Ellington

Once again, public officials in Mississippi have thrust our state into the national spotlight. And once again, it's not for anything positive.

In one light, the attention is warranted in that the Republican primary for U.S. Senate between state Sen. Chris McDaniel and U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran is one of the most important political contests in the country right now. Senate races often get a lot of attention, but there is a very real possibility in this off-presidential election year that Republicans could retake control of Congress' upper House.

Of course, Republicans have represented Mississippi in the Senate since Kingdom Come, but in this case, chairmanship of one of the most powerful committees on the Hill is at stake. As the most senior Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran would become its chairman.

In another light, as James Fallows described in The Atlantic recently, "there's an all-but-irresistible freak-show undertone to a lot of reports from Mississippi." That's thanks in large part to a story that surfaced a few weeks ago about a blogger arrested for taking photos of Cochran's bedridden wife and subsequent reports that a number of the people arrested in the scandal had ties to the McDaniel campaign.

Later, on Election Night, we shook our collective heads when more McDaniel supporters entered the Hinds County courthouse for reasons that are still not entirely clear and got stuck. 


Oh, it was amusing news fodder—including for the Jackson Free Press. One of the people involved in the courthouse caper was Janis Lane, a central Mississippi Tea Party official who told us in 2012 that women should never have been allowed to vote. The news helped the two-year-old video go viral. Again.

In some ways, a little silliness is a natural part of political party primaries. It gets the bases interested and motivated to turn out to the polls.

But there are serious issues facing Mississippi voters in this vote. Does anyone know what those issues are?

How many people know that Cochran helped attract almost $40 million in federal money to the Jackson metro area or the McDaniel introduced a bill that would allow teachers to deduct out-of-pocket expenses from their income taxes? Or that Cochran—along with his then-colleague Sen. Trent Lott—was among a handful of senators who did not join in a 2005 resolution apologizing for the practice of lynching?

It's easy to imagine even serious-minded GOP primary voters being annoyed with the fact that clear explanations of the candidates' stances on meat-and-potatoes conservative issues of low taxes and limited government have been nonexistent. Progressives should hear more from the candidates on these issues as well.

In the final weeks before the June 24 primary runoff, we hope that the Republican primary—and the media coverage of it—focuses on issues, not the freak show.