A battle for control of the Republican Party erupted today as an emboldened Tea Party is moving to oust senators who voted to reopen the government, and business groups began mobilizing to defeat allies of the small-government movement.
'We are going to get engaged,' said Scott Reed, senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 'The need is now more than ever to elect people who understand the free market and not silliness.' The chamber spent $35.7 million on federal elections in 2012, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based group that tracks campaign spending.
Meanwhile, two Washington-based groups that finance Tea Party-backed candidates said today that they're supporting efforts to defeat Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran, a 35-year veteran who voted for the deal ending the 16-day shutdown and avoiding a government debt default.
'Chris McDaniel is not part of the Washington establishment and he has the courage to stand up to the big spenders in both parties,' Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said in a statement supporting the challenger, a Mississippi state lawmaker.
Cochran is at least the seventh Republican incumbent to face a primary in the 2014 midterms. The intra-party contests come as Republicans are attempting to capture six more seats and gain control of the Senate for the first time since 2007. Party leaders are also working to protect their majority in the U.S. House, which stands at 232 to the Democrats' 200 members.
Tougher Road
Achieving either of those goals became more difficult after the Tea Party-aligned House and Senate Republicans embraced a plan tying government spending to defunding Obamacare. President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats rejected the proposal and had the power to stop it, and their partisan adversaries took the lion's share of the blame for the impasse.
The Republican Party's favorability was at a record low of 28 percent in a Gallup Poll conducted Oct. 3-6. That was down 10 percentage points from the previous month and 15 points below Democrats. The Tea Party is less popular now than ever, according to a poll released Oct. 15 by the Pew Research Center. Forty-nine percent of U.S. adults have an unfavorable opinion of the movement, while 30 percent have a favorable one.
The Cook Political Report, a nonpartisan Washington-based group that tracks races, changed the ratings of 15 U.S. House seats today, all but one in favor of the Democrats. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, will need to capture a net 17 seats to win control of the House.
Shutdown Vote
Both sides are using the Oct. 16 vote on a bipartisan agreements to reopen the government and lift the nation's $16.7 trillion debt ceiling as a barometer for choosing their targets.
In the Senate, 18 of the 46 Republicans voted against the final deal, including Senators Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Pat Roberts of Kansas and John Cornyn of Texas, all of whom are facing primary contests. In the House, 87 of 231 Republicans opposed it.
'They voted 'no' because they understand this is a rallying cry that brings in money against them,' said Tom Davis, a former National Republican Congressional Committee chairman and now director of federal government affairs for Deloitte Consulting, said in an interview. 'This has not helped Republicans. It's hurt the Republican brand.'
Shifting Strategy
To improve their odds, Tea Party leaders are fine-tuning their strategy by targeting incumbents in states where Democrats have little or no chance of winning the general election. In 2012 and 2010, the movement nominated weak or flawed candidates in Indiana, Missouri, Delaware and Nevada who were defeated in the November general elections, dashing Republicans' chances for taking over the chamber.
That's part of the calculation in challenging Senator Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, where no Democrats hold statewide office, said Michael Leahy, a Republican activist. Leahy is helping to organize volunteers Saturday to knock on doors in the state and urge voters to protest Alexander's support for ending the Washington impasse by backing his primary challenger in August 2014.
'Whoever wins the primary in Tennessee is going to sail to victory,' Leahy said in an interview. 'Democrats are anemic here.'
Shutdown Vote
In addition to Cochran and Alexander, Republican senators facing primary challenges include Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. All four supported the agreement to re-open the government.
'The strategy of primarying people like Thad Cochran is more of the same and its means more Senate minorities in the future,' said David French, the top lobbyist in Washington for the National Retail Federation. 'I question the judgment there.'
French said the federation would back candidates in Republican primaries. Neither he nor Reed would specify which incumbents they'd support.
'There are incumbent Republicans who are on the wrong side of some of these issues,' said French, whose organization spent more than $300,000 on races in 2012. 'There are definitely some incumbent Republicans we're not going to support again.'
Yesterday, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth, both Tea Party allies, endorsed McDaniel's primary challenge of Cochran. The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee founded by former South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint, backed Senator Rand Paul in Kentucky in 2010 and Senator Ted Cruz in Texas in 2012. McDaniel is the group's first endorsement in the 2014 elections.
Tea-Party Spending
Club for Growth Action, the group's super political action committee, spent $17.9 million on federal races in 2012, according the center. Senate Conservatives Fund spent $15.9 million in 2012 and $3.9 million so far on 2014 campaigns.
It's too soon to know whether the boost the Tea Party-backed Senate candidates are anticipating will materialize, said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races for the Cook Report.
With the exception of Louisville investor Matt Bevin, who is spending his own money to challenge McConnell, 'none of these other candidates are really serious yet,' Duffy said.
'It's going to take a week or so to figure out how Tea Party voters feel about it,' Duffy said. 'If they are angry, that they could give some of these candidates momentum.'
Democrats are also looking to use the shutdown battle in Washington to their political advantage.
Mississippi Recruit
Rickey Cole, the Democrats' chairman in Mississippi, said a Republican civil war presents an opportunity. Cole is pitching party leaders in Washington to recruit a Democratic candidate for the Senate contest.
'Folks are returning my call, but everybody's got to do a poll to decide which side of the bed to get out of,' Cole said in an interview. 'This race could be a replay of what happened to Senator Lugar in Indiana.'
After 36 years in office, Richard Lugar lost a primary last year to Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who had Tea Party support. Mourdock went on to lose to Democrat Joe Donnelly in the general election.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which assists candidates, is attacking the Republican House members who are running for the Senate, saying they're partly to blame for the unpopular shutdown.
Montana, West Virginia and Georgia Senate contests all feature current Republican House members running for seats where incumbents are retiring. In Arkansas and Louisiana, Democratic senators are squaring off against House Republicans.
'Republicans are immeasurably damaged by this,' the committee's spokesman Justin Barasky said. 'They repeatedly voted to keep the government shutdown. It highlights a recklessness and irresponsibility that all those candidates have.'
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Michael C. Bender in Washington at mbender10@bloomberg.net; Kathleen Hunter in Washington at khunter9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jodi Schneider at jschneider50@bloomberg.net
Posted by Unknown on Friday, October 18, 2013 - Rating: 4.5
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