Curtis Wilkie, fellow at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at University of Mississippi, covered national politics for the Boston Globe for 25 years.

When Thad Cochran agreed last fall to speak to my politics class at the University of Mississippi, I introduced the senator as a “moderate Republican.”

He stopped me. “I’m not a moderate,” he said, in his usual soft-spoken manner. “I’m a conservative.” No modifier need be applied. He recognized it could now be used against him.


Thad might disagree today, but “moderate” is a word that many other Mississippians would use—admiringly—to describe his 36-year career in the Senate, which is under threat, perhaps permanently, from a movement that considers compromise the equivalent of surrender. After years working quietly on bipartisan measures and channeling billions of dollars in appropriations to his home state, Cochran, 76, has faced a devastating challenge from within his own party in a close primary runoff against Tea Party challenger Chris McDaniel—a rebuke that has been all the more stunning considering that Cochran had not been seriously challenged, by Democrats or Republicans, since 1984. To those who respected him, even when they might have disagreed politically, it’s a genuinely sad reminder that what Thad Cochran represents—the old-school politics of the true Southern gentleman—is already an anachronism.

Thad—he is known throughout Mississippi by his first name—has never displayed a combative temperament. From the beginning of his career he rejected the invective of Southern demagoguery, a specialty that so many of his contemporaries were practicing when he was first elected to Congress. Privately, he can give a hilarious, scornful imitation of the blatherings of the late segregationist Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett. In actuality, Thad seems a descendant of the school of courtly Southern senators—I think of Sam Ervin of North Carolina, John Sparkman of Alabama, John Stennis of Mississippi—who spoke of conservative values but never carried the rattle of pitchforks in their voices. With seniority and mild manners, they cultivated trust among their colleagues and parlayed it into federal riches for their home states.

Full disclosure: I’ve known Thad since we were young boys on the Ole Miss campus in 1947, while our teacher-parents were earning their master’s degrees. A decade later, we were back at the university as students. Over the years, we lived in Washington at the same time, while he was in Congress and I was a correspondent for the Boston Globe. Now, like so many Ole Miss alumni our age, we both call Oxford home. Thad and I have plenty of political differences, but he is not the kind to disrupt a friendship with argument. That’s not his style.

Like most Republicans of his vintage in our state, Thad was originally a Democrat. He once told me he voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964, when Barry Goldwater’s candidacy and the passage of the Civil Rights Act triggered a stampede by white conservative Mississippians to the Republican Party. Four years later, Thad helped to lead a statewide campaign among disaffected Democrats who supported Richard Nixon. By 1972, he was a successful Republican candidate himself for a seat in the House.

Thad’s basic conservatism was never in doubt, but from the start of his career he departed from a line long held by most Mississippi politicians at that point: Race issues weren’t part of his political calculus. He refused to join in the bitter-end resistance to school integration in Mississippi in the 1970s, and he became one of the first white officials to make alliances with blacks. (In a rare sight for a Republican, Thad is openly seeking help in the predominantly black Mississippi Delta in the closing hours of the campaign.)

After he won a Senate seat in 1978, Thad built seniority and power the same way as had congressmen and senators who once represented the old “Solid South,” Democratic since the end of Reconstruction: by quietly acquiring clout as the region changed to red on the political map. He specialized in agriculture and appropriations and rarely engaged in discussions about heated “wedge issues” such as abortion rights and gun control. Thad became an example of the proverbial Capitol Hill “work horse,” laboring in private while the “show horses” sought cameras and acclaim. NBC tells me he only appeared on Meet the Press twice, most recently in 1997.

Thad Cochran with Trent Lott in 2006. | AP Photo

Back in the 1970s, ’80s and even ’90s, members of Congress drew on the expertise of others, regardless of party designation. A Democrat from an industrial state wouldn’t hesitate to seek advice on a farm issue from a Republican friend from Iowa. Congress was more of a community, and Thad fit into it easily. He was an excellent tennis player and often found himself in a tough match with a Democrat; he played regularly with John Breaux of Louisiana and even competed in annual, informal contests with Ted Kennedy at Hickory Hill. Once the game was over, it was all bonhomie off the court.

Instead of exercising conservative zealotry, Thad worked often with Democrats in the Senate and—God forbid—with Democratic administrations to craft legislation acceptable to both sides. In 2002, for instance, he was one of 11 Republicans who voted to pass the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill. His voting record was still reliably conservative, usually approaching 90 on the American Conservative Union scale, though it never reached 100 percent. Today a mere 90 is not good enough for many of his constituents.

Despite his low-key demeanor, Thad’s ability to steer appropriations Mississippi’s way made him a hero back home. They’re often disappointed by his votes, but even Mississippi Democrats generally like Thad as a man and respect his ability to guide billions of dollars to the state through his role as a leader on the Appropriations Committee. Budget-watchers might sneer at him as a prince of pork barrel spending, but Mississippi has profited through public works projects, funds for education and, most notably, relief after Hurricane Katrina.

Curiously, for most of his congressional career Thad’s biggest rival in Mississippi has been fellow Republican Trent Lott. The two men, four years apart in age, were elected to Congress the same year and came to Washington looking like a Republican tandem—smart, young Ole Miss lawyers representing a new party in their state. But they were never close and often took opposite positions on everything from patronage to policy. In 1996, they ran against each other to replace Bob Dole as the Republican Senate leader. Lott, a smooth operator and far more ambitious, held far more IOUs and won easily.

Of these two Republicans, Trent—who is also known statewide by his first name—was always the one with the harder, more partisan edge. He won the allegiance of remnants of the old white supremacist Citizens Council crowd that dominated Mississippi politics before blacks won the right to vote, and his own brand of conservatism remains more pleasing to the far right than Thad’s. The GOP in Mississippi was divided for years between factions calling themselves “Thad Republicans” or “Trent Republicans.” I’m not privy to what moves Republican minds, but I’d bet that hard-core conservatives’ long-time resentment of Thad helped to form a nucleus for the Tea Party insurgency in Mississippi—in spite of the support Thad has gotten this year from Trent, along with all of the party establishment.

Thad’s only serious Democratic opposition came in 1984, when a progressive former governor, William Winter, was encouraged by Democratic interests to run for the seat. Thad won re-election with 61 percent of the vote, and Winter has often called the attempt to oust Cochran his biggest political mistake. Since that time, Democrats have not bothered to try to unseat Thad. Last year at a literary festival in Natchez, where the senator presented his annual Thad Cochran Humanities Achievement Award, I heard Winter himself, a Democratic icon, publicly hail the senator as the state’s“finest public servant in modern history.”

That’s not an uncommon sentiment. I have a friend in Washington, a prominent lobbyist with Democratic credentials, who calls Thad “the nicest guy in the Senate.” He contributed to Cochran’s 2014 campaign, and he isn’t the only Democrat to do so. Meanwhile, Thad is appealing to two of the few sources of Democratic strength in the state: organized labor, as well as blacks. Because there is no party registration in Mississippi, Democrats are free to vote in the Republican run-off, unless they were among the few who took part in the Democratic primary earlier this month. (When Travis Childers, a credible “blue dog” Democrat who previously held a congressional seat for one term, filed for the Senate seat this year, I figured he did so as a provisional candidate for his party in case of an upset in the Republican primary. The tactic may turn out to be interesting.)

During four decades in Washington, Thad has tended to pay attention to his interests in Mississippi and to leave national politics to others. He embraced the Reagan years, even as the Republican Party grew into a formidable power in his state. But he never tried to be a kingmaker. In a rare instance of irreverent comment, he criticized Sen. John McCain during the 2008 campaign. “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Thad told a reporter. “He is erratic. He is hot-headed. He loses his temper, and he worries me.”

Thad later said his words were “ill-advised,” and the two seem to have kissed and made up at least temporarily; McCain was in Jackson on Monday to stump for his fellow senator. Nevertheless, Thad was never enthusiastic about the 2008 Republican ticket. He didn’t go to the convention, and on the night that Sarah Palin made her speech to accept the party’s vice presidential nomination Thad hosted a small dinner party at his home in Oxford, a comfortable two-story cabin by a lake. My wife and I were there as friends; the other guests were Republicans. The conversation was discreet, and even in private Thad said nothing critical of McCain or Palin. But as he turned on the TV so that we could watch her performance, it seemed clear to me that he disapproved.

There’s no reason for Palin to know of that 2008 gathering at Thad’s home, but her appearance in Mississippi this spring to add fire to the Tea Party uprising seemed symbolic retaliation.

Neither Thad’s elbows nor his rhetoric was ever sharp enough for the hard core. So this year, Thad is left with a following that is loving and loyal, but he is confronted with an opposition that is passionate. His friends are not optimistic.

Years ago, another Mississippian, Walker Percy, wrote a novel called The Last Gentleman. It is more mystical than political. No one has written a biography of Thad Cochran. But if they do, I think that would be a good title.