JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – Mississippi voters are choosing a Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, ending one of the state’s hardest fought and most expensive races in decades.
Polls are open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday for the statewide primary runoff between six-term incumbent Thad Cochran of Oxford and a tea party-backed challenger, state Sen. Chris McDaniel of Ellisville.
The only voters banned from casting a Republican ballot Tuesday are those who voted in the Democratic primary June 3.
McDaniel finished 1,418 votes ahead of Cochran in the earlier three-person primary, but nobody received a majority to win.
“Right now, somewhere in Washington, I’m starting to sense some trembling,” McDaniel, 41, told supporters at a rally Monday night in Flowood. “And by tomorrow evening, every one of those men and women will know that we’re tired of the backroom deals; we’re tired of the business as usual; we’re tired of the favoritism; we’re tired of the cronyism. We’ll remind them once and for all that this is our country and they work for us.”