Six-term incumbent Thad Cochran, the Republican leader on the Senate Agriculture Committee, won the GOP run-off in Mississippi by 2 percentage points over state Sen Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party favorite. Cochran won on a combination of TV endorsement by football star Brett Favre, a door-to-door campaign to identify and turn out voters, and Democratic cross-over voters, said Politico. Cochran, a defender of Southern crops, was a key figure in writing the new farm policy law and has supported public nutrition programs.
“It was an extraordinary end to a wild campaign, with a Republican standing up for the rights of black Democrats, and with Tea Party groups from the North, especially the Senate Conservatives Fund, crying foul,” said the New York Times, which reported an upsurge in voting in black precincts in Jackson. McDaniel refused to concede the election in what Politico said was a major victory for the GOP establishment.
Cochran’s victory all but extinguished the chances for Democrats to win the seat as an offset of Republican gains forecast in the mid-term elections. The Washington Post said Cochran was “poised to reclaim the chairman’s gavel of the Appropriations Committee.” If the GOP wins the Senate majority and Cochran takes Appropriations, Pat Roberts of Kansas might chair the Agriculture Committee and become the first person to chair Agriculture in both chambers of Congress.