In a strange twist, the lead attorney for Mississippi Republican Senate candidate Chris McDaniel is apparently contesting both his own vote in the run-off and his wife’s.
That attorney, Mitch Tyner, has been saying for weeks that there were thousands of irregular votes in June’s Republican run-off. He has asked the state Republican executive committee to overturn the results of the run-off and declare McDaniel — instead of his opponent, incumbent GOP Sen. Thad Cochran — the winner.
McDaniel’s campaign list of contested votes now includes the names of Tyner and his wife.
The Daily Caller has obtained a Aug. 6 letter on Tyner Law Firm letterhead addressed to the chairman of the Mississippi Republican Party. In it, Tyner explains that he is providing a supplement to his original 243-page formal challenge of Cochran’s victory in June 24’s Republican Senate primary. The supplement, compiled by a woman named Judy Batson, lists hundreds more names of potentially irregular or ineligible votes.
On page 17 of that affidavit, the list includes the names Mitchell Harry Tyner Sr. and Sloane Davis Tyner as potentially irregular votes.
This isn’t the first time the vote of a well-known figure in the campaign has been contested: Cochran aide Jordan Russell is included in the list of improper votes. Specifically, it requests that Russell’s vote be invalidated because there was “no reason given for voting absentee.” Russell is Cochran’s top spokesman and is routinely quoted in the press.
In a phone interview with The Daily Caller earlier this month, Russell said: “This whole thing would be amusing if it wasn’t a serious Senate election, but the level of absurdity here seems to reach new heights every day.”
Tyner did not immediately return an email Tuesday from TheDC. We’ll update when we hear back.
