Mississippi Tea Partiers Vow to Keep Fighting the State GOP
Cheramie Bills is on a mission to uproot Mississippi’s Republican establishment. “When I say the GOP in this state will be replaced, it will be replaced, one person at a time,” Bills says, leaning across the table at the Drip Drop Coffee Shop in Richland, Miss., just outside Jackson, the state capital. “From supervisors to city mayors to everyone.”…
… The Barbours are the problem, in Bills’s eyes. “Our whole goal is to flip the system,” she says….
…Cochran supporters say recruiting black Democratic voters to their side was a legitimate political tactic in a tightly contested election. “It was the obvious thing to do,” says Brad White, a strategist who ran Cochran’s turnout operation in the runoff….
…Bills isn’t waiting for the judges to decide the future of her state’s Republican Party. She’s working with the Conservative Coalition of Mississippi, which plans to start clubs in 82 counties with the goal of identifying conservative candidates to run in next year’s state elections. The group says it has 2,000 members and has recruited activists to lead chapters in 40 counties. McDaniel spoke recently at a meeting in Rankin County, where he lost by 1,529 votes….
…“It makes me sick to my stomach,” Bills says. “I want term limits. I want closed primaries. And I want a recall.”
Bloomberg Businessweek
9/25/14
