Were black pastors throughout Mississippi used as part of a massive illegal campaign machine, paying Democratic voters to swing the state Republican primary runoff in favor of the incumbent, Sen. Thad Cochran?
Journalism startup GotNews.com posted an interview Monday with a man claiming just that: He said he is a black pastor who paid black voters to turn out for Cochran last Tuesday, and that he did it because he was told Cochran’s Tea Party challenger, Chris McDaniel, was racist.
Rev. Stevie Fielder, the pastor claiming to have paid black voters to turn out for Thad Cochran. (Image source: screen grab via YouTube)
Rev. Stevie Fielder, the pastor claiming to have paid black voters to turn out for Sen. Thad Cochran. (Image source: YouTube)
“[The Cochran campaign] pretty much got the white folks they could get, and they needed some African-American folks to turn the election,” said the pastor, identified as Rev. Stevie Fielder.
Mississippi blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic, with only 2 percent participating in the Republican primary in 2012. Mississippi allows anyone, regardless of party affiliation, to vote in its GOP primary, as long as they didn’t previously vote in that year’s Democratic primary.
What could make the Cochran campaign’s outreach suspect is the fact that an essentially unenforceable Mississippi law prohibits voters from participating in a primary if they don’t intend to support that party’s candidate in the actual election.
And according to Fielder, the Cochran campaign was buying votes.
“If we had to buy the votes, we’d buy the votes just to keep [Cochran] in, to keep McDaniel out,” Fielder said.
Fielder said he worked with Cochran staffer Saleem Baird, a man whose checkered past includes a 2011 arrest in connection with improperly licensed strippers at a Jackson, Mississippi, club.
“What [Baird] would do is … put $15 per vote in each envelope and then give it to the people as they’d go in and vote,” Fielder said, adding that he was given many of these envelopes and tasked with recruiting black voters.
“Did he indicate that he was doing this program with many different pastors or just with you?” the interviewer asked.
“Many,” Fielder answered, “all over the state.”
Fielder says he recruited “hundreds” of voters by offering $15 per vote.
“[Voters] were glad to get $15,” Fielder said, adding that he also mentioned McDaniel’s alleged racism to prospective recruits as an extra incentive.