McDaniel spokesman accuses Cochran camp of 'slander' over voice mail

Sen. Thad Cochran's campaign has released a voice mail from opponent Chris McDaniel's campaign manager, state Sen. Melanie Sojourner, to Cochran campaign manager Kirk Sims about the arrest of a political blogger accused of sneaking into the nursing home room of Cochran's bedridden wife and posting images of her.

The Cochran campaign says the message appears to contradict the McDaniel campaign's statements that it knew nothing before the arrest about the blogger and McDaniel supporter.

A McDaniel campaign spokesman on Sunday said "we are shocked and appalled, by how the Cochran campaign is using the actions of a sick individual to slander Chris McDaniel."

Sojourner initially tells Sims in the Saturday voice message that "We don't know this guy. We have no idea who he is."

But then later she says: "There was some stuff several months ago where this guy was doing some insane stuff online. We found out about it and Chris and I immediately sicced a bunch of volunteers trying to find out who was the source of just a lot of ugly rumors and nasty stuff and we wanted it squashed ..."

The Cochran campaign has questioned what McDaniel's campaign knew about Clayton Kelly, 28, of Pearl before he was arrested Friday night by Madison police. He faces a charge of exploitation of a vulnerable adult. He is accused of sneaking into Rose Cochran's nursing home room, photographing her and using the photo in an April 26 video hit piece opposing Cochran and in support of McDaniel. The video was pulled down within a couple of hours of going online.

McDaniel and his campaign on Saturday disavowed knowledge of Kelly and at one point even of the arrest before news of it broke midmorning.

But Sojourner, in the 7:41 a.m. voice mail message, said she had "been up most of the night, got some information about an arrest that occurred and Kirk, I need Chris to speak to Sen. Cochran."

She said McDaniel "is very upset about it and needs to have a personal phone call certainly with you, but he really wanted to have one with Sen. Cochran if you think that would be at all possible."

Sojourner said, "from day one I have just demanded that our staff not get involved in certain aspects about Sen. Cochran's personal life. This is a campaign about political issues."

McDaniel campaign spokesman Noel Fritsch on Sunday said that on April 26th, "the campaign became aware of a highly offensive internet video."

"We immediately instructed staff that this was out of the bounds of politics, and we should make sure no one associated with our campaign gave any credence to the video," Fritsch said. "... Everyone knows we had nothing to do with this, and the insinuations otherwise are shameful and have no place in the campaign."