On Monday’s Mark Levin Show, Ted Cruz weighed in on the contentious (and ongoing) runoff election for the Mississippi Republican Senate nomination. “What happened in Mississippi was appalling,” Cruz told Levin. He said the conduct of the “Washington, D.C. Machine” was “incredibly disappointing” in the race between incumbent Senator Thad Cochran and Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel, who lost the runoff by around 6700 votes.
The McDaniel campaign is poring through ballot boxes in the state ahead of the scheduled certification of the ballot on Monday and his team reports at least 4900 voting irregularities. The FEC is investigating possible campaign finance violations from a pro-Cochran Super PAC and there have been serious allegation that Cochran staffers participated in a cash-for-votes scheme.
Noting that McDaniel won a sizeable majority of Republicans in the runoff election, Cruz, who is Vice Chairman for Grassroots Outreach of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said, “The D.C. Machine spent hundreds of thousands of dollars urging some 30,000-40,000 partisan Democrats to vote in the runoff, which changed the outcome.” Acknowledging that all Republicans want to grow the party, the Texas senator said the actions of the “D.C. Machine” did nothing to further that goal. “Instead, the ads they ran were racially-charged false attacks and there were explicit promises to continue and expand the welfare state,” Cruz said. “And nobody has suggested that the Democrats who voted in the primary will actually vote Republican in the general election,” he added. “Instead, they were just recruited to decide who the Republican nominee was and that’s unprincipled and it’s wrong.”
Other Republican senators have weighed in on the election. Last week Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said, “I’m for more people voting, not less people voting. I think the people of Mississippi spoke and I think Thad Cochran has done a lot of good things for Mississippi.” Senator John McCain (R-AZ) praised Cochran’s “really excellent get-out-the-vote campaign.” McCain said, “There are some people who are complaining that African-American voters voted. I thought one of the major priorities of the Republican Party was to get all minority and ethnic voters out to vote for Republicans.”
Cruz also discussed the serious allegations of voter fraud in the election, saying, “I very much hope that no Republican was involved in voter fraud.” He said the allegations need to be vigorously investigated and anyone involved in criminal conduct should be prosecuted. “The voters of Mississippi deserve to know the truth.”
Cruz told Levin on Monday, “I think it would be abominable if Republicans were involved in voter fraud and I think the only fair thing to do for voters in Mississippi and the only fair thing for the integrity of the election is to investigate the allegations seriously and then to prosecute anyone who was involved in criminal conduct.”
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