William Thad Cochran ( KOK-rən; December 7, 1937 – May 30, 2019) was an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator for Mississippi from 1978 to 2018. A Republican, he previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1978.
Born in Pontotoc, Mississippi, Cochran graduated from the University of Mississippi. He served in the United States Navy as an ensign (1959–1961) before graduating from the University of Mississippi School of Law. After practicing law for several years in Jackson, Mississippi, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1972. He served three terms in the House representing Jackson and portions of southwest Mississippi.
Cochran won a three-way race for U.S. Senate in 1978, becoming the first Republican to win a United States Senate election in Mississippi since Blanche Bruce was elected during Reconstruction. He was re-elected to six terms by wide margins. He was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee from 2005 to 2007 and again from 2015 to 2018. He also chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee from 2003 to 2005. With over 45 years of combined House and Senate service, Cochran is the second longest-serving member of Congress ever from Mississippi, only after former Democratic U.S. Representative Jamie L. Whitten.
Cochran resigned from the Senate due to health issues in April 2018. Cochran died on May 30, 2019, in Oxford, Mississippi.
William Thad Cochran was born on December 7, 1937, in Pontotoc, Mississippi, the son of Emma Grace (née Berry) and William Holmes Cochran, a teacher and school principal, respectively. His family settled in Hinds County, Mississippi, home of the state capital, Jackson, in 1946 after a few moves around the northern part of the state. He graduated valedictorian from Byram High School near Jackson.
Cochran then received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Mississippi with a major in psychology and a minor in political science in 1959. There he joined the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity and was on the cheerleading squad (fellow senator Trent Lott was also an Ole Miss cheerleader). He was elected to the Phi Kappa Phi honor society, and worked as a lifeguard at Livingston Lake in Jackson during the summers.
After a time in the United States Navy (1959–1961), where he was commissioned an ensign aboard the USS Macon, Cochran received a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1965. While in law school, he won the Frederick Hamel Memorial Award for having the highest scholastic average in the first year class and served on the editorial board of the Mississippi Law Journal. Following graduation, Cochran practiced law at the firm of Watkins & Eager in Jackson, Mississippi, where he was promoted to partner.
In 1968, Lamar Alexander recruited Cochran to serve as chairman of Citizens for Nixon-Agnew in Mississippi.
In 1972, Jackson lawyer Mike Allred and oilman Billy Mounger, both Republicans, recruited Cochran to run for Congress as a Republican. That year, Democratic Congressman Charles H. Griffin of Mississippi's 3rd congressional district decided not to run for a third full term. Cochran won the Republican nomination for the Jackson-based district, which was renumbered as the 4th District after redistricting. He defeated Democratic state senator Ellis B. Bodron by 47.9% to 44%. One factor in Cochran's victory was Richard Nixon's strong showing in that year's presidential election. Mississippi was Nixon's best state in 1972, taking 78.2 percent of the statewide popular vote. Another Republican candidate that year, Gil Carmichael, who ran for U.S. Senate against James Eastland, only finished with 38 percent of the vote, largely because of Nixon steadfastly backing Eastland. Another factor for Cochran's win was black turnout. Eddie McBride, a black independent candidate, pulled enough black voters from Bodron to help sway the election. McBride had been recruited by Fayette Mayor Charles Evers to retaliate against Bodron, who had blocked Evers' initiative to build a nursing home in Fayette. Cochran, alongside Trent Lott, became the second and third Republicans to be elected to represent Mississippi in the House of Representatives since Reconstruction.
In the 1974 elections, Cochran won in a landslide victory with 70.2 percent of the vote, winning every county besides black-majority Claiborne and Jefferson. He called his victory an endorsement of "my views on cutting down inflation and unnecessary spending." Cochran ran for reelection in the 1976 elections and was predicted to easily win. Cochran easily won reelection with 76% of the vote.
In 1978, six-term Democratic Senator James Eastland decided to retire. Cochran ran for the seat and won the Republican primary, defeating state senator and former Jones County prosecutor Charles W. Pickering, 69%–31% percent. In the general election, he faced Democrat Maurice Dantin, a former district attorney who had triumphed in a four-way primary with the backing of Eastland, and Independent candidate Charles Evers, the mayor of Fayette. Evers, the first African American to be elected mayor of a Mississippi town since Reconstruction, split the Democratic vote and Cochran won with a plurality, taking 45.3% to Dantin's 31.8% and Evers' 22.6%. This made Cochran the first Republican to win a statewide election in Mississippi in a century and thus became Mississippi's first new U.S. senator since John C. Stennis in 1947. Eastland resigned on 27 December to give Cochran a seniority advantage over other new incoming U.S. senators. Governor Cliff Finch appointed Cochran to serve the remaining week of Eastland's term.
Cochran faced an expected strong challenge for re-election from incumbent Democratic governor William Winter in 1984, but he was re-elected easily, 60.9 to 39.1 percent. He was likely helped by the presence of Ronald Reagan atop the ticket for president; Reagan carried Mississippi by an almost identical margin, 61.8 percent to Walter Mondale's 37.4 percent.
He was completely unopposed in 1990 and took 71 percent of the vote in 1996; the Democratic nominee, retired factory worker Bootie Hunt, received 27.4 percent. No Democrat ran against Cochran in 2002; he faced only Reform Party candidate Shawn O'Hara, beating him by 84.6 to 15.4 percent. Cochran faced his strongest challenger in twenty-four years in 2008 when the Democrats nominated State Representative Erik R. Fleming. In a year that saw widespread Democratic gains, Cochran was still re-elected, 61.4–37.6 percent.
In 2014, Cochran faced a primary challenge from Tea Party-supported candidate Chris McDaniel. Although the primary was initially considered uncompetitive, McDaniel proved a serious challenger. Polling showed the lead swinging between the two and it eventually became a "50%-50% race".
The primary was considered a marquee establishment-versus-Tea Party fight. Cochran's seniority and appropriating skills contrasted with the junior status of the rest of the state's congressional delegation. The primary was described as "nasty" and full of "bizarre" twists.
In May 2014, a scandal emerged when a McDaniel supporter allegedly entered a nursing home where Cochran's bedridden wife was living and took pictures of her. The images were posted to a blog, intending to advance the rumor that Cochran was having affairs while his wife was receiving care. Four people were arrested in connection with the incident. The connection to the McDaniel campaign was disputed. One of the arrested included McDaniel ally Mark Mayfield, who was vice chairman of the state's Tea Party. In response, McDaniel said, "the violation of the privacy of Mrs. Cochran [was] out of bounds for politics and reprehensible."
Neither candidate won a majority in the primary election; McDaniel won 49.46% of the vote, while Cochran received 49.02%. A runoff election between McDaniel and Cochran was held on June 24. Despite trailing in most of the polls, Cochran won with 51.01% of the vote to McDaniel's 48.99%. The Cochran campaign denied allegations of vote-buying made by a blogger regarding his run-off victory. In the aftermath of the runoff, the McDaniel campaign claimed there were indications of voter fraud. McDaniel's legal challenge to the election results failed.