Thad Cochran

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Thad Cochran (2007)

William Thad Cochran (* 7. December 1937 in Pontotoc , Pontotoc County , Mississippi , † the thirtieth May 2019 in Oxford , Mississippi) was an American politician of the Republican Party . He was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1973 to 1978 and the Senate for the state of Mississippi from 1978 . As chairman of the grants committee , he was one of the most powerful men in the Senate and retired from the Senate on April 1, 2018 for health reasons.

Family, education and work

Cochran was the child of school principal William Holmes Cochran and teacher Emma Grace Cochran. In 1946 his family settled in Hinds County , which is also the state capital Jackson . Cochran later lived in Jackson. He was an Eagle Scout and attended Byram High School near Jackson. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Mississippi in 1959 in psychology and political science. After two years in the US Navy , he attended law school at the University of Mississippi, which he graduated in 1965. He then worked as a lawyer for seven years.

politics

Cochran was politically active early on: first for the Democrats , but in the late 1960s he switched to the Republicans. In 1968 he led Richard Nixon's election campaign for the state 's presidential election .

House of Representatives

When Congressman Charles H. Griffin decided not to run again in 1972, Cochran captured his congressional electoral district , the 4th in the state around Jackson, in the 1972 election , narrowly beating his Democratic opponent Ellis Bodron. Cochran benefited from the success of the Republicans in the election; in the presidential election held at the same time , Nixon won 49 of the 50 states and received 70 percent of the vote in Mississippi. Cochran moved into the House of Representatives with Trent Lott . You were the second and third Republicans to represent the state in the House of Representatives since the Reconstruction era. In 1974 he was re-elected despite the difficult conditions for the Republicans after the Watergate affair . In 1976, he won the next election by a larger margin.

senate

In 1978 Cochran had a chance to move into the Senate: The chairman of the Judiciary Committee , James Eastland , a vehement proponent of racial segregation, no longer stood for election. Cochran prevailed against Charles W. Pickering in the party primary . In the November general election, the candidacy of Charles Evers , mayor of Fayette and brother of murdered civil rights activist Medgar Evers , weakened the Democrats enough for Cochran to prevail. This made him the first Republican since the Reconstruction era to win a state election in Mississippi. In the 1984 election, he easily won against the then governor of Mississippi, William Winter . In the 1990 election he also had no opponent and six years later he won, this time with over 70% of the vote. In 2002 he again had no rival candidate from the major parties to stand against him; In 2008 he was victorious with 61.4 percent of the vote against the Democrat Erik R. Fleming .

Compared with his democratic predecessor Eastland and Lott, who succeeded him in the Senate in 1988, Cochran had comparatively inconspicuous election statistics. He was also less in the public eye than this, but had significant influence within the Senate and within Mississippi. In 2006, Time magazine named him one of the top ten current senators.

Cochran was chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus from 1991 to 1996 and chaired the Agriculture Committee from 2003 to 2005. From 2005 to early 2007 he was chairman of the powerful Committee on Appropriations . He is also a member of the Agriculture Committee and the Committee on Rules and Administration and thus ex officio of the Joint Committee on the Library .

As of January 2015, Cochran returned to chair the Senate Grants Committee after the Republicans won a majority in the 2014 Senate election .

On March 5, 2018, he announced that after more than 45 years of membership in Congress , he would resign on April 1, 2018 for health reasons. The party leadership's favorite, Cindy Hyde-Smith , was named as his interim successor.

Cochran died in late May 2019 at the age of 81.

Positions

As one of four Republican senators, Cochran approved Chuck Hagel's appointment as Secretary of Defense in the Obama cabinet in February 2013 .

In March 2015, he was one of the seven Republican US Senators who did not sign an open letter from the remaining 47 Republicans on this body on the Iranian nuclear program . In it, the signatories criticized the outcome of the international negotiations, refused to support President Obama and announced to the leaders of Iran that they would not be bound by the agreement.

literature

  • Maarten Zwiers: Cochran, Thad. In: Ted Ownby, Charles Reagan Wilson (Eds.): The Mississippi Encyclopedia. University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2017, pp. 260 f. , also online .

Web links

Commons : Thad Cochran  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Longtime GOP Sen. Thad Cochran dies at 81 , thehill.com, published and accessed May 30, 2019
  2. ↑ Thad Cochran: The Quiet Persuader. In: Time , April 2006 (English).
  3. ↑ Sen. Thad Cochran to resign April 1. In: CBS News , March 5, 2018.
  4. ↑ Eric Bradner, Kaitlan Collins, Ashley Killough: Mississippi governor picks Cindy Hyde-Smith to replace Sen. Thad Cochran. In: CNN.com , March 20, 2018.
  5. ^ US Senate Roll Call Vote: Confirmation Charles Timothy Hagel, of Nebraska, to be Secretary of Defense (February 26, 2013).
  6. ^ Republican Senators Warn Iran in Open Letter. In: Politico , September 3, 2015 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Cochran, Thad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cochran, William Thad (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Republican Party politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Pontotoc , Pontotoc County , Mississippi
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 2019
Place of death Oxford , Mississippi