In a telephone interview with the Washington Examiner on Monday morning, Harris said she has never met Barbour and doesn’t know how he ended up being linked to the radio ads. Harris also said she has never met either former Gov. Haley Barbour, Henry Barbour’s uncle, or Austin Barbour, Henry Barbour’s brother who advised the Cochran campaign.

“It was a group of ladies and I,” she said. “I don’t know how the Barbours even got [mentioned.] I’ve never met any of them.”

Asked why she felt the need to get involved in runoff campaign and run ads with hard-hitting language that suggested McDaniel and the Tea Party were racists who would return Mississippi to the state’s ugly segregationist past, Harris said: “One being, [McDaniel saying he] wouldn’t stoop so low for asking for a Democratic vote. And the way politics is going, it seemed liked something we needed to do.”