Sen. Ted Cruz says that it is “appalling” that Sen. Thad Cochran and his allies resorted to recruiting Democrats on their way to winning the GOP primary in Mississippi, saying it is “unprincipled and wrong” and that allegations of vote fraud should be investigated.
Mr. Cruz, Texas Republican and possible 2016 presidential contender, told conservative radio host Mark Levin late Monday that the “conduct of the Washington D.C. machine in the Mississippi runoff was incredibly disappointing.”
“What we know at the outset is that [state Senator] Chris McDaniel won a sizable majority of the votes from Republicans who voted in the run-off, but the D.C. machine spent hundreds of thousands of dollars urging some 30,000 to 40,000 partisan Democrats to vote in the run-off, which changed the outcome,” Mr. Cruz said.
“All of us want to grow the party, but what the D.C. machine did was not try to grow the party. Instead, the ads they ran were racially charged false attacks and they were explicit promises to continue to expand the welfare state.”
Mr. Cochran won the June 24 runoff race by more than 6,700 votes after aggressively courting black voters in the final weeks of the campaign.
The result came three weeks after Mr. McDaniel emerged as the top vote-getter in the primary race, but failed to collect 50 percent of the vote, which was needed to win the nomination outright.
The McDaniel camp has since signaled it plans to challenge the run-off results, while also accusing the Cochran camp of race baiting in the closing weeks of the campaign.
Mr. Cruz told Mr. Levin that there should be an investigation into the allegations of voter fraud and prosecute anyone who was involved n criminal conduct
“It is the only responsible thing to do,”Mr. Cruz said.
Others, though, have suggested that Mr. McDaniel is being a sore loser and should accept that Mr. Cochran won the race.
Former Florida Rep. Joe Scarborough, co-cost of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said Tuesday that Mr. McDaniel and those supporting his push were unhinged.
Asked for one word to describe the challenge, Mr. Scarborough said, “tin foil hats.”
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