Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran, who was elected to the Senate in 1978 and served until his resignation last year, died Thursday at the age of 81. Cochran, who was his state’s first Republican senator since Reconstruction, was a loyal member of the Senate GOP caucus, but he had some unusual twists and turns during his decades in public life. The biggest surprise was Cochran’s miraculous 2014 primary runoff victory, during which he successfully appealed to African Americans to cast a vote in the GOP contest to help him fend off state Sen. Chris McDaniel, an ally of neo-Confederate groups.
Like many Mississippi Republicans of his era, Cochran came up as a Democrat, and he later told historian Curtis Wilkie that he still supported Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater in 1964 even as local white resistance to civil rights propelled Goldwater to an 87-13 win. But Cochran was a full-fledged Republican by 1968, when he headed up Richard Nixon's state campaign: Nixon took third place with just 14% of the vote, while segregationist George Wallace, a Democrat-turned-independent, beat Democratic Vice President Hubert Humphrey 63-23.
Four years later, Cochran ran for an open House seat that included Jackson and southwestern Mississippi. He defeated Democratic state Sen. Ellis Bodron 48-44, while Eddie McBride, an African American independent, took 8%. Trent Lott, Cochran's future Senate colleague and rival, also won a seat that day, which made the two just the second and third Republicans to represent the state in Congress since Reconstruction.
Cochran took over 70% of the vote in his two reelection campaigns, and in 1978, he sought to succeed longtime Democratic Sen. James Eastland, a notorious segregationist who had decided to retire. Cochran and Lott reportedly had agreed in advance that if the seat ever opened up, they would decide who would run for it. However, Cochran jumped in quickly with the support of the party establishment without talking to Lott or other up-and-comers. Lott didn't end up running, but he would have his revenge years later.
Cochran was trying to become the first Republican to hold a Senate seat in the Magnolia State since Reconstruction, but he faced a tough campaign against Democrat Maurice Dantin. However, Cochran once again benefited from the presence of a black independent candidate. Fayette Mayor Charles Evers, an older brother of Civil Rights-era martyr Medgar Evers and the state's first black mayor in about a century, took 23% of the vote, and Cochran beat Dantin 45-32. Six years later, Cochran turned back a credible challenge from former Democratic Gov. William Winter in 1984 by a 61-39 margin, and until his 2014 primary with McDaniel, he never faced another tough election.
Unlike many other white Southern politicians, including his predecessor James Eastland, Cochran had a good relationship with his state's black voters, something that would eventually save him from political defeat decades down the road. And while he was a loyal vote for the leadership, he largely kept his head down and never was much of a fire-breathing conservative.
However, while Cochran would gain plenty of power in D.C., he lost his fights against Lott, who joined him in the Senate in 1989. Cochran was elected chair of the party conference in 1990, the No. 3 spot in the leadership. But in 1994, Lott cut in line and tried to unseat Wyoming's Alan Simpson as whip. Cochran backed Simpson, but Lott won anyway, which gave him a more powerful post in the Senate over his senior colleague.
Two years later, after Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole resigned to focus on his unsuccessful presidential campaign, the two Mississippi senators competed to lead the caucus. Lott, who already had a reputation as a firebrand, was more popular with his colleagues than the laid-back Cochran, and he won 44 to 8.
Cochran never did achieve the same highs as Lott, but he also never hit Lott’s lows. In 2002, Lott gave up his leadership post after he praised South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond's infamous 1948 segregationist presidential bid. A little more than two years later, Cochran became chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, and he used his influence to secure disaster funding for his state after Hurricane Katrina. Lott also managed to bring plenty of nondisaster money to Mississippi over the years, which pissed off his intraparty critics.
Cochran spent much of 2007 keeping people guessing whether he'd seek another term. But he announced in November that he'd run again, and he faced no serious opposition afterwards. A few weeks later, Lott, who was once again the GOP whip, decided to resign, and he soon became a lobbyist; Cochran got along far better with Roger Wicker, Lott's replacement.
Cochran repeated the same will-he-or-won't-he routine in 2013, but this time, it had consequences. Chris McDaniel, a state senator close to the tea party movement, announced in October that he would run regardless of what Cochran did, and he immediately earned endorsements from anti-establishment groups who viewed the incumbent as the embodiment of the leadership and pork barrel politics that they hated. Cochran didn't take the hint and decided to run again, but he started the campaign with little money. Cochran also never seemed to recognize the anti-establishment direction his party was heading in, and he didn't have the fire-in-the-belly anti-Obama conservatism that primary voters craved.
The state GOP establishment and the powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce backed the senator in the incredibly nasty campaign, and Lott even did ads for his old foe. However, McDaniel outpaced Cochran by about 1,400 votes in the primary. A minor third candidate prevented McDaniel from winning the majority he needed to avoid a runoff, but with just three weeks to go before the second round, Cochran looked doomed. Conventional wisdom held that turnout would be lower for round two, and that McDaniel's more excited and ultra-conservative base would be the ones who would show up.
But Cochran ended up defying the odds and winning 51-49. The senator encouraged African Americans to vote in the GOP runoff, a very unusual tactic in any Republican race. But Cochran's long ties to the community and McDaniel's neo-Confederate supporters helped him make the argument, and black voters played the decisive role in securing him a final term. McDaniel and his allies never accepted his defeat, insisting that Democratic voters had illegally voted in the GOP primary and demanding a new election.
McDaniel never got his new election, and Cochran had little trouble in November. However, the senator’s health was not good during his final years in office, and in 2018, he resigned and was replaced by fellow Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith. McDaniel made another play for the seat, but he lost the November nonpartisan primary to Hyde-Smith.
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