After months of milquetoast statements and letting surrogates do any campaign trash talking, incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran went on the offensive in Hattiesburg on Tuesday, calling his opponent Chris McDaniel “an extremist” who would hurt Mississippi with indiscriminate cuts to federal spending.

He also made his strongest statements to date about McDaniel supporters allegedly sneaking into Cochran’s wife’s nursing home room and taking photos of her for a political hit piece video and about McDaniel campaign. And about an investigation into McDaniel campaigners being found by authorities locked in the Hinds County courthouse in the wee hours of the morning after election night with conflicting stories about why they were there.

But his offensive campaign and more hands-on stumping comes late in the game, as Cochran trails McDaniel at least slightly in recent polls since fighting to a draw in last week’s primary and heading to a runoff June 24. McDaniel led slightly in the primary, but neither secured more than 50 percent on June 3.

McDaniel continues campaigning on growing anti-Washington, anti-incumbent and tea party sentiment. Cochran is trying to turn the tables, remind Mississippians what his seniority and clout has done for the state.

“He said he wouldn’t even vote for disaster assistance for Mississippi,” Cochran said, referring to McDaniel statements early in the race where he demurred on whether he would have supported federal Katrina relief Cochran helped secure. McDaniel later clarified he would have supported the relief spending. One of the Cochran campaign’s earliest ads attempted to make hay over McDaniel’s comments.

“That’s the most outrageous thing I’ve heard ever from a public official in Mississippi,” Cochran said “… He doesn’t want any federal dollars used to help out a state like Mississippi after a hurricane has hit the Gulf Coast, like Katrina? Did he go down there to look at what had happened and how much money was going to be required to restore all of that?”

Cochran, 76, has faced questions of his age and whether he was really engaged in his own campaign for a seventh term or up to the task. Media and public access to him had appeared limited by handlers.

McDaniel supporters have seized on this theme, and claimed Cochran is too old, too immersed in Washington politics and out of touch with Mississippians. A “Where’s Thad?” website was created by McDaniel supporters before the first primary vote.

This week, Cochran is on the campaign trail across the state, making more public appearances and talking with potential voters and media and trying to take the offensive. He’s been hitting numerous spots that have benefitted from his seniority in the Senate and ability to bring home federal dollars. On Tuesday, stops included Forrest General Hospital and the University of Southern Mississippi School of Nursing — for which he helped secure $3 million in federal money to build a new nursing school building.

Of the Katrina relief, Cochran noted he worked hard with others in the state delegation to help save the Gulf Coast from ruin after Katrina.

“(McDaniel) is trying to indict that kind of power and influence in Washington?” Cochran said. “It would be dangerous to have somebody like him elected.”

Cochran also talked Tuesday about the incident with his wife in the nursing home and the McDaniel campaigners locked in the courthouse, although Cochran referred to it as “the jail.”

“It’s bizarre people got arrested doing things at the nursing home where my wife is,” Cochran said, “and the jail — people in there after midnight — and these are people working for him and his candidacy? What in the world were they doing up there? I don’t think anybody knows all the answers yet. How many people were involved? What were they up to? I’m just raising the question. I don’t have the answers. But it sure is bizarre, isn’t it? I mean, think about it.”

Cochran said that as the runoff nears, “People need to be reminded of things that (McDaniel) has said and done.”

“And what he’s promised not to do, like vote for the farm bill,” Cochran said, “or whether he would vote for programs to help the poor and the needy. We have a lot of federal initiatives and if he’s going to take in after all of them and cut the budget, we are going to be the state that suffers the most and to me that’s a mistake.”

McDaniel on Tuesday had campaign stops scheduled including Meridian, Newton and Forest. His campaign released a new television ad entitled “History.”

It says Mississippians on June 3rd “made history by voting for conservative Chris McDaniel for U.S. Senate” and that McDaniel vows to “repeal Obamacare entirely, reduce the national debt, cut taxes and term limits for all our politicians.”

Read more here.

The stars appear to be aligning for Republicans to take back control of the Senate, National Republican Senatorial Committee Executive Director Rob Collins told Journal editors this week. But a win by former radio talk-show host Chris McDaniel in Mississippi’s GOP runoff, he warns, could reorient the political scape in Democrats’ favors.

If history is any guide, Republicans stand to pick up six seats, which is the average for opposition parties in midterms since the 1950s. The field also favors Republicans, who have seven fewer seats to defend this year than Democrats. Of the 21 Democratic seats that are up, seven are in states that Mitt Romney won, and six are in states where he received 54% or more of the vote (Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota, West Virginia).

Keep in mind, however, that Republicans lost Senate races two years ago in North Dakota (one point), Montana (four points), Indiana (six points) and Missouri (15 points)—all states where Mitt Romney won more than 53% of the vote. In 2010, Republicans also blew wild-cards in Colorado, Nevada and Delaware by nominating gaffe-prone candidates (though President Obama won all three states in 2012).

The GOP’s candidate roster this year is stronger due to NRSC recruitment and training, which has expanded the field. Mr. Collins lists North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas and Alaska as the most likely pick-ups. Exceptional Republican nominees have put Michigan, Colorado, New Hampshire and Iowa into play, and Oregon and Virginia are within a stretching-arm’s reach.

However, the NRSC executive fears that a McDaniel victory in Mississippi’s June 24 GOP run-off—the challenger edged out Sen. Thad Cochran in the primary last week by just over a thousand votes—could cost Republicans a Senate seat and undercut Republican candidates nationwide. Mr. McDaniel has an extensive audio record of impolitic comments that will likely come back to bite him. For instance, Mr. McDaniel has referred to Hispanic women as “mamacitas,” which few voters in or outside of Mississippi are likely to perceive as a term of endearment.

Democrats would love nothing more than to blare his gaffes through their media megaphone as they did two years ago with GOP Senate nominees Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, which cost Republicans the Missouri and Indiana Senate races. Liberals will seek to turn the 2014 election into a referendum on “radical Republicans,” which helped them hold the Senate in 2010 and 2012. A McDaniel victory would give Democrats another shot at playing this winning card.

Education funding could become a focal point of the hotly contested U.S. Senate runoff between six-term incumbent Thad Cochran and his challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel.

Cochran supporters have begun zeroing in on McDaniel’s remarks earlier this year when he advocated eliminating federal funding of education.

Former Gov. Haley Barbour, who helped form a pro-Cochran political action committee, has said he believes McDaniel’s stance on education funding will help expand the runoff electorate in Cochran’s favor.

Of McDaniel’s position on federal education spending, “That’s just radical,” said Barbour, whose Mississippi Conservatives PAC spent an estimated $1.7 million in support of Cochran before the June 3 first Republican primary, according to media reports.

Roughly one-fourth of K-12 education spending in Mississippi – $834 million in the current fiscal year – is from federal funds, and hundreds of millions of additional federal dollars flow to the state’s community colleges and universities.

Not long after McDaniel garnered about 1,400 votes more than Cochran in the June 3 primary but did not capture the majority needed to avoid the runoff, Barbour spoke of the need to expand the electorate by attracting new voters to the Republican primary.

People who didn’t vote in the June 3 Democratic primary are eligible to go to the polls in the June 24 runoff, even if they didn’t vote in the first Republican primary.

Barbour said McDaniel’s position in opposing federal education funding in the state, as spelled out in an April 10 campaign speech reported by The Associated Press, would be devastating not only for schools, community colleges and universities, but also for the Mississippi economy, which relies on schools for a quality work force.

McDaniel said in the April speech that federal funding for education is not mentioned in the Constitution, so education for the federal government is “none of their business.” In an April interview with The Associated Press the day following the speech, he said if the federal Department of Education were eliminated, state and local governments could handle education funding on their own.

When the AP asked him if the state could handle the loss of federal money, McDaniel responded: “I think Mississippi, if it’s allowed to keep more of its tax revenue, could offset those losses.”

On Monday, McDaniel campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch said the primary point McDaniel was making is that the U.S. Department of Education should be eliminated. He said that is a traditional Republican position held by former President Ronald Reagan.

Fritsch said, “It’s unfortunate that Thad Cochran and his allies are spouting Democratic scare tactics about the dangers of fiscal responsibility. Chris McDaniel’s position is that of most Mississippians. We need to be good, conservative stewards of the taxpayer dollar.

“Education is a vital and core part of government and Chris supports efforts to improve education in Mississippi, but because Thad knows he can’t win with Republicans he is going to use Democratic talking points to try to scare people into voting for him. It won’t work and quite frankly it’s sad.”

Barbour estimated the state gets more than $1.5 billion per year in federal education funds. K-12 spending for special education includes school nutrition and Title I for poor children. Community colleges and universities get funds for financial aid while community colleges get work force training funds and universities receive similar funds, plus research grants.

Kell Smith, a spokesman for the state Community College Board, confirmed that the 15 community colleges receive $248 million, “a good deal of this coming indirectly from Pell Grants our students receive” while they receive $258 million annually in state funding.

“The difference between McDaniel and Cochran is dramatic,” Barbour said, adding the incumbent has long supported federal education funding on the federal level.

In a statement late Monday, Jordan Russell, a spokesman for the Cochran campaign, said, “Sen. Cochran believes education decisions are best made at the local level. He is a strong, consistent supporter of public education in Mississippi including K-12, community and junior colleges, and our universities because he knows a high-quality education is a key to providing opportunities for Mississippians.

“Judging from his comment on April 10th, Chris McDaniel’s position on public education would mean drastic cuts to our schools and universities. That’s another clear contrast between the two candidates for U.S. Senate.”

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On Tuesday, Mississippians will go to the polls to make their choices in the Republican and Democratic primaries for the U.S. Senate.

In the Democratic primary, former U.S. Rep. Travis Childers of Booneville faces minimal opposition and should breeze into the November general election.

Who Childers will face in November is, of course, the hottest current topic in Mississippi politics, a race pitting six-term incumbent Thad Cochran against two-term state senator Chris McDaniel.

The race has been among the most acrimonious and ugliest in recent history, as the Tea Party candidate McDaniel takes on Cochran in what is widely viewed as a fight over ideological control of the Republican Party between the Tea Party.

The bitter struggle hit a low point in recent weeks as the focus of the contest shifted from policy to scandal after police in Madison arrested four McDaniel supporters and charged them with illegally conspiring to photograph Cochran’s wife in the nursing home where she has lived since 2001 with dementia. Police investigators say Rose Cochran was photographed on Easter Sunday and her image was included in an anti-Cochran political video posted briefly online six days later. While McDaniel has condemned the act and vehemently denied any involvement, the four men charged in the photo incident are McDaniel supporters and two of them were particularly close associates of the candidate.

That ugly spectacle aside, we believe there is a clear choice in this race.

McDaniel, in true Tea Party fashion, strikes the pose of someone unwilling to compromise. He is going to Washington to wage war and take no prisoners. No negotiations. No compromises. That approach might win points among his supporters, but it suggests that McDaniel has a naive approach to how government works — and doesn’t work.

Cochran, on the other hand, has proven to be an effective, thoughtful and conciliatory leader. Over his five terms in the Senate, he has exhibited his effectiveness by the millions of dollars in funding, facilities and programs he has brought to a state ever in desperate need. Our state’s share of the military pie alone, speaks to his effectiveness. With major Air Force bases in Columbus and Biloxi, the NASA facility in Bay St. Louis, the SeaBee Base in Gulfport and the Naval Air Station in Meridian, Mississippi is a major player in our defense industry. Likewise, major research facilities at our universities also attest to the skills of our congressional delegation.

Now in his 36th year in the Senate, Cochran is tied for its third most senior member. The influence and advantages accompanying that seniority should not be discarded without good reason.

Thad Cochran’s record on behalf of Mississippians makes him the easy choice as the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.

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Much has been said and written about the nastiness of the U.S. Senate race pitting challenger Chris McDaniel against longtime incumbent Thad Cochran.

The negative tenor of the campaign, while regrettable, is hardly surprising.  The Republican Party is seriously divided in a nation that’s seriously divided.

When you strip away the attack ads, though, Tuesday’s Republican primary represents a pivotal point for Mississippi that pits practicality against ideology.

In years past, a six-term incumbent such as Cochran, who has conducted himself with dignity in office and has been highly successful at steering federal dollars to his home state, wouldn’t have to break a sweat in a re-election campaign.

Mississippians–Democrat and Republican–have understood that it’s only through seniority that this small state has been able to hold its own and then some in securing federal dollars and programs.  It’s partially because of this clout that for every dollar Mississippi sends to Washington in taxes, it receives more than three dollars in return.

The GOP’s tea party wing, which is backing McDaniel, is asking voters to forget about that highly favorable balance of payments and to toss Cochran out, even as he has a real shot at becoming chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful positions in Congress.  They are asking the state to commit fiscal suicide, all in the name of making a point about the federal debt, about being uncompromisingly true to conservative principles, about registering general dissatisfaction with the country’s direction.

They make the argument that Mississippi was the poorest state in the nation when Cochran first went to Washington 41 years ago, and it’s still the poorest state in the nation.  So what has all that federal spending done? they ask.  The answer is simple.  It’s kept Mississippi from being even poorer.

Without the clout of seniority, it’s unlikely Mississippi would have a shipbuilding or space industry on its Gulf Coast.  It’s likely that the Delta, propped up by farm subsidies and flood-control projects, would be further depopulated.  It’s unlikely that the state’s universities would have many of the attractive facilities or programs they now do.  It’s likely that the Gulf Coast, decimated just nine years ago by the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, would be nowhere near its current state of recovery.  In short, if not for the influence of Cochran and many of his like long-tenured predecessors, this state would be even further behind the rest of the country on most every meaningful economic, educational and social measuring stick.

Certainly, some of these benefits for Mississippi were achieved through legislative compromise.  That’s the nature of getting things done in Congress and most any institution that’s democratic in nature.  The problem in Washington is not there’s been too much deal-making of late.  It’s that there’s been too little on all sides.  The Affordable Care Act to which McDaniel and his tea party faithful object so strongly is in fact the product of an unwillingness to compromise.

One of these days, Cochran should retire.  At 76, he is showing his age.

When he does step down, though, it should be to a candidate in his mold:  one who can reach across party lines to get things done, who brings this state together rather than drives it apart, who has more to him than a fire-breathing speech.

That candidate is not McDaniel.

We strongly recommend that voters in the Republican primary cast their ballots for Cochran.

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