Mississippi can lay claim to some of the GOP’s ugliest infighting leading up to Tuesday’s Senate primary vote, marked by a proxy war between the conservative establishment and tea party affiliates that’s triggered a torrent of spending by outside groups.

Poll results have been all over the map in recent weeks, indicating that state senator and rising tea party star Chris McDaniel might have a shot at unseating six-term Sen. Thad Cochran. At the same time, the race has become increasingly acrimonious.

McDaniel supporters found that Cochran’s executive assistant, Kay Webber, has traveled to dozens of countries with Cochran on the taxpayer’s dime between 2011 and 2013. The McDaniel campaign also criticized the incumbent for listing as his primary address an apartment in the basement of a house that Webber owns, which sparked rumors that Cochran has been spurning his wife. Rose Cochran lives in a nursing home where she is being treated for dementia. To top it off, Webber has allowed her house to be rented for Democratic fundraisers on occasion.

Now, the Cochran campaign is trying to tie McDaniel’s operation to Clayton Thomas Kelly, a tea party blogger who was arrested in May for taking photos of Rose Cochran inside her nursing home. Three others have been arrested in connection with the scandal, including Mark Mayfield, a board member of the Central Mississippi Tea Party.

And outside money has flowed unabated to influence this race, with more than $1.3 million spent in the last week. In fact, outside spending has far exceeded that of the campaigns, reaching a total of $7.8 million. Only in North Carolina has there been more non-party outside spending so far this cycle.

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Cochran, who ran unopposed in his 2008 primary, is now fundraising like a threatened incumbent. He’s collected $3.9 million this cycle in part thanks to the generous support of his conservative colleagues in Congress: Leadership PACs have given him more than he’s taken in from any other industry, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s (Ky.) Bluegrass Cmte and Texas Sen. John Cornyn‘s Alamo PAC. Cochran has also received funding from Mississippi’s other senator, Roger Wicker (R) through Wicker’s Responsibility & Freedom Work PAC.

McDaniel’s campaign, which has collected $1.3 million, might lag behind his opponent’s in terms of sheer fundraising might, but it’s received a lot of small donor support. Gifts of $200 or less account for 33 percent of McDaniel’s war chest, compared to only 1 percent of Cochran’s.

But McDaniel is also backed by powerful outside forces, including several tea party-connected fundraising behemoths; they’ve spent a whopping $5.1 million to unseat Cochran. The race has become a top target of Club for Growth Action, the super PAC affiliate of Club for Growth, which has poured $2.5 million in the race, more than half of all its total spending this cycle.

McDaniel’s campaign itself is bankrolled by a slew of tea party groups, including Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and Citizens United, which are among his top five contributors as well as being big outside spenders in the race. McDaniel has also received donations from Sarah Palin’s SarahPAC and from the Tea Party Express/Our Country Deserves Better, which both gave $5,000 to his campaign.

Cochran, meanwhile, has the backing of established conservative groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Rifle Assn. But he has racked up significantly less support from outside groups than his challenger. Instead, he’s relying heavily on his Washington ties. Lobbyists have given $64,000 to Cochran’s campaign, making the industry his fourth-largest source of funding — and donations from industry groups and conservative PACs are still coming in daily.

Cochran said in February, “the tea party, you know, is something I don’t really know a lot about,” enraging McDaniel supporters who question his conservative credentials. That may be true, but tea party adherents clearly know him well enough to have made a priority of trying to pick him off on Tuesday.

Follow Lalita on Twitter at @lalitaclozel



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