In 1776, American revolutionary philosopher Thomas Paine wrote, “in America, the law is king.” Later, Founding Father John Adams said that the United States must establish “a government of laws and not of men.”
But some people in America don’t want to live by the rules. Or they want to ignore laws that don’t favor them. One example is Chris McDaniel, the tea party-backed loser of Mississippi’s U.S. Senate Republican primary.
Certified results show six-term U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran won by 7,667 votes. But more than three weeks later, McDaniel has not conceded.
McDaniel complains that Democrats helped give Cochran the nomination in a state where Democrat is often synonymous with black.
In other words, McDaniel believes that black voters ruined his Republican election.
Cochran won the GOP runoff by getting people — white and black — who didn’t vote the first time to go to the polls.
The pro-Cochran super PAC Mississippi Conservatives sent almost $145,000 to All Citizens for Mississippi, a group that urged black voters to turn out for the June 24 runoff
The super PAC, which is led by former Gov. Haley Barbour, paid for the outreach efforts to black and Democratic voters. The group spent $111,000 in the final weeks of the campaign to highlight Cochran’s support for historically black colleges and for Hurricane Katrina recovery dollars.
McDaniel had finished 1,418 votes ahead of Cochran in the June 3 GOP primary. Turnout increased by 63,295 votes in the runoff. Cochran received 51 percent of the 382,197 ballots cast in the June 24 runoff.
“We were looking for all Mississippians who would vote for Thad Cochran,” Brian Perry, the super PAC’s director, told The Associated Press, “and we went into all communities.”
McDaniel’s campaign said that Cochran and his allies resorted to “race baiting” to win. Second District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, the lone Democrat in Mississippi’s congressional delegation, said McDaniel should blame himself and his tea-party rhetoric if he’s upset about black voters affecting the GOP primary.
“When you talk about government not having an obligation to its citizens and you use code words like ‘they have lived off the government too long,’” said Thompson, “to the average black Mississippian, those code words bring up too much of the past.
“And I just think that McDaniel did as much for the Cochran turnout in the black community as the Cochran people did,” said Thompson, who is black.
McDaniel has seemed to suggest that drawing these “new” voters into the election was somehow illegal. He knows better.
The only voters prohibited from casting a ballot in the June 24 GOP runoff were those who had voted in the June 3 Democratic primary. Mississippi voters do not register by party, but state law bans people from voting in one party’s primary and another party’s runoff in the same cycle.
McDaniel has claimed that there were massive voting irregularities on June 24 but has yet to produce any evidence. Still, his lawyers said Wednesday that McDaniel could file a legal challenge to the election’s result within 10 days.
McDaniel’s campaign has been trying to obtain copies of the poll books from all 82 counties. But the campaign doesn’t want to pay for those copies. Never mind that the Cochran campaign paid for copies after the June 3 election. Never mind that an average citizen would have to pay for those copies.
In its quest for evidence of improper voting, McDaniel’s campaign said it needed to see poll books that included the birthdates and other identifying information. A quick check of the law would have shown that this is illegal.
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, the state’s top elections official, said that the McDaniel campaign’s filing of lawsuits against circuit clerks to seek poll books that show birthdates is a waste of time and tax dollars.
“Voters have a right to have their personal information protected,” Hosemann said.
On Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court agreed with Hosemann. The justices ruled that circuit clerks must redact voters’ birthdates before poll books are open for public inspection.
Justices ruled that poll books are controlled by the state Public Records Act. That law says that Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and dates of birth must be redacted before the public can examine certain documents.
McDaniel campaign attorney Mitch Tyner said he will ask the court to reconsider and reverse the decision. Of course he will.
And in the very likely event that McDaniel’s campaign loses there, will that end this farce? And when McDaniel finally loses, whom or what will he blame for his defeat.
I assume he will blame the Republican establishment, rogue Democrats and inconvenient laws.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
