“A sheriff’s department spokesman refutes claims by the Chris McDaniel camp that three staffers were let into the courthouse by ‘uniformed personnel’ sometime after it closed late election night,” the Jackson Clarion Ledger reports.

“The incident is now under investigation by the sheriff’s department, and they have requested courthouse security footage… Hinds County Circuit Clerk Barbara Dunn says it would be virtually impossible to tamper with ballots after they make it to her office. All ballots including absentee were locked inside a vault in her office, which was locked when everyone left Tuesday night between 11 p.m. and 11:30 p.m.”

Michigan Democrats hit U.S. Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land with a Seinfeld-themed web video parody.

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Scott Brown (R) “abruptly resigned Wednesday from an obscure Florida company and gave up stock initially valued at $1.3 million after facing a barrage of questions about his role as a ‘senior adviser,’ a controversy that had dogged his US Senate campaign in New Hampshire,” the Boston Globe reports.

Joe Klein: “We are sure to be smothered by Hillary (or hillary!, as an old campaign button had it) well past the summer solstice… I approach the coming spectacle with a combination of obsession, exhaustion, dread and exhilaration. This is going to be horrible fun – and crucial, as the Clintons always are… Some presidential campaigns are about inevitability. Others are about energy. The best have both, but it’s rare: inevitability tends to crush energy.”

“I’ve seen her candor more than once, but always off the record. That will have to change. If Hillary Clinton hopes to succeed, she’s going to have to drop the veil – spontaneously, quite possibly in a crucial moment, like a debate – and trust the public to accept who she really is. Absent that, there is no such thing as inevitability.”

“You can’t be the candidate that shakes down more money on Wall Street than anybody since I don’t know, Woodrow Wilson, and be the populist. You can’t be the one to say we’re going to focus on rebuilding America if you voted to go to the Iraq war.”

— Former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D), quoted by Time, on a possible presidential bid by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) needs a large, broad turnout in a June 24 runoff — a steep hill, since runoffs are typically parochial with low turnout. Challenger Chris McDaniel needs his blue collar and tea party base of voters in his strongholds to turn out strong again. They still appear fired up and ready. Both Republican U.S. Senate campaigns need money, lots of it fast, or outside groups willing to spend on their behalf.”

“As the two campaigns analyzed Tuesday’s voting — in which they fought to nearly a draw — and plotted strategy moving forward, most prognoses had the runoff tilted in McDaniel’s favor.”

However, Harry Enten
says “we should be cautious in speculating how the Mississippi runoff
will go. There hasn’t been a GOP primary for Senate or governor in the
past 26 years in which an incumbent didn’t get the most votes but still
made a runoff. We’re in mostly uncharted territory.”

Nate Cohn says Democrats shouldn’t get their hopes up about winning a U.S. Senate seat in Mississippi — even if tea partier Chris McDaniel (R) prevails in a runoff against Sen. Thad Cochran (R).

“There is no state more polarized than Mississippi. Eighty percent of voters are black or white evangelical Christian. And the problem for Democrats is that they’re on the wrong side of the ledger. In 2012, 50 percent of voters were white evangelical Christians, and they voted 95 percent for Mitt Romney. They form a nearly unbreakable bloc, and they’re augmented by the state’s deeply conservative non-evangelical white voters. Over all, Mr. Obama barely exceeded 10 percent of white voters, if at all… There just might not be a road to victory for Democrats in Mississippi.”