Daily Mail: Race-baiting against Chris McDaniel point back to Haley Barbour and his nephew

The Daily Mail has really done their research today, uncovering even more than had first heard from the NRO. It’s so much more I decided to make this it’s own post:

DAILY MAIL – A series of three racially charged radio ads that ran in rural Mississippi on Election Day played a role in driving black Democrats to vote in a Republican primary run-off election. MailOnline has exclusively obtained audio of the ads.

They were broadcast 48 times in a 12-hour period Tuesday on WMGO-AM radio in the town of Canton, and urged black Mississippians to cross party lines and support GOP Sen. Thad Cochran in his smash-mouth contest against tea party insurgent Chris McDaniel.

Each carried a required acknowledgement stating that it was ‘paid for by Citizens for Progress.’ Clerks at the office of Mississippi’s secretary of state told MailOnline that no such group is registered there as a political committee.

The Federal Election Commission also lacks any registration from a group with that name.

Mitzi Bickers, an Atlanta pastor and former president of the Atlanta school board, used the same nonexistent group name – ‘Citizens for Progress’ – in a 2013 campaign for a local sales tax proposal.

After it was reported that Bickers filed a fraudulent financial disclosure report related to the campaign, she resigned her post as a senior adviser to Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed.

The political ‘super PAC’ that paid her to run the robocalls is called Mississippi Conservatives, according to National Review.

Haley Barbour, the former governor, founded the PAC, which is now run by Henry Barbour, his nephew.

Henry Barbour denied any knowledge of the three radio ads, but acknowledged to MailOnline that his organization had paid Bickers for the phone call campaign.

‘We hired Mitzi Bickers to do paid phones,’ he said Friday via email. ‘If she had something to do with radio ads, I am unaware of it and was not involved with radio ads in Canton.’

‘It’s time to take a stand and say no to the tea party, the call’s script read. ‘No to their obstruction, no to their disrespectful treatment of the first African-American president.’

That’s just the first part of it. Remember the nasty race-baiting flyer that came out? Daily Mail tracked that down too:

James ‘Scooby Doo’ Warren, a longtime Democratic political operative, told the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger on June 17 that he was directing a ‘get-out-the-vote’ plan that included the robocalls.

He was working, Warren said, with Mississippi Conservatives, the same Haley Barbour-related PAC that funded Mitzi Bickers to produce the racially explosive robocalls. It’s not clear whether he was involved with the radio ads.

Warren also said he was working closely with Bishop Ronnie Crudup Sr., a clergyman whose church created a separate political action committee called ‘All Citizens for Mississippi.’

That group paid to produce and distribute pro-Cochran fliers in African-American neighborhoods, including one that claimed ‘the tea party intends to prevent you from voting.’

A full-page ad the group ran in a black community newspaper in Mississippi stated that ‘we’re asking Democrats to cross over and vote in the Republican primary.

The New York Times reported that All Citizens for Mississippi didn’t legally exist when that ad was run, but only filed its first report with the Federal Election Commission later.

PLEASE READ FULL ARTICLE

Mark Levin had this to say on his Facebook:

Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Karl Rove, Thad Cochran, Haley Barbour, the NRSC, et al, must answer for this. To say they were not involved in blatantly racist behavior is not good enough. They’ve yet to condemn this activity let alone demand that those behind it be exposed.

He’s right. They need to condemn the heck out of this and we shouldn’t let them get away with not doing it.

I’m sure Mark will have more to say tonight and we’ll bring it to you when he does.


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