Mississippi Senator Marries Long-Time Aide Five Months After Wife Dies From Dementia

Sen. Cochran shown with his mistress and staff aide, Kay Webber, at a gala in 2013

In what was described as one of the nastiest political campaigns last year, Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) denied he was involved in an affair with a long-time member of his Washington Senate staff. Cochran's wife of 50 years, Rose, had been institutionalized in a nursing home suffering from dementia when a political blogger walked into the nursing home and snapped a photo of her sleeping in her bed at the nursing home. A local prosecutor in Jackson who backed Cochran's re-election indicted the political blogger and several others, including a local radio talk show host and a prominent attorney, on conflated conspiracy charges in an effort to discredit Cochran's Republican primary opponent, Chris McDaniel. Sen. Cochran steadfastly denied he was having an affair with the long-time staffer, Kay Webber, from whom he claimed to only be renting a baseroom apartment in her Washington home. It turns out Cochran was lying to the state's voters. Over the Memorial Day weekend, Cochran married Webber just five months after his 73-year old wife passed away.

Meanwhile, the blogger at the center of the accusation still awaits trial on charges of criminal voyeurism, burglary and conspiracy. The prominent attorney who allegedly aided him, Mark Mayfield, committed suicide last year after a SWAT team descended on his law office and arrested him like a violent offender. The two other men charged in the case pleaded to lesser crimes in exchange for cooperating with the prosecutor in his case against the blogger, Clayton Kelly. Cochran went on to narrowly defeat his Republican primary opponent and win re-election over his Democratic opponent. Another long-time Cochran aide, Fred Pagan, was recently arrested in Washington for buying and distributing a date rate drug. The Gannett-owned Clarion-Ledger, which backed Cochran's re-election, was at the center of the flash mob media mentality that sought to demonize the McDaniel supporters who thought Mississippi voters should know that their long-time senator was having an illicit affair with a high-paid member of his staff whom he was shacking up with in Washington. And then they wonder why Americans have no confidence in the people elected to Congress. Washington is nothing more than a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah.