Some of the prominent tea party outside groups that help boost Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s (R) seem to be throwing in the towel for McDaniel since Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), who McDaniel is challenging, was declared the winner in the runoff of the GOP primary for U.S. Senate.
“Club for Growth Action went all in for Chris McDaniel in the Mississippi Senate race. And we have no regrets,” Club for Growth President Chris Chocola wrote in an email to supporters sent out on Wednesday, a day after the primary.
Chocola in the email did not mention that McDaniel did not concede the race and his campaign has suggested some sort of challenge to the runoff outcome. Instead, Chocola said that the Mississippi race was a risk.
“The Mississippi Senate race was a calculated risk – unfortunately, this one didn’t go our way. But it was close. Very close,” Chocola continued.
Similarly, FreedomWorks, another group that backed McDaniel, sent out a statement Tuesday night shortly after Cochran was declared the winner. The statement was very clearly an acknowledgement that Cochran won.
“It’s disgraceful that self-described GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell, John McCain, the Chamber of Commerce and the NRSC would champion a campaign platform of pork barrel spending and insider deal-making, while recruiting Democrats to show up at the polls,” FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe said. “If the only way the K Street wing of the GOP establishment can win is by courting Democrats to vote in GOP primaries, then we’ve already won. Tonight is proof that the K Street establishment is intellectually bankrupt, and we are going to have to clean it up.”
Not every group seemed to be giving up on the race though.
Establishment is terrified of @senatormcdaniel because he would bring REAL CHANGE to Washington, DC #McDaniel2014 #mssen #TeaParty
— Tea Party Express (@TeaPartyExpress) June 25, 2014
The Senate Conservatives Fund, another prominent tea party-aligned outside group that supported McDaniel, released a statement similar to the Club for Growth’s on Wednesday saying that the outcome was a disappointment.
