Rove American Crossroads in Mississippi Controversy

Said the Post story the day after Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel had defeated six-term Mississippi GOP Senator Thad Cochran in the first round of the state’s GOP primary:

The same declaration below as reported in “The Hill” the same day as the Washington Post article (June 20, 2014):

“Crossroads sitting out Mississippi runoff”

By Alexandra Jaffe, The Hill - June 20, 2014

At least one major establishment player is sitting out the expected runoff between Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) and primary challenger Chris McDaniel.

American Crossroads announced Wednesday, as the votes were still being counted in Mississippi, that it would not be wading into the fight.

“Other than Alaska, we have completed our work on Senate primaries this cycle and are now focused on general elections. With the Chamber [of Commerce], the [National Republican Senatorial Committee], and a local super PAC already backing Cochran, this is not our fight,” said Paul Lindsay, American Crossroads’s communications director.

That leaves Cochran lacking a major spender in what’s likely to be a fierce and expensive fight for the nomination, in contrast to the full-throated support national conservative groups have expressed for McDaniel.

Outside groups spent $8 million on the primary fight alone, with more than $5 million of that going to McDaniel.

Cochran heads into the runoff at a disadvantage, facing the challenge of maintaining enthusiasm around his candidacy and convincing persuadable voters and those who didn’t vote to go to the polls for him later this month.

While both candidates need all the outside help they can get in the runoff — Cochran posted $681,000 cash on hand while McDaniel had $238,000 in mid-May, much of which has likely been depleted — Cochran may need it more, if national conservative groups again go all-in for the challenger.

And they indicated as much on Wednesday. FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe said his group would “double down” for McDaniel in the runoff; Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said his group “will vigorously pursue this race to its conclusion.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/208237-american-crossroads-sitting-out-of-mississippi-primary

Politico - June 29, 2014: No place like home: Romney scapegoat wins in Miss. The novel’s plot is now almost eerily prescient: A cynical Republican consultant returns to his native Mississippi to run a slash-and-burn campaign, grappling with cartoonish scandals and echoes of his childhood in the civil rights era. In the end, an aging political throwback — a genteel ex-governor — lands a place in the U.S. Senate.

Stuart Stevens wrote the satirical book, “Scorched Earth,” in 1994. In 2014, he practically lived it.

The former senior strategist for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, Stevens decamped this spring to Mississippi to help steer Sen. Thad Cochran through a trying reelection fight. Settling in a hotel a few miles from the home on Jackson’s Piedmont Street where he grew up, the Republican operative became a mercurial presence around the race. An ad-maker by trade, Stevens popped up on Cochran’s campaign bus, near the senator’s side during a predawn stop at the Ingalls shipyard, on the sidelines of a Chris McDaniel event featuring Romney’s old nemesis, Rick Santorum.........

SNIP

".......Stevens’ ties to the Mississippi political elite go back decades: His father, Phineas Stevens, co-founded the law firm Butler Snow, the legal powerhouse where former Gov. Haley Barbour now hangs his hat. Stevens came up in politics as a driver to William Winter, the Democratic governor who remains a hero to civil rights progressives, and advised Barbour’s two successful campaigns. Austin Barbour, the former governor’s nephew, who is credited with the nuts-and-bolts turnaround of Cochran’s effort, is a strategist at Stevens’ firm. His father and mother, Pat, still reside in the state, and a sister lives in Laurel, in the heart of McDaniel’s state Senate district.".........

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