Thad Cochran, the seven-term Republican senator from Mississippi, on Saturday married a long-time aide. His office said the wedding took place in a private ceremony in Gulfport.
Cochran’s relationship with his executive assistant, Kay Webber, was the subject of rumors during a vicious 2014 Republican primary against a Tea Party candidate, Chris McDaniel.
Supporters of McDaniel spread rumors that Cochran, whose wife Rose had been in a nursing home for a decade, suffering from dementia, was having an affair with Webber.
A pro-McDaniel blogger broke into the nursing home, in order to take pictures of Cochran’s wife. The McDaniel campaign disclaimed knowledge of the break-in, which led to the indictment of several conservative activists close to the Tea Party insurgent.
At the time, a Cochran spokesperson dismissed any innuendo about Cochran’s relationship with his aide, insisting that Webber was “a member of the staff and a trusted aide, and any other suggestion is silly gossip”.
Cochran edged McDaniel by a 51-49 margin in a runoff, after neither candidate received a majority of votes in the first round of voting. The runoff was plagued by accusations of voter intimidation and fraud, as the Cochran campaign relied on the votes of African American Democrats to edge out McDaniel in a contest that still divides Mississippi Republicans.
Rose Cochran died in December, at the age of 73.
