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New Facebook messages reviewed and reported on by The New York Times on Monday reveal a plan to photograph U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-Mississippi) bed-ridden wife in a nursing home. Those efforts led to multiple arrests and escalating tension in the last two weeks of Mississippi's U.S. Senate Republican primary. The Times' Campbell Robertson uncovered the messages while examining the events that preceded the suicide of Mark Mayfield, a local Tea Party leader who was one of those arrested in the alleged conspiracy to photograph Rose Cochran. Those photographs were included as part of a video posted on the blog...

JACK­SON, Miss. — Mark May­field, one of the founders of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Tea Par­ty, had lost his po­lit­i­cal ap­petite. He stayed away from Face­book and stopped writ­ing let­ters to the ed­i­tor. He went to his law of­fice, but of­ten had lit­tle to do, since his ma­jor clients had all but cut him off. When the runoff for the Re­pub­li­can pri­ma­ry came around, pit­ting long­time Sen­a­tor Thad Cochran against State Sen­a­tor Chris Mc­Daniel, the Tea Par­ty chal­lenger whom Mr. May­field deeply be­lieved in, friends said Mr. May­field could not even bring him­self to vote. Then on the morn­ing of June 27,...

Quite damning if true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NeP-Wfvp7o&app=desktop

In June Senator Thad Cochran won the GOP primary runoff election over conservative challenger Chris McDaniel after 25,000-35,000 Democrats helped push him to victory. Cochran and the Republican establishment also were behind the racist anti-Tea Party ads that ran in Mississippi prior to the runoff election. Thad Cochran won the election over Chris McDaniel by 6,880 votes in the June 24 runoff.

The Republican Senatorial primary in Mississippi exhibited an over-the-top abuse of power, showing how the accumulation of one party political power corrupts the entire system. Upon the death of Mark Mayfield, an attorney who had been arrested and charged with felony conspiracy for supposedly telling blogger Clayton Kelly how to access Rose Cochran’s room in a nursing home, I began to look into how that ridiculous incident had gotten so out-of-hand. During the primary, I watched as Bradley Dayspring, communications frat-boy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), made such a big deal about the arrest of the men that...

McDaniel Calls on Secretary of State to Direct Clerks to Provide Access to Election Records, Announces July 16 Press Conference Republican Chris McDaniel today called on Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann to clarify the rules for Circuit Clerks regarding access to election records and announced a Wednesday morning press conference to discuss the election records his team has examined thus far. “For the last two weeks, more than two hundred volunteers for from all over Mississippi have worked tirelessly in an effort to gain access to election records in order to ensure the integrity of the primary process in Mississippi,”...

On Friday’s broadcast of Laura Ingraham’s radio show, Missouri Republican Party chairman Ed Martin explained his decision to take an outspoken role in criticizing the alleged tactics of some Republicans in Mississippi behind an effort to get Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) his party’s nomination over State Sen. Chris McDaniel last month. Martin pointed to the racial components of Cochran’s tactics and argued the GOP could not be the “party of Lincoln” having implemented such tactics. “[I] actually didn’t follow as closely as others – the McDaniel-Cochran, all the details,” Martin said. “But when I saw the coverage and listened to...

Connie Cochran, the sister-in-law of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) and a Hinds County, Mississippi, election commissioner, swears she didn’t have anything to do with destruction of election evidence. There’s just one problem with her denial: It was never alleged that she, or the Hinds County Election Commission, did any such thing. “It's ludicrous to imply that the Hinds County Election Commission destroyed anything," Connie Cochran told the Jackson Free Press on Thursday morning. Shortly after making that statement, the local paper noted Connie Cochran “was advised to make no more additional comments.”

Earlier this month, in a taped interview with a conservative blogger, a Mississippi man named Stevie Fielder accused the campaign of Sen. Thad Cochran of having handed him envelopes of cash intended to lure black voters to the polls. McDaniel backers jumped on the story as evidence of fraud. We looked at those accusations after they emerged, finding a lot of reason to question the claims. Now, in an interview with the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Fielder says, among other things, that his convoluted story referred only to a "hypothetical" situation. "What was said and what was recorded on that tape was...

A few recent developments have revealed the tea party temperament in its most distilled, potent form. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin called for the impeachment of President Obama on the theory that his border policies are "the last straw that makes the battered wife say, 'no mas.' " Excavating the layers of mixed metaphor - the straw that broke the camel's back is somehow causing an abused woman to surrender in Spanish - Palin demands the ousting of an American president on the constitutional theory that "enough is enough." Republicans who disapprove of this plan, according to Palin,...

Ann Coulter is urging tea party challenger Chris McDaniel to concede in the Mississippi Senate Republican primary. In an op-ed in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the conservative commentator said McDaniel supporters who are fighting to contest the June 24 runoff election results against Sen. Thad Cochran are hurting the GOP — and McDaniel’s own political future.

Mississippi GOP Chairman Joe Nosef issued a statement Thursday in response to the latest legal actions from True the Vote, saying he plans to target the election integrity organization and its lawsuit's various Mississippi voter plaintiffs with legal action.

JACKSON — A federal lawsuit seeking voter records has been refiled in Mississippi’s southern district federal court. Texas group True the Vote and 22 Mississippi residents refiled their lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Jackson against Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann and the state Republican Party. The new version of the suit adds election commissions in Copiah, Hinds, Jefferson Davis, Lauderdale, Leake, Madison, Rankin, Simpson and Yazoo counties. The plaintiffs say federal law requires authorities to release voting rolls and poll books without erasing voters’ personal information. They also say the law doesn’t allow fees for redaction, saying...

Missouri GOP Chair:"Investigate Mississippi Primary Racism."Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus has been asked to open an investigation into the Mississippi Senate GOP runoff election—by a member of the RNC.In an interview with The American Spectator, Missouri State Republican Chairman Ed Martin says he believes what happened in Mississippi is symbolic of a “battle for the future of the party.” Martin says that RNC colleagues he has spoken to “are looking for Reince Priebus to show leadership” on the issue. “Leadership” defined as opening an investigation into what Martin and others see as race-baiting tactics used to win the primary runoff...

For now, the incumbent, Johnny L. DuPree, remains in office, while the political stalemate continues. Mr. DuPree, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2011, has been locked in a bitter battle with former City Councilman Dave Ware since the June 4 balloting, which ultimately gave Mr. DuPree a 37-vote advantage. Mr. Ware, who ran for mayor as an independent, and his backers have waged a relentless battle since the vote, arguing that Mr. DuPree benefited from invalid absentee ballots and pervasive election fraud. (City officials also acknowledged that they had left a ballot-filled box unmonitored for a time after the...

Sen. Thad Cochran's campaign manager, Kirk Sims, has been replaced by his state director Brad Davis, according to a GOP source close to the campaign. The source, who has first-hand knowledge of the information from speaking to campaign officials, also said the campaign has retained the legal firm Butler Snow for unknown reasons. Sims, a former chief of staff to Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant, leaves his campaign manager post having won a bitter primary fight against odds but also amid allegations of vote-buying and other improprieties that have engulfed the election's outcome in acrimony. Noel Fritsch, a spokesman for Cochran's...

In an unusual move that is getting some national political buzz, the chairman of the Missouri Republican Party is asking the national GOP to investigate campaign ads and robocalls that attacked Mississippi Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel in his failed attempt to unseat U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. Missouri Republican Party Chairman Ed Martin has requested that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appoint a task to investigate the “racially divisive” ads and robocalls that alleged McDaniel had racist ties. The request has turned some heads because, as the leader of a state Republican Party, someone in Martin's position would...

Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin teamed up to show "Reformicons" just how tough reforming the GOP will be. The last couple of weeks have been a coming out party of sorts for the “Reformicons,” the group of conservative intellectuals who have taken it upon themselves to reform the Republican Party into something less dogmatic and more electable. They were the subject of a New York Times Magazine profile and countless thinkpieces. They were the topic of a panel discussion at the Brookings Institution. Pundits were commenting on the resurgence of conservative intellectualism and wondering whether a gaggle of economics-obsessed conservatives...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky dismissed allegations from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, of impropriety in the Mississippi Republican primary — but noted it’s an issue for state officials to decide. “I assume the people in Mississippi will look at what ever complaints are filed,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday when asked to comment on Cruz’s call for an investigation in to voter fraud. “That is what typically happens in a post election situation if there are complaints filed they are dealt with at the state level.” “I think it’s pretty clear who won. Sen. [Thad Cochran, R-Miss.,] ran a...

Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., got lost on his way to a Senate Republican luncheon on Tuesday and ended up at the Democrats' gathering instead, the Hill reported. The Mississippi senator, who recently won an intensely ugly primary election against Tea Party-backed candidate Chris McDaniel, apparently forgot where he was going while navigating the halls of Congress. “After exiting a Senate elevator on the wrong floor” Cochran re-boarded, the report notes. “He then found the right floor but turned away from the Senate GOP luncheon, a few yards from the elevator, to stroll the opposite direction, arriving at the Democrats' weekly...