A black reverend stiffed by the Cochran campaign has exposed an alleged criminal conspiracy by Cochran staffers to commit massive voter fraud ahead of Tuesday's controversial U.S. Senate Republican runoff election in Mississippi.
Reverend Stevie Fielder, associate pastor at historic First Union Missionary Baptist Church and
former official at Meridian's redevelopment agency, says he delivered "hundreds or even thousands," of blacks to the polls after being offered money and being assured by a Cochran campaign operative that Chris McDaniel was a racist. "They [the Cochran campaign] told me to offer blacks fifteen dollars each and to vote for Thad."
It is illegal under several provisions of Mississippi law and federal law for campaign officials to bribe voters with cash and punishable up to five years in jail. (MS Code 97-13-1; MS Code 97-13-3 (2013) (Federal Code 18 U.S.C. 597, U.S.C. 1973i(c)) Voter fraud schemes are not unusual for Mississippi. In 1999 Mississippi's attorney general reported massive voter fraud allegations throughout the Magnolia state. In 2011, a Mississippi NAACP leader was sent to prison for voter fraud,
according to the Daily Caller.
It would seem that laws were broken here, too. At the direction of the Cochran campaign, Reverend Fielder went "door to door, different places, mostly impoverished neighborhoods, to the housing authorities and stuff like that," telling fellow blacks that McDaniel was a racist and promising them $15 per vote. "They sold me on the fact that he was a racist and that the right thing to do was to keep him out of office," Fielder says.
Text messages released to Got News and a recorded interview with Reverend Fielder confirmed that Saleem Baird, a staffer with the Cochran campaign and current legislative aide to U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, and Cochran campaign manager, Kirk Sims, were involved in a $15 per vote cash bribery scheme to target members of the black community.
"They said they needed black votes," said the Reverend Fielder on the phone. He says Baird told him to put "give the fifteen dollars in each envelope to people as they go in and vote. You know, not right outside of the polling place but he would actually recruit people with the $15 dollars and they would go in and vote." Fielder said he received thousands of dollars in envelopes from Baird and distributed them accordingly. Fielder also says he went to the campaign office on another occasion to pick up $300 in cash and was among a room full of people who were doing the same thing he was.
Fielder said that Saleem Baird was doing the same thing with people all over the state. Fielder believes that the racism
charge against McDaniel and the promise of $15 a vote motivated 'thousands' of black Democrats like him to vote for Cochran in the runoff. When asked if Fielder would have been more suspicious of Baird's promises had he been white, Fielder replied, "Yes, definitely."
For his efforts, Fielder says the Cochran campaign and Baird promised him $16,000 for paying black voters $15 a vote, but Baird wound up stiffing him. Baird even asked him to delete all texts between the two of them. In addition to Baird, Fielder says he spoke with Kirk Sims, the Cochran campaign manager, and a woman named "Amanda" with the campaign, most likely Amanda Shook, director of operations to re-elect Thad Cochran. All refused to pay him the agreed upon amount of $16,000.
Baird realized he had been lied to when he "took a good look at the campaign ads" and realized "McDaniel was not a racist...me and other people were misguided and misled."
Fielder confronted Saleem the weekend before the election and asked about whether or not McDaniel was actually a racist and Baird confirmed it. Baird 'personally confirmed that McDaniel was a racist." Baird 'manipulated me to manipulate many other people," says Fielder. Baird did not disclose that he worked as a paid legislative staffer for Senator Roger Wicker. Fielder also says he spoke with campaign manager Kirk Sims about getting paid and about the ethnical complaints he had.
