State Sen. Chris McDaniel’s Senate campaign is saying that it learned late last night that a blogger was arrested for breaking into the nursing home where Sen. Thad Cochran’s wife lives.
“The McDaniel campaign found out about the break in when a local political blog posted about it at 11:40 p.m. last night,” McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said in a statement Saturday afternoon. “Senator McDaniel has denounced the break-in and called Senator Cochran to extend his condolences. It is unconscionable for the Cochran campaign and the liberal media to use the act of a sick individual to lob despicable accusations.”
Fritsch’s statement follows a Clarion-Ledger’s report that McDaniel’s campaign manager, state Sen. Melanie Sojourner (R), was aware of details about the break-in by blogger Clayton Thomas Kelly before they had been publicized by the newspaper and had called Cochran’s campaign about the incident.
The blog that the McDaniel campaign is apparently referring to is Jackson Jumbalaya, which had reported on Kelly’s arrest. But an update to the blog post there said the Clarion-Ledger had beaten Jackson Jumbalaya to identifying Rose Cochran, Thad Cochran’s wife, as the target of the break-in.
The Clarion-Ledger report identifying Cochran was published Saturday morning.
