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 first replacement Bills and other conservative activists would like to see is the occupant of one of Mississippi’s U.S. Senate seats. The battle is ferocious, unforgiving, and, if Bills gets her way, historic. On one side is Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party candidate whom she supports; on the other, incumbent GOP Senator Thad Cochran, who’s held the post since 1978 and is the state’s Republican patriarch.