COLDWATER, Miss. — Amid the Confederate flags, the guns and the pigs — in pens and on plates — Chris McDaniel worked the Tate County Fair in search of votes in his quest to beat Sen. Thad Cochran in a runoff election in two weeks. “I need you,” McDaniel said to Brandy Davis, before also greeting Bobby Goodwin, a heavyset man carrying a handgun, at a booth for the Citizens Militia of Mississippi. The members of the militia, whose motto is “Any fate but submission,” implored the Republican to take a hard-line stance on immigration and gun rights. McDaniel assured them that he would and that he is not “going to join any club” in Washington. “This is a peek back to a better time,” he told a reporter a short while later as he walked through a sea of makeshift stands. “I’m a Jeffersonian and a Reaganite, and I like to remember how good things once were.” If McDaniel is going to beat Cochran, it will be in large part because of supporters such as those in Coldwater on Saturday, where the latest cause celebre of the tea party movement held his first post- primary event of note. Like many here, McDaniel is a true outsider — surrounded by volunteers with limited political experience, he engages little with the news media and less with leaders of his party....
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