He is aggressive, unpredictable and, at times, insensitive — if not offensive — on matters of gender and race.

It’s not that the establishment is overly concerned about losing Cochran’s seat — this is Mississippi, after all, where a Democrat hasn’t been elected to the Senate in more than three decades. But party leaders are worried about feeding an impression that could hurt their chances elsewhere, in the same way Senate candidate Todd Akin of Missouri tarnished the GOP in 2012 when he referred to “legitimate rape.”

“One of the lessons of the Todd Akin disaster is that Democrats will not hesitate to tie the statements, behavior and controversies of one Republican candidate to all Republican candidates,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “This is the kind of stuff that the producers and hosts of MSNBC daytime programming salivate over.”…

In his former role as a talk-radio host before becoming a state senator, McDaniel, 41, referred to Hispanic women as “mamacitas,” proclaimed that he would never again pay taxes if African Americans were paid reparations for slavery, mused about whether “homosexual churches” exist and wondered aloud whether former attorney general Janet Reno “was a woman.”