As I write this short blog post, tea party candidate Chris McDaniel is holding onto a slim lead over Thad Cochran in the race for Cochran’s U.S. Senate seat.

Cochran is a conservative Republican seeking his seventh term in the Senate. He’s also a champion of what’s called “pork-barrel” legislation, bringing money and federal projects to Mississippi. The tea party doesn’t like that kind of thing. Frankly, neither do I.

But the campaign took a hideous turn down the stretch for the Republican Party nomination. McDaniel supporters broke into the nursing home where Mrs. Cochran has lived for the past dozen or so years. She’s incapacitated. She suffers from dementia. Yet the McDaniel goons thought they’d take pictures of her to use in an anti-Cochran political ad that talks about his alleged relationships with women other than his wife.

I had hoped Mississippians would turn on McDaniel over this matter. His henchmen have been charged with criminal trespass in this hideous display of disgracefully dirty politics.

They’ve counted nearly 90 percent of the vote. It doesn’t look good for Sen. Cochran. It doesn’t look good, either, for Mississippi Republicans who may be about to nominate in whose name this disgraceful act was committed.