Group gives $70K to McDaniel legal fund

The Senate Conservatives Fund has contributed $70,000 to a legal fund set up by Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel to contest his loss in a GOP primary runoff election.

A handful of other prominent conservative names and groups, including FreedomWorks and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, have expressed support for McDaniel’s plan to contest the results of the primary runoff loss to Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.).

{mosads}The $70,000 contributed by the Senate Conservatives Fund represents nearly all of the $90,000 the group raised on behalf of McDaniel as of Tuesday morning, according to Yahoo News, which first reported the contribution. 

McDaniel’s staff and supporters have spent the past week poring over the poll books looking for evidence of illegal voting, and a lawyer for the campaign said Monday they had found thousands of illegitimate votes and were “surprised at the amount of evidence that continues to come forward that shows there has indeed been election fraud in this case.”

Cochran’s campaign has dismissed these allegations and said their own review of the ballots found a much smaller number of irregularities.

But McDaniel’s effort has the support, at least, of one high-profile senator — and the passive sanction of another.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a conservative star and vice-chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which heavily supported Cochran, said Monday he believes allegations of voter fraud in the runoff should be investigated.

And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters at his weekly press conference on Tuesday that “anybody’s entitled” to contest the election. 

“It’d be up to the people in Mississippi to determine the outcome,” he said. “I think it’s pretty clear who won. Senator Cochran ran a very successful runoff campaign and got the most votes. But anybody’s entitled to contest the outcome and that may well happen in Mississippi.”