Dixie split in top GOP race
WASHINGTON — Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel and six-term Sen. Thad Cochran remained locked in a close, uncallable race in Mississippi’s primary election Tuesday night — an epic struggle in a party deeply divided along ideological lines.
Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, a state senator, overwhelmed a fistful of Republican rivals in Iowa and will challenge Rep. Bruce Braley this fall for a seat long in Democratic hands.
In a third Senate race on the busiest night of the primary season, former Gov. Mike Rounds won the Republican nomination in South Dakota — and instantly became the favorite to pick up a seat for the GOP in its drive to win the six the party needs to capture a majority this fall.
Five states picked candidates for governor, including California, where Democrat Jerry Brown cruised to renomination to a fourth term.
The marquee contest of the night was in Mississippi, where Cochran, 76, and McDanie l, 41, dueled. Returns from 95% of the state’s precincts showed the challenger narrowly ahead in a three-way race, but just below the 50% threshold needed to avoid a June 24 runoff.
The Mississippi contest was a costly and heated race between a pillar of the GOP establishment and a state lawmaker who drew backing from former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The campaign took a sensational turn when four McDaniel supporters were charged with surreptitiously taking photographs of the senator’s 72-year-old wife, who suffers from dementia and has long lived in a nursing home.
In Iowa, where Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin’s retirement created an open seat, Ernst fashioned her rise on memorable television commercials. “I grew up on an Iowa farm castrating hogs, so when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork,” she said in one of them, concluding with a smile, “Let’s make ’em squeal.”