Article snippet: JACKSON, Miss. — Former US Senator Thad Cochran, who served seven terms and used seniority to steer billions of dollars to his home state of Mississippi, has died. He was 81. Cochran’s final chief of staff, Brad White, said Cochran died Thursday at a veterans’ nursing home in Oxford. Cochran was elected to the U.S. House in 1972. When he won a Senate seat in 1978, he became the first Republican since Reconstruction to win statewide office in Mississippi. He led the Appropriations Committee in 2005-06, channeling money to Mississippi and other Gulf Coast states for Hurricane Katrina recovery after the 2005 storm, and regained the committee chairmanship in January 2015, when the GOP again took control of the Senate. He won reelection in 2014, but announced last year he was retiring because of his health. Cochran was a driving force behind more than $100 billion in funding to help Gulf Coast states recover from Hurricane Katrina. He was also a big practitioner of earmarks — home-state goodies such as highway projects, economic development grants and university research dollars. GOP leaders banned earmarking, but Cochran was backing Navy shipbuilding efforts in 2015. Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, which makes a variety of Navy ships such as modern destroyers, has long been one of Mississippi’s largest private employers. Mild-mannered and known for working across party lines, Cochran won most of his re-election campaigns easily. However, he struggled in 2014 ami... Link to the full article to read more