Yesterday’s victory of Thad Cochran over Chris McDaniel essentially eliminates Travis Childers’ chances of turning MS-SEN into a Dem pickup this November, since Childers’ only (and very slim) chance of victory was to run a perfect campaign against a deeply flawed, and frankly racist candidate in deep red Mississippi (NYT had Childers with a 5% chance of winning against McDaniel, which is probably about right). Had McDaniel won, who knows, maybe Democrats could have had a repeat of IN-SEN 2012, which I’m sure would have freaked the GOP out.
However, at the same time, the economist within me can’t help but wonder whether the marginal benefit of Childers’ chances moving from zero to single digits, outweighs the marginal costs of McDaniel likely replacing Cochran as a senator. So I decided to do a little research and explore this a bit further...
Apart from the problems of having another ‘Ted Cruz’ in the senate, and being a Fox News magnate, Mississippians would likely have suffered too with Senator McDaniel.
Firstly, I suspect one of the reasons many African Americans turned out to vote for Cochran was that McDaniel would likely have ignored African American constituency issues being the neo-confederate he is, and being much more pre-occupied with showmanship. Whilst Senator Cochran votes against African American policy interests (e.g. the ACA) he at least has a history of African American outreach. Cochran was not one of those conservative segregationist Democrats who went on to re-align with the increasingly conservative national Republican party; he was always unsympathetic to the cause. He voted for LBJ in 1964, citing the civil rights act, and when he ran for MS-04 in 1972 as a Republican, it was against a segregationist Democrat, Ellis Bodron, whom he beat narrowly by reaching out to black communities (MS-04 was 43% African American at the time), reaching close to 50% of the vote in black-majority counties such as Wilkinson, Jefferson, and Claiborne. This was when the party of white domination and segregation was the Democratic Party in Mississippi, still stuck in its civil war hangover. Hence, I don’t buy the claim that some on DK front pages are making that Cochran only started reaching out to African American voters for the runoff, and hence does not really care about African American constituents, since he won his first election in 1972 arguably doing just that. I think Cochran does genuinely care about black constituent service, however important you regard these services to be.
However, the other reason I suspect African Americans turned out for Cochran is because of his appropriation powers which he explicitly ran on. I don’t know what the figures are for the most recent years, but between 2008 and 2010, he earmarked $2.6M, and steered further appropriations through his clout as well. That’s good for Mississippi, and particularly African Americans who are on average less well off, since these funds cover public work projects, funds for education ($800m a year for the K12 system, which McDaniel opposes), and most notably, disaster relief, like in the aftermath of Katrina. All of that clout would be lost with Senator McDaniel, and even in the unlikely outcome of a Senator Childers too, since neither would have the seniority (and McDaniel wouldn’t have the interest) to appropriate such funds. Make no mistake though, I think a Democratic majority in the Senate, and Childers as senator would be far better for Mississippi than either Senator Cochran or McDaniel. But, I do wonder whether a 5% chance of getting a better senator is worth the 95% chance of losing all this funding for the many low-income residents of Mississippi.
So, to conclude, I have no doubt that Senator Childers, and a Democratic majority in the Senate would be better, both for Mississippi and the US as a whole, than Senator Cochran, and far, far better than a Senator McDaniel. However, I have mixed feelings from the consideration: whether a, say, 5% chance of replacing Cochran with someone better (Childers) outweigh the costs of a 95% chance of replacing Cochran with someone much, much worse? The horse-race side of me tells me that last night was a bad night for increasing the chances of a Dem pickup, but the economist side of me thinks that a Cochran win may realistically have been the best economic result for Mississippi and its constituents (Democratic or otherwise).
Sources:
http://www.politico.com/...
http://www.academia.edu/..._ (Page 8-9)
http://www.foxnews.com/...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...