â€œporkâ€ as a four-letter word, were no longer moved to vote for him simply because of the millions of dollars that Mr. Cochran had brought home from Washington during his long Senate career.

But Mr. Cochran did little himself to confront his opponent, preferring to talk up what his seniority in the Capitol allowed him to do for the state. Speaking to supporters in Jackson at a rally on Monday, the senator read a speech in which he said he would use his position on the Appropriations Committee to rein in spending â€” and then reminded reporters after the event that he had used his seat on the panel to claim Mississippiâ€™s â€œfair shareâ€ of federal dollars.

Iowa â€“ U.S. Senate

If Mr. Cochran was unable to adjust to the necessities of Republican politics in 2014, Mr. McDaniel seemed well-suited for the moment. He aligned himself with Tea Party-backed senators like Ted Cruz of Texas and seized on the contempt that conservative activists have for Mr. Obama by assuring them he would fight for them in Washington.

The race was the most bitter primary face-off this year. In a bizarre turn that seemed like something out of a John Grisham or William Faulkner novel â€” if either of those Mississippians wrote such gothic political tales â€” a blogger who backed Mr. McDaniel was arrested for sneaking into a Mississippi nursing home in April to take pictures of Mr. Cochranâ€™s wife, Rose, who is bedridden and has dementia.

The blogger posted video of Mrs. Cochran, but it was quickly taken down. Mr. Cochranâ€™s campaign seized on the incident and broadcast a pair of commercials linking Mr. McDaniel to the episode. That Mr. McDaniel was still able run so strong in the face of such a story illustrated the intensity of his support and the favorable environment in which he was running.

Senator Joni Ernst waved to supporters at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, after winning the Republican primary election for the United States Senate. Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press

In Iowa, Ms. Ernst was outspent by one of her opponents â€” Mark Jacobs, a wealthy former electric energy company executive â€” but received significant help from outside groups. She also won national attention for an ad in which she talked about castrating hogs when she was growing up on an Iowa farm, and vowed to inflict similar pain on what she said were the â€œbig spendersâ€ in Washington (â€œmake â€˜em squealâ€).

Ms. Ernst will face Representative Bruce Braley, a Democrat who avoided primary competition. The seat is currently held by longtime Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat who is retiring.

In South Dakota and Montana, Republicans almost entirely avoided any Senate primary drama.

Former Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota easily won the Republican nomination for the seat now held by Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat who is retiring. Mr. Rounds is favored over Rick Weiland, who won the Democratic nomination with no opposition. In Montana, Representative Steve Daines, a Republican, will face Senator John Walsh, a Democrat who was appointed to fill the seat vacated when Max Baucus was appointed as the United States ambassador to China. The Montana race is expected to be intensely competitive leading up to the November vote.

California has no Senate race this year, but in the stateâ€™s most closely watched House race, Representative Mike Honda, a Democrat seeking his eighth term, outpolled Ro Khanna, a fellow Democrat who enjoyed significant support in Silicon Valley. But under California's nonpartisan primary rules, the two will face off again in November.

Correction: June 4, 2014

An earlier version of this article misstated the number of states with primaries on Tuesday. It is eight, not seven.

A version of this article appears in print on June 4, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Tea Party Primary Challenge In Mississippi Goes to the Wire.