Mississippi politics can be nasty and vicious. But a conservative blogger now stands accused of doing something that, even by Mississippi standards, is downright slimy. Police say that he snuck into a nursing home where Senator Thad Cochran’s wife is living, snapping a picture of her, and using that picture to attack the six-term Republican.
On April 26, Clayton Kelly, who runs the conservative blog “Constitutional Clayton” out of his home in the Jackson suburb of Pearl, posted an anti-Cochran video on both his blog and YouTube channel. Kelly is supporting state senator Chris McDaniel, who is mounting a tea party-backed challenge to Cochran in the Republican primary. The video included a picture of Cochran’s wife, Rose, who has long suffered from dementia and is now bedridden.? On Friday night, police in another Jackson suburb, Madison, arrested Kelly on charges that he obtained that picture in one of the most despicable ways possible. According to police, Kelly slipped onto the grounds of St. Catherine’s Village, a nursing home where Rose Cochran has lived since 2000, and took a picture of her. He is currently in jail on $100,000 bond on charges of exploiting a vulnerable adult, and could get up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
The Cochran family’s lawyer, Donald Clark, said that as soon as Cochran learned about the picture, he retained Clark’s firm, which then notified Madison police. The post and video were deleted within hours of their appearance, presumably after complaints from Clark. In a major understatement, Clark said that the Cochrans’ “privacy and dignity have been violated.” For his part, McDaniel rushed out with a burning statement condemning Kelly’s alleged actions, and said that he had personally called Cochran to “express my abhorrence for the reprehensible actions of this individual.” Cochran canceled his entire Saturday campaign schedule to deal with the incident.
The McDaniel campaign has fallen all over itself to stress that Kelly was never employed by the campaign in any capacity. However, both the Cochran campaign and national Republicans? raised eyebrows about when McDaniel knew about Kelly’s arrest. McDaniel’s campaign manager, fellow state senator Melanie Sojourner, left a voicemail for Cochran campaign manager Kurt Sims at 7:45 am Central on Saturday morning condemning Kelly’s alleged behavior. She also said that McDaniel learned about the incident late Friday night, and wanted to personally express his condolences to Cochran. The first public report of the arrest making a connection to Rose Cochran was when The Clarion-Ledger’s report went live on the Web at 9:24 am. Shortly after that, The Hill’s Alex Jaffe ran into McDaniel at a craft fair in Hernando, south of Memphis. McDaniel indicated that he hadn’t heard about the incident until then.? McDaniel’s campaign released a statement saying that it learned of the arrest via a “local political blog.” However, the only report of the arrest before Saturday morning came from the Jackson Jambalaya blog on Friday night at at 11:40 pm. There was initially no mention of Rose Cochran, but several commenters speculated that she was the one Kelly had been filming.
On Saturday night, McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch released a timeline of when the McDaniel campaign learned of the incident. According to this updated chain of events, Sojourner read the post on Jackson Jambalaya at 1 am on Saturday morning, and was certain that Rose Cochran had been the person Kelly was accused of filming “based on the preponderance of evidence.” She was sure enough that she contacted McDaniel at 7:30 am and told him that he needed to personally reach to Cochran. Fifteen minutes later, Sojourner called Sims. McDaniel was not fully briefed on the incident until 10:30 am, but once he was briefed put out a statement condemning the crime at 10:49 am.
If Kelly thought it was even remotely acceptable to use a bedridden woman in an attack ad, then this incident is the strongest example I’ve seen of how low our political discourse has sunk. And that would be true regardless of when McDaniel and his campaign knew about the arrest.
Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
