Missisippi Burning: McDaniel Offers $15k Reward

by Matt Vespa,

Last week, I wrote a post about how voter outreach and cultural ties helped Sen. Thad Cochran win in the Mississippi runoff against his challenger State Sen. Chris McDaniel.

As for the cultural ties, Mississippi voters still like their pork projects and the long-serving lawmakers who bring home that bacon. But, as for voter outreach, I jumped the gun. While evidence is still accumulating and being analyzed, there are some very questionable practices that have been alleged surrounding the get-out-the-vote effort on Cochran’s behalf that deserves some attention.

Investigative reporter Charles Johnson alleges that the Cochran camp bought the votes of black Mississippians. Matt Lewis at the Daily Caller wrote that:

The African-American pastor alleging that he was offered money to buy votes for Thad Cochran was also paid by the reporter for the story. This is both ironic and problematic: If you’re the kind of person who is willing to participate in a vote-buying scheme, isn’t it possible you’d also be the kind of person who is willing to make up a wild story in order to get paid by a reporter?

Another interesting wrinkle is that the person making the allegation claims he received the walking around money to distribute to African-American voters but never got paid the money he was promised for his services (note: Always get paid up front!).

Of course, even if this pastor is telling the truth, the hard part will be proving that a). the people ordering the vote buying were actually from the Cochran campaign, and b). that the number of votes bought would account for the difference in the election.

Still, it doesn’t mean that Cochran’s GOTV operation shouldn’t be looked into over these reprehensible allegations.

Recently, Eliana Johnson wrote for National Review about “scandal-plagued” Democratic political operative Mitzi Bickers, who helped Cochran reach black voters.

Yeah, it’s dirty politics at it worst. Now, the FEC is looking into the Mississippi Conservatives PAC for possible campaign finance violations.

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