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Thad Cochran survives Mississippi Senate runoff
In Oklahoma, U.S. Rep. James Lankford wins Republican nomination for open U.S. Senate seat
JACKSON, Mississippi (CFP) — Buoyed by an influx of support from Democratic and independent voters, U.S. Senator Thad Cochran has turned back a bitter GOP primary challenge in Mississippi, defeating State Senator Chris McDaniel.
U.S. Senator Thad Cochran
Cochran, 76, took 51 percent of the vote in the June 24 runoff, compared to 49 percent for McDaniel. The runoff was triggered when neither man captured a majority in the first round of voting June 3.
“We all have the right to be proud of our state tonight,” Cochran told his jubilant supporters. “Thank you for this wonderful honor and wonderful challenge that lies ahead.”
But a clearly unhappy McDaniel refused to concede, criticizing Cochran’s campaign for appealing to black and Democratic voters in order to win the primary and stay in office.
“There is something a bit unusual about a Republican primary that’s decided by liberal Democrats,” McDaniel said. “So much for principle.”
Cochran will now face former Democratic U.S. Rep. Travis Childers in November’s general election.
Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, U.S. Rep. James Lankford has captured the Republican nomination for the Sooner State’s open U.S. Senate seat, defeating former Oklahoma House Speaker T.W. Shannon.
Lankford took 57 percent of the vote, compared to 34 for Shannon, with five other Republican candidates trailing the front-runners.
Given Oklahoma’s pronounced Republican tendencies, Lankford will be the heavy favorite in November’s general election. The Democrats will decide an August 26 runoff between State Senator Connie Johnson from Oklahoma City and retired teacher Jim Rogers.
The Oklahoma seat opened up when U.S. Senator Tom Coburn announced he would retire at the end of this year due to health issues.
The race in Mississippi pitted Cochran and the state’s Republican establishment against Tea Party activists and outside conservative groups — such as the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth — that strongly backed McDaniel.
Outside groups on both sides poured millions in advertising into the Magnolia State, clogging its relatively inexpensive airwaves.
After trailing McDaniel in the first round of voting, Cochran’s campaign began making appeals to Democratic and independent voters who did not vote in the GOP primary in the first round.
That is legal in Mississippi, as long as those voters didn’t already vote in the Democratic primary.
The results of the second round of voting showed how well that strategy worked. About 67,000 more people voted in the runoff than in the primary, and in Hinds County — which includes the predominantly black city of Jackson — Cochran’s margin of victory was 11,000 votes, nearly double what it was in the first round.
Cochran is one of five sitting Southern GOP senators targeted for defeat by outside conservative groups. So far, incumbents have survived primaries in Texas, Kentucky, South Carolina and Mississippi, with one contest still to come in August in Tennessee.
Cochran’s victory is bad news for Democrats, who were rooting for a McDaniel victory to have an outside shot at capturing a Senate seat in deeply Republican Mississippi.
Childers was elected to the U.S. House from Mississippi in 2008 but lost his seat in the Republican wave of 2010. He got into the race when it appreared Cochran might lose, which could have given Democrats an opening against a more conservative candidate running statewide for the first time.
In the closing days of the race, Cochran and his allies told voters that nominating McDaniel, an outspoken radio talk show host, was too risky.
The GOP Senate primary in Oklahoma came down to a battle between two of the party’s fastest rising stars.
U.S. Rep. James Lankford
Lankford, 45, represents much of metro Oklahoma City in the House, In just his second term in Congress, he was elected head of the House Republican Policy Committee, the fifth highest position in the House GOP leadership.
That insider resume drew fire from some Tea Party and conservative groups who rallied around Shannon, 35, from Lawton, an African-American who is also an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation.
A one-time aide to former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watts, Shannon rocketed to prominence in state politics, becoming speaker just six years after being elected in 2006.
Analysis: Hillary Clinton’s coy routine isn’t fooling anybody
Clinton’s latent tsunami of publicity makes no sense if she isn’t running for president
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
Among the least attractive characteristics of the Clintons (both she and he) is what may be charitably described as their chronic disingenuousness.
To wit, they resort to spin and subterfuge that’s too clever by half, even when the truth would do them no harm. The meaning of ‘is’ always seems to depend on what the meaning of ‘is’ is, at any given moment in time. Just like her Arkansas accent comes and goes.
Which brings us to Hillary’s recent magical mystery tour, replete with an orgy of copious, self-serving publicity that would make a Kardashian blush. The centerpiece of this effort has been her repeated insistence, that, by gosh, she just hasn’t decided yet if she’s going to run for president.
But of course she’s running for president. Would Bonnie and Clyde walk by a bank without at least attempting to rob it? Of course not.
If she’s not running for president, her recent behavior makes absolutely no sense.
She doesn’t need to make money by hawking a book. After all, she and Bill now have more dough than they or Chelsea could spend in five lifetimes, no matter how many houses (note the plural) they buy.
She certainly doesn’t need a book tour to bolster her celebrity. And it’s rather doubtful that she has any realistic ambition to win a Pulitzer prize with her weighty tome.
So that brings us to the inevitable conclusion that all of this is but a prelude to 2016.
The Ready for Hillary crowd might say, so what? Why should she telegraph her intentions now and become a target for the vast right-wing conspiracy? As Hillary might put it (with a hearty thump on the desk), at this point, what difference does it make?
Well, for one thing, her coy routine isn’t going to keep her from being fired upon by conservatives. They’ve never stopped. However, what it does do is remind many voters how allergic the Clintons are to candor.
So six months or a year from now, when Hillary finally admits that, well, by golly, she is going to run for president after all, many people will realize that, once again, they have been taken in by Clintonian double-speak.
Of course, that last statement presupposes that anyone in America actually believes that Hillary Clinton isn’t running for president. Perhaps that depends on what the meaning of ‘isn’t’ is.
Meanwhile, refusing to admit what voters already know just reminds them that, for the Clintons, the truth is always a movable feast.
Louisiana U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise wins majority whip
Scalise is the only Southern member in the House GOP leadership
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana has been elected as House majority whip, making him the sole Southerner in the House GOP hierarchy.
Scalise, 48, who represents the Pelican State’s 1st District anchored in the New Orleans suburbs, defeated U.S. Reps. Peter Roskam of Illinois and Martin Stutzman of Indiana in the June 19 vote.
House Majority Whip-elect Steve Scalise
The final vote total wasn’t announced, but Scalise won a majority among the 233 House Republicans on the first ballot. He will take office August 1 as the No. 3 Republican in the House.
“I’m looking forward to bringing a fresh new voice to our leadership table and joining with this team to help confront the challenges that people all across this country are facing,” Scalise said after the vote.
“We’ve got solid conservative solutions that are going to solve the problems facing our country.”
Scalise’s ascension was made possible by the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia in his June 10 GOP primary race.
Cantor resigned as majority leader, and the current majority whip, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, claimed Cantor’s spot, opening up the whip’s post for Scalise.
Despite the fact that nearly half of the 233 members of the House Republican caucus represent Southern states, Scalise is the only Southerner in the party’s leadership. Cantor had also been the only Southern leader.
Southerner members also hold nine of the 21 committee chairmanships in the House.
Scalise was elected to the House in 2008. He was previously a state legislator in Louisiana.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham rolls to primary victory in South Carolina
Graham avoids runoff with majority in a race against six GOP rivals
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
COLUMBIA, South Carolina (CFP) — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham — the No. 1 target of Tea Party and anti-establishment groups in this year’s GOP primaries — has easily won renomination over a field of six challengers.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham
Graham took 56 percent of the vote in the June 10 Republican primary, far ahead of the second place finisher, State Senator Lee Bright of Spartanburg, who took just 15 percent. The rest of the field polled in single digits.
Graham will now face Democratic State Senator Brad Hutto of Orangeburg, who won the Democratic primary, Given the state’s strong Republican tendencies, Graham will be a prohibitive favorite.
Graham, 58, who is seeking this third term in the Senate, has run afoul of some Tea Party groups and conservative anti-establishment activists for his efforts to reach bi-partisan compromises with Democrats, including his support of an immigration reform bill that was opposed by most Republican senators.
His close political and personal friendship with U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona has also drawn fire, particularly over their blistering criticism of U.S. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for his filibuster over President Obama’s drone strike policy. Tea Party groups tried, and failed, to oust McCain during his 2010 re-election bid.
However, over the past year, Graham has buttressed his conservative credentials with heavy criticism of the Obama administration for its handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and for the IRS’s targeting of tax exempt groups.
Graham benefited from the large number of Republicans who filed to run against him, which fragmented the field and did not allow any of them to catch fire.
Fully anticipating he would be challenged in the primary, Graham also raised and spent more than $7 million, dwarfing his competitors, according to reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission.
Graham is one of five sitting Southern Republican senators in 2014 who have drawn primary challengers backed by Tea Party and anti-establishment conservative groups. Those challenges fell short in Kentucky and Texas but in Mississippi, U.S. Senator Thad Cochran was forced into a runoff. The fifth race is in Tennessee, which doesn’t hold its primary until August.
U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor goes down in primary shocker
House’s No. 2 Republican ousted by his own voters in Virginia’s 7th District
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
RICHMOND (CFP) — In one of 2014’s biggest election shockers, U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has lost a Republican primary to a challenger who derided him as a Washington insider.
GOP House nominee Dave Brat
Despite being outspent 25-to-1, Dave Brat of Henrico, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, took 56 percent of the June 10 vote in Virginia’s 7th District, compared to 44 percent for Cantor.
Cantor, widely seen as the heir apparent to House Speaker John Boehner, is now out of Congress, leaving an unexpected vacancy in the House leadership.
Brat began the race saying he wanted to be Cantor’s “term limit.” He also said the majority leader “has spent his time climbing the power ladder, making backroom deals and undermining conservative legislation.”
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor
Brat also criticized Cantor for supporting legislation that would have allowed some children of illegal immigrants to remain in the country. Cantor shot back, saying he was opposed to granting “amnesty” to illegal immigrants and touting his opposition to an immigration reform bill now stalled in the House.
Federal Election Commission reports also show Cantor raised and spent more than $5 million on the primary — 25 times what Brat managed to raise.
The 7th District takes in suburban Richmond and some rural areas to the north. The district is heavily Republican, making Brat the prohibitive favorite in November.
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