Thad Cochran

• Born: December 7, 1937
• Birthplace: Pontotoc, MS
• Died: May 30, 2019
• Place of death: Oxford, MS

Thad Cochran, who had also served in the House of Representatives from 1973 to 1978, was a Republican senator from Mississippi originally elected in 1978 who had a reputation as a practical, soft-spoken man. Although he was willing to cooperate with Democrats, and he supported funding for food stamps, rural housing, and African American colleges, his politics were by no means liberal. Cochran was a Southern conservative who opposed abortion rights and received high ratings from conservative interest groups. He primarily voted along party lines, and in 1995 he voted 93 percent of the time with a majority of Republicans.

His reluctance to become involved in partisan battles may have been the reason fellow Mississippian Trent Lott was able to move past Cochran to become majority whip for the 104th Congress.

Early Life and Education

Thad Cochran was born December 7, 1937, in Pontotoc, a small rural community in Mississippi. His parents, William Holmes and Emma Grace Cochran, both worked as teachers. His family was always active in politics. As a boy, Cochran often helped his parents with their work on local political campaigns.

School was Cochran's top priority. He was valedictorian of his graduating high school class. Cochran was active in varsity sports, the 4-H club, and the Boy Scouts. He demonstrated his future leadership qualities by becoming an Eagle Scout, an accomplishment of which he remained very proud. Cochran credited scouting with expanding his view of the world, and suggested that a trip to Washington, DC, with the Scouts was the beginning of his interest in seeking office at the national level. He long considered himself an "honorary Scout master".

Cochran enrolled in the school of liberal arts at the University of Mississippi in 1955, and earned a BA degree with a major in psychology and a minor in political science. After graduation he joined the US Naval Reserve as an Ensign, and served for eighteen months aboard the USS Macon.

Cochran enrolled in the School of Law at the University of Mississippi in 1961, and during his first year he won the Frederick Hamel Memorial Award for having the highest academic average in his class. While in law school, he was awarded a Rotary Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and studied international law for a year at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. He continued his hard work and graduated with the third-highest grade point average of all graduating students from the University of Mississippi law school during the 1960s.

After law school, Cochran joined the firm of Watkins & Eager in Jackson, and was made a partner in the firm after less than three years. He married Rose Clayton in June 1964, and the couple had two children.

Early Political Career

Cochran first became active in politics in 1967, when he made his first television appearance in support of Fred Thomas, who was running for sheriff of Hinds County. The following year, he became involved in a Republican campaign for the first time when he served as executive director of Mississippi Citizens for Nixon-Agnew. In 1971, Cochran worked on Charles Sullivan's gubernatorial campaign. That same year, he was elected president of the Young Lawyers Division of the Mississippi Bar Association, and named by the Jaycees as Jackson's Young Man of the Year.

In 1972 Cochran was elected to the United States House of Representatives for the Fourth District. He was appointed to the Public Works and Transportation Committee, which had jurisdiction over economic development, transportation, and flood control. During his second term in the House, Cochran was chosen to represent the Southern states on the House Republican Policy Committee.

Senator Cochran

Cochran was elected to the Senate in 1978 after serving six years in the House. He won the election by a narrow margin, but was the first Mississippi Republican in one hundred years to win a Senate seat. His margin of victory improved in 1984, when he defeated Governor William Winter, the first time since Reconstruction that a Republican candidate received a majority of the vote in a statewide race. In 1990, he became the first Republican in nearly a century to win a statewide race with no Democratic opposition. Cochran won reelection in both 1996 and 2002 by overwhelming majorities.

While Cochran was not as well known nationally as his fellow Mississippian senator Trent Lott, his influence as a senior member of the Agriculture Committee and chairman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee had an enormous impact on Southern agriculture, as both committees acted favorably toward the large agricultural community in Mississippi.

Cochran's committee assignments, including work on the Senate ethics, labor and human resources, and judiciary committees, as well as his seat on the committee on American Indian affairs, exposed the senator to a broad range of controversial topics. His efforts to improve access to medical care for the poor and the uninsured earned him the National Association of Community Health Centers' (NACHC) Distinguished Community Health Champion Award in 2003. Cochran played an important role in securing a $161 million increase for the Community Health Centers program.

Congressional Record

Senator Cochran served as chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee. He also worked with the Joint Committee on Printing and the Appropriations Committee.

Cochran's career as a legislator was extensive. He worked on the National Missile Defense Act, the Campaign Finance Reform Act, as well as key provisions of several farm bills. Cochran also wrote legislation that provided federal funding for education programs such as teacher training, vocational education, libraries, and educational television. He served as a member of the National Education Goals Panel, the Board of Visitors of the Air Force Academy, chairman of the board at the Military Academy at West Point, and the Board of the US Naval Academy.

Cochran was reelected in 2008, defeating Democratic Party challenger Erik Fleming. In 2010, he successfully secured funding for a large expansion of the University of Southern Mississippi's School of Nursing. Though the 2014 Republican primary proved atypically competitive for him, he was ultimately victorious in retaining his seat once more after beating his challenger in a run-off election and then securing a general election win. However, in early 2018 he announced that he was resigning, citing health concerns. He died in Oxford, Mississippi, on May 30, 2019, at the age of eighty-one.

Bibliography

Cochran, William Thad." Biographical Dictionary of the United States Congress, bioguideretro.congress.gov/Home/MemberDetails?memIndex=c000567. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.

McFadden, Robert D. "Thad Cochran, 81, Lawmaker Who Brought Largess to Mississippi, Dies." The New York Times, 30 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/obituaries/senator-thad-cochran-death.html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.

Taylor, Jessica. "Ailing Mississippi Sen. Cochran to Resign, Setting Up 2018 Special Election." NPR, www.npr.org/2018/03/05/590989957/ailing-mississippi-sen-cochran-to-resign-setting-up-2018-special-election. Accessed 6 Oct. 2020.