WASHINGTON – U.S. Senate hopeful and tea party candidate Chris McDaniel isn’t ready to concede victory to Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., just yet. McDaniel announced that he would provide a $1,000 reward to anyone who is able to bring forward proof of fraud in last month’s Mississippi Republican primary, in which his competitor received 7,000 more votes.
“Specifically, what my campaign needs is incontrovertible proof that black conservatives don’t exist,” McDaniel said on an interview with CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “I mean let’s be honest here. Cochran won because of the black vote. Yet, as we all know, blacks don’t vote Republican. Something’s rotten in Mississippi, Kate, and it’s not just the stench from the Delta.”
McDaniel realizes that his “theory on black conservatives” is a mere gut feeling and requires some form of empirical proof, though, which led to his idea for offering a reward. He has urged political researchers, members of academia, and even blacks themselves to provide hard evidence that blacks are incapable of either registering as Republicans or voting for Republicans.
“Charts, regression analyses, an official declaration from Al Sharpton–I’ll take whatever I can get to show that these people couldn’t have legitimately voted for this crook,” continued state Sen. McDaniel, whose distrust of Cochran has existed since at least last month, when he hired poll watchers to oversee voting operations in those black communities courted by the incumbent senator.
McDaniel later admitted that since his announcement, he has received a wide array of underwhelming responses, including a hand-written letter reading, “I’m black and only vote for Democrats. Where’s my $1,000?”
“It’s a step in the right direction, but we’ll need something a bit stronger,” said McDaniel. “If nobody gives me what I’m looking for, I guess I’ll just bang my drum a little harder. Saying something enough times usually becomes the truth anyway.”
