Courthouse lock-in latest wrinkle in bitter U.S. Senate primary campaign in Mississippi

JACKSON, Miss., June 5 (UPI) -- A campaign official for U.S. Senate candidate Chris McDaniel and two others spent hours in a closed Mississippi courthouse on election night, officials say.

The Hinds County Sheriff's Office is trying to determine how the three got into the courthouse in Jackson and what they were doing there, said Othor Cain, a spokesman. Scott Brewster, one of the three, is an official with McDaniel's campaign who formerly served as Mississippi coordinator for Newt Gingrich's presidential run.

McDaniel, backed by the Tea Party movement, and U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., who is seeking a seventh term, ended the primary in a near-tie with a runoff election looming. The bitter campaign has included allegations that a right-wing blogger and McDaniel supporter photographed Cochran's wife in a nursing home.

"There are conflicting stories from the three of them, which began to raise the red flag, and we're trying to get to the bottom of it," Cain said of the courthouse investigation. "No official charges have been filed at this point, but we don't know where the investigation will lead us."

Noel Fritsch, a McDaniel campaign spokesman, said Brewster and his companions went to the courthouse Tuesday night to observe the vote count and got locked in accidentally.

"Predictably, a close Cochran ally wants to make hay out of this. Sadly, the Cochran campaign wants to make this election about anything but issues. Mississippians deserve better than this sort of distraction politics," Fritsch said in the statement.