Cochran's fight: All too personal

POPLARVILLE, Miss. – The ads tie Sen. Thad Cochran’s primary challenger to a stomach-turning crime: a grave violation of privacy in the nursing home where the senator’s stricken wife resides. In blaring language, they warn voters that the “McDaniel campaign scandal” is spreading, enveloping several men with direct ties to the ladder-climbing state lawmaker seeking to topple Cochran.

But in the final days of Mississippi’s Republican Senate primary, you won’t hear any of that from Cochran himself.


Hounded by national conservative groups seeking his defeat and grappling with an outlandish breach of personal and legal boundaries, Cochran is greeting voters with a soft smile and nary a mention of his hard-right opponent for the GOP nomination. A Washington institution portrayed as out of touch by his party’s right flank, Cochran has quickly become a sentimental favorite for many Mississippians thanks to his opponents’ overreach.

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Cochran, 76, is said to be privately shaken up by the intrusion into Rose Cochran’s living quarters at the St. Catherine’s Village nursing home in Madison County. The incident came to light in mid-May, when a local conservative blogger was charged with breaking into the facility and taking a photograph of her; Clayton Kelly allegedly used the photo as part of a video attacking Thad Cochran’s conduct in Washington. The senator has returned to St. Catherine’s Village multiple times since the intrusion to visit with his wife, who has long suffered from progressive dementia.

Three more men have since been arrested in the scheme, including a leader of the Mississippi Tea Party and an activist who has appeared on talk radio with Chris McDaniel, Cochran’s opponent. The 41-year-old state senator has denied any connection to the break-in and accused Cochran’s campaign of politicizing a criminal investigation.

Cochran doesn’t mention the incident on the stump. He doesn’t say McDaniel’s name in public remarks. He gives no outward indication of being hurt or angry about the breach of his wife’s residence. He did mention Rose at a Wednesday event in Hattiesburg, recalling how she reacted when he first raised the idea of running for Congress back in 1972.

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“I said, ‘What would you think about being married to a United States congressman?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know, which one?’” he said, drawing a round of laughter from several dozen supporters at a campaign office housed in a strip mall.

In an interview a few hours later, the six-term senator described his reaction when he first heard the news of the nursing home break-in. “I was surprised. It sounded kind of bizarre to me. I couldn’t imagine why they would want to be taking photographs of Rose,” Cochran said. “What we did in terms of response was to advise the local law enforcement authorities – the sheriff’s office and city police in the area – and then let them decide what their responsibilities were.”

As Cochran tells the story, that’s where his role in the whole uproar ended. He chuckles at the observation that he never mentions McDaniel to voters: “That’s right. I let him get his own publicity.”

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Yet even without Cochran’s help on the trail, the event known universally as “the nursing home incident” has overwhelmed the closing weeks of his race against McDaniel. An already-harsh race has grown intensely personal. While Cochran isn’t free and clear yet, McDaniel supporters fear that the sensational story has blocked the challenger from delivering a solid closing message, and perhaps curdled McDaniel’s appeal among voters who might be inclined to support a more strident ideologue but like Cochran on a personal level.

Even before the nursing-home incursion, McDaniel had veered into dangerous territory with not-so-veiled insinuations about Cochran’s health (“I pray for health, I hope he’s fine,” he told a national reporter in February) and sharp attacks on the senator’s fiscal record and habit of traveling internationally on the taxpayer dime (“I don’t like it when Michelle Obama does it. I don’t like it when Sen. Cochran does it,” McDaniel said on a radio program this month.)

Playing political hardball against a genial septuagenarian is risky under any circumstances, but all the more so against an incumbent like Cochran, an earnest, grandfatherly type who has been known for years as “Gentleman Thad.”

McDaniel’s campaign did not make him available for an interview Wednesday. In a TV ad released this week, McDaniel called the Cochran campaign’s TV ads on the Madison County investigation “outrageous.”

Against the backdrop of an already-caustic campaign against a well-liked incumbent, the targeting of Rose Cochran was an explosive act. Apparently motivated by a desire to show that Rose Cochran is in nursing care at home while the senator is in Washington, the activist plot has triggered a furious backlash among Cochran’s admirers.

“That was absolutely one of the lowest things I have ever heard in my life. It’s sick,” said Chester Moore, Cochran’s campaign chair in Lamar County and a veteran of his races dating back to 1972. Sue Bush, a longtime Cochran volunteer heading up the effort in Forrest County, agreed: “It’s something that shouldn’t be happening to a man who has represented us so well.”

Congressman Gregg Harper, one of Cochran’s most enthusiastic surrogates in the race, declared that undecided voters were “really offended” by the spiraling revelations about the activists’ designs on Rose Cochran. The senator, Harper said, has been characteristically levelheaded about the whole thing.

“I know he would be deeply hurt by what has happened, but I’ve also seen [his] calm, forgiving nature,” Harper said. “Everywhere I’ve heard him speak on this, I’ve heard him say he trusts law enforcement to get to the bottom of it.”

Cochran’s handling of the nursing-home incident is just the latest and perhaps most meaningful way in which his personal political style has diverged from the sledgehammer messaging delivered on TV by the senator’s campaign and a supportive super PAC. At events in Hattiesburg and Poplarville Wednesday, he pitched himself mainly as a workhorse for “Mississippi’s priorities” and “Mississippi’s interests.” In his soapbox spiel, Cochran doesn’t lob denunciations of the Affordable Care Act, like his early TV ads; nor does he attack President Barack Obama’s “failed liberal policies,” like the campaign leaflets handed out by volunteers.

Instead, he talks about supporting national security and military installations in Mississippi, and touts the seniority that would make him chairman of the Appropriations Committee in a Republican-controlled Senate.

The personal relationships and gentle style that Cochran has developed over more than four decades in public life are on vivid display as he greets voters at every campaign stop. At a courthouse in this storm-drenched small town, Cochran walked gingerly from room to room to make friendly conversation about the geography of his ambitious travel schedule (“It’s a bigger state than you think”) or the challenges of serving in county office (“Closer to the people – no place to hide!”)

Asked by POLITICO if this would be his last campaign, Cochran answered with a laugh and a shrug. On the question of whether he would serve a full, six-year term in the Senate, he gave what sounded like a cautious yes.

“I have no idea if this is my last campaign or not,” Cochran said. “I’m seeking a six-year term in the U.S. Senate. My term is expiring and I look forward to winning the election and serving that term. Beyond that is the ionosphere.”

In spite of everything – the trauma of the last few weeks and the intensity of the outside-group attacks against him – Cochran insisted he is still enjoying the game. “Oh indeed!” he said. “I’m enjoying it. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of representing our state.”

And what will he do the day after the election, in the event that he wins? Cochran answers with the usual smile and without hesitation: “Take a nap.”