Unless there is a last minute entry today in the Republican Primary, the candidates vying for the GOP nomination for U.S. senator on June 3 will be Thad Cochran and Chris McDaniel.

Cochran is as well known as a candidate for statewide office could hope to be. Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972, he became the first Republican in more than 100 years to win a statewide election in Mississippi when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978.

McDaniel, the challenger, is serving his second term in the state Senate.

In terms of resumes, there is no contest.

So McDaniel is trying to turn Cochran’s congressional record into a disadvantage.

Of particular interest to South Mississippians should be McDaniel’s odd evaluation of Cochran’s support for federal disaster relief following Hurricane Katrina.

According to Politico.com, McDaniel told an audience in Oxford, “I’m not going to do anything for you. I’m going to get the government off your back, then I’m gonna let you do it for yourself.”

Afterwards, a Politico.com reporter asked McDaniel if he would have voted for Katrina disaster relief.

“I would have to see the details of it. I really would,” said McDaniel. “I probably would have supported it, but I don’t know enough about it. That’s just it.”

After a quick course in disaster relief or damage control, or both, McDaniel issued this clarification: “Just to be perfectly clear, I support disaster relief efforts for massive tragedies like Katrina, and I’ve told the media that on several occasions. However, fraud, waste, abuse and misspent funds must never be allowed.”

So one minute McDaniel tells potential constituents he won’t do anything for them. Then he underscores that promise by questioning the federal response to one of the worst natural disasters in the nation’s history. And then he backs down and says, well, he would support disaster relief as long as, you know, it’s not wasted.

That rhetoric may please McDaniel’s Club for Growth supporters, but it left many Mississippians “flabbergasted,” as former-Gov. Haley Barbour said.

For his part, Cochran issued a statement saying “it is critical that Mississippians can count on their elected representatives to help them in times of crisis.”

“I was fortunate to be in a position to help us recover from Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in our state’s history. Our delegation worked together in a bipartisan manner to make sure Katrina relief legislation was passed. I was very pleased to have been a part of the successful effort, which was supported by our colleagues across the country.”

And as we have made clear in earlier editorials, Mississippi was fortunate to have Cochran in that position.

Cochran and McDaniel now have less than 100 days to make their case for which of them is best suited to serve in the U.S. Senate until 2020. Neither should leave that task to surrogates or advocacy groups

After more than 40 years in Congress, Mississippians have a clear picture of Cochran.

But it is difficult to get a clear image of McDaniel.

about this article.

On Feb. 19, U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel was interviewed by Politico. As reported by Politico, after “repeatedly ducking” questions about whether he would have voted for the Hurricane Katrina Relief Bill, Mr. McDaniel said, “I would have to see the details of it. I really would. That’s not an easy vote to cast.”

What?

We all know that if our elected representatives in Congress after Katrina had taken the McDaniel “dithering dance” approach — “Gee, I just don’t know how I’d vote” — the Coast would have been in a world of hurt. But for the fast, decisive action of our elected representatives in securing federal support, the Coast would still look like a war zone today — almost nine years after Katrina’s devastation. Thankfully, we had farsighted representatives who recognized that such unprecedented devastation called for prompt, decisive action, not wishy-washy representatives who “just don’t know.”

We can thank God that at the time of our greatest need we had the likes of Haley Barbour, Trent Lott and Thad Cochran looking out for our best interests on the Coast. And, with apologies to Gov. Barbour and Sen. Lott, the greatest of those was Sen. Thad Cochran.

JOHN HARRAL

Gulfport

about this article.

Greenwood Commonwealth, The (Greenwood, MS)

Section: Opinion

Words don’t fit McDaniel’s vote

February 24, 2014

U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel, when he’s decrying the wasteful spending of the federal government, includes the arts as an area where he says the waste is obvious.

He likes to single out the $200,000 Congress gave to the Rock and Roll Music Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.

Mississippi Conservatives, a political action committee supporting incumbent Thad Cochran, however, points out that McDaniel, as a state senator, voted last year to give 10 times that amount in state money to the Grammy Museum being developed in Cleveland, Miss.

We don’t criticize McDaniel for that vote. The Grammy Museum is going to be a great attraction for the Delta, generating tourism revenues that should more than offset the state’s investment while also providing another cultural outlet for residents of this state.

What we do criticize is the apparent hypocrisy of McDaniel’s campaign. He may say now what his tea party fans want to hear, but some of his votes before he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate say something else.

A roundup of the coverage of and response to State Senator Chris McDaniel’s remarks on Hurricane Katrina relief:
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“The future of the state of Mississippi hung in the balance. Nearly a third of its economy was shut down. Whole cities had been obliterated. Without federal aid, the state would face an instant depression and recovery would take a generation … All other issues and politics aside, any Mississippian that faults Cochran for doing all he could do to help his state in its hour of need needs to have their head examined.” – Geoff Pender, Clarion Ledger, 2-23-14
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“That’s not an easy vote to cast” – Chris McDaniel, POLITICO, 2-19-14
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“Voting for aid for your own people after one of the worst disasters in U.S. history would be a tough decision? Really?” – Times Picayune Editorial, 2-21-14
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“I would have to see details of it. I really would,” McDaniel said. – Chris McDaniel, POLITICO, 2-19-14
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“In the days following the Burns article, newspaper editorials and numerous Republican leaders blasted McDaniel for his weak statement of support for Katrina relief.” – Bill Crawford, Daily Journal, 2-24-14
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“I don’t think any person from Mississippi would dream somebody running for senator in our state would not have enthusiastically supported that,” Barbour said. “Our delegation worked their fingers to the bone and I think this is the most important legislative achievement of Sen. Cochran’s career. I mean, the idea that anybody from Mississippi would find it a hard vote?” – Haley Barbour, POLITICO, 2-21-14
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“McDaniel added that, ‘some of the money [in the Katrina bill] was misspent,’ arguing that when it comes to government spending: ‘It’s one thing to provide immediate storm relief and to protect people’s lives and property, it’s quite another to benefit campaign supporters.” The state legislator declined to back up the implication that storm money was used in a corrupt fashion. Asked whether there was a specific instance of government abuse he had in mind, McDaniel responded: “Not that I can say.”  POLITICO, 2-19-14
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The rest of McDaniel’s post is absolutely ludicrous. First of all, the state senator from Jones County is essentially insinuating that Cochran — and, by extension, every other lawmaker who supported the bill — was somehow responsible for the $2 billion in wasteful spending on “guns, strippers and tattoos.”

“Really? McDaniel is going to tell the electorate that Cochran supported a bill that provided prostitutes and tattoos for people on the coast? That’s bunk!” Sam Hall, Clarion Ledger, 2-21-14
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“As best I can tell, he’s never directly answered whether he would have voted for the $29 billion in Katrina relief Cochran secured for the Gulf Coast.”  - Geoff Pender, Clarion Ledger, 2-23-14
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“I’m not going to do anything for you.” – Chris McDaniel, POLITICO, 2-19-14
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“When an Ole Miss student challenged McDaniel’s past description of Mississippi as a “welfare state,” McDaniel stood by that characterization.” – POLITICO, 2-19-14

In his effort to make longtime U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran look out of touch with Mississippians, state Sen. Chris McDaniel paused long enough last week to make himself look so.

McDaniel hemmed and hawed when a Politico reporter from D.C. asked whether he would have supported the federal Hurricane Katrina aid Cochran championed.

“I would have to see details of it. I really would,” McDaniel said. “That’s not an easy vote to cast.”

After being lit up from D.C. down to Destrehan, which McDaniel called “slander,” he’s been trying to do a little Katrina two-step since — keep his D.C. tea party, anti-federal spending money backers happy while sorta-kinda walking back his statements. A little. He’s for helping people after a storm and all. But he’d probably do it different, without all the “fraud, waste, abuse and misspent funds.”

He gave a similar non-answer answer to the same question from a reader in a Clarion-Ledger live chat back in October. As best I can tell, he’s never directly answered whether he would have voted for the $29 billion in Katrina relief Cochran secured for the Gulf Coast.

And it would appear he and his campaign staff haven’t closely studied the most important Mississippi legislation to come out of Congress in his lifetime. They’ve mostly so far referenced fraud, waste and abuse that came from a first round of practically automatic federal emergency relief spending, and money that was distributed by the Red Cross.

There was fraud, waste and abuse in Katrina relief spending. And there will be the next time there is federal aid for a major U.S. disaster. That’s part of the human condition. But most misspending occurs on the state-government level — where McDaniel has served since 2008 without, that I recall, ever raising any major alarm about state Katrina spending — and on the local and individual level. Government leaders in McDaniel’s native Jones County got in some hot water with the feds over Katrina debris removal contracts.

Cochran’s defining achievement was securing an unprecedented program that provided Mississippi $5 billion to help repair and rebuild 40,000 homes and apartments damaged or destroyed by the storm.

And he also helped set up the Katrina Fraud Prevention and Detection Unit that then-state auditor, now Gov. Phil Bryant, helped lead. Fraud levels for the housing programs tracked about 1 percent, and HUD adopted them as “best practices” to be emulated nationwide.

And speaking of McDaniel’s Jones County, it should be noted that many people consider it to have been the hardest hit by Katrina outside the Coast area. Twelve people died there, nearly 1,000 homes were severely mangled or destroyed and thousands more damaged. An expert once told me it appeared part of Katrina’s eye ripped while passing over Jones County and spawned severe straight-line winds and tornadoes.

McDaniel’s predecessor in the state Senate, now State Auditor Stacey Pickering, and other Jones County officials at the time were concerned their inland area was being overlooked and were calling for federal help.

Would McDaniel, if he were in the U.S. Senate, have told them, “That’s a tough one, let me think about it and get back to you?” Of course not.

The McDaniel camp has fertile ground to say six-term Sen. Cochran has been in Washington too long. For days now they’ve been blanketing inboxes with Cochran comments that he doesn’t know much about the tea party or Chris McDaniel (how dare he?), and comments he made in 2008 about Barack Obama being a nice guy and the commonwealth probably wouldn’t self-destruct if he were elected.

And Cochran has a long record on federal spending he has to defend.

Fair ’nuff.

But I’ll repeat what I said in this column back in October:

“The future of the state of Mississippi hung in the balance. Nearly a third of its economy was shut down. Whole cities had been obliterated. Without federal aid, the state would face an instant depression and recovery would take a generation … All other issues and politics aside, any Mississippian that faults Cochran for doing all he could do to help his state in its hour of need needs to have their head examined.”