Chris McDaniel’s Strategist Blames Tea Party Leader’s Suicide On Opponent’s Campaign

Last updated on November 17th, 2020 at 04:59 pm

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Mark Mayfield, one of the leaders of the Central Mississippi Tea Party and a key supporter of Mississippi State Senator Chris McDaniel during his recent US Senate campaign, was found dead Friday of a gunshot wound. The cause of death is being investigated as a suicide. Mayfield had been arrested and indicted in May along with two others in a case surrounding the alleged break-in of a nursing home where Senator Thad Cochran’s wife resides. Apparently, Mayfield and others were trying to get footage of Cochran’s wife, who suffers from severe dementia and has lived in the nursing home since 2001, to use in an attack ad against Cochran.

Immediately after the news hit about Mayfield’s death, one of McDaniel’s campaign staffers, Keith Plunkett, took to Twitter and decided to blame Cochran’s campaign for Mayfield’s death. The tweet, sent out at 10:14 AM on Friday, has since been deleted by Plunkett. However, as we all know, nothing can ever really be deleted from the internet. Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed has the screengrabs of the tweets here. Below is the text of the tweet:

A good man is gone today bc of a campaign to destroy lives. To all “so called” Republican leaders who joined lockstep: I WILL NOT REST!

Per Gideon Resnick at The Daily Beast, Plunkett posted similar thoughts on his Facebook page. He has since deleted that post as well.

Plunkett reiterated the sentiment in a Facebook post. https://t.co/gQM2PKPrAP

— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) June 27, 2014

In a moment lacking in even the smallest amount of self-awareness, Plunkett told MSNBC’s Benjy Sarlin on Friday that the reaction and “politicization” of Mayfield’s involvement in the Cochran nursing home break-in was “beyond the pale.”

“The politicization of the incident was beyond the pale. It was an attack on a good man that is well respected. I’ve never met a person that had a bad word to say about him.”

Yet, blaming your opponent’s campaign for the DEATH of that person is completely and totally reasonable. Got it.

Currently, McDaniel has yet to concede after losing to Cochran in the Republican primary runoff election on Tuesday. McDaniel claims that the results are illegal since he is absolutely sure that Democratic voters crossed over and voted for Cochran. McDaniel feels that a large number of voters that voted in the Democratic primary a few weeks ago voted in this runoff election. He also cites a Mississippi election law that states that voters in a primary election must intend to support the same candidate in the general election. A federal appeals court ruled in 2008 that the law is unenforceable.

Image: DJournal.com

Justin Baragona

Justin Baragona is the Managing Editor at Politicus Sports as well as Senior Editor at PoliticusUSA. He was a political writer for 411Mania.com before joining PoliticusUSA. Politically, Justin considers himself a liberal but also a realist and pragmatist. Currently, Justin lives in St. Louis, MO and is married. Besides writing, he also runs his own business after spending a number of years in the corporate world. You can follow Justin on Twitter either with his personal handle (@justinbaragona) or the Sports site’s (@PoliticusSports).