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Chastened G.O.P. Tries to Foil Insurgents at Primary Level
By Jeremy W. Peters, February 9, 2014
Richard H. Black is a Republican state senator from the Northern Virginia suburbs who once sent plastic fetuses to his colleagues with a note attached: “Would you kill this child?” He said a statue of Lincoln had no business going up in Richmond because it would be “sort of like putting the Confederate flag at the Lincoln Memorial.”
And he tried to block unmarried, gay and lesbian couples from receiving state home loans, saying that would “subsidize sodomy and adultery.”
Mr. Black easily won his latest race, and had party leaders on his side. But when he started exploring a run for Congress last month, he felt a distinct chill. Some Republicans were concerned that he could become their worst fear: the second coming of Todd Akin, the Missouri representative whose comments about “legitimate rape” doomed his Senate candidacy in 2012.
The Republican Party establishment, chastened by the realization that a string of unpredictable and unseasoned candidates cost them seats in Congress two elections in a row, is trying to head off potential political hazards wherever it can this year.
In House and Senate races across the country, many of the traditional and influential centers of power within the party are taking sides in primaries, overwhelming challengers on the right with television ads and, in some cases, retaliating against those who are helping the insurgents. In Mr. Black’s case, one by one, powerful Republicans started backing his rival, Barbara J. Comstock, a member of the State House of Delegates. First Mitt Romney endorsed her. Then came Citizens United and the president of Americans for Prosperity, the group financed by the wealthy Koch brothers.
A few day after he announced his candidacy, Mr. Black dropped out. “It was pretty evident that she had all the machinery,” he said in an interview.
One of the biggest challenges for Republican leaders in the 2014 midterm elections will be how to hang on to the Tea Party support that has been so instrumental to the party’s growth, while winning back voters alienated by hard-right candidates. These conflicting goals were evident last week as Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio shelved plans to tackle immigration reform in the House, bowing to pressure from conservatives.
“We’re not picking a fight with the basis for the Tea Party,” said Scott Reed, the senior political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who noted that most Republicans were sympathetic to the free-market, small-government philosophy that inspired the movement. “But some have hijacked the Tea Party model and taken it to an extreme level.”
The chamber has become one of the establishment’s most powerful forces this year by taking the highly aggressive step of working in primaries to defeat Republicans who are seen as unelectable and damaging to the national party.
“Let’s not screw around eating our own,” Mr. Reed said. “Let’s win a seat.”
Tea Party groups and other conservatives who are challenging the traditional party leadership say the pushback this year is as hostile as it has ever been.
“I’ve been told by a number of donors to our ‘super PAC’ that they’ve received calls from senior Republican senators,” said Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, which is supporting challengers to Republican incumbents across the country. The message from these donors was blunt: “I can’t give to you because I’ve been told I won’t have access to Republican leadership,” Mr. Kibbe said. “So they’re playing hardball.”
Few have fought rougher than Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, who is facing a primary challenger at home and Tea Party angst in Washington.
Under his direction, the National Republican Senatorial Committee cut ties with a prominent Republican advertising firm and pressed individual senators to do so as well because of its work with a group that targets incumbent Senate Republicans, the Senate Conservatives Fund. That group has accused the McConnell campaign of pressuring its bookkeeper into resigning because she feared that she would never get work from Republican candidates again.
“He’s essentially joined the I.R.S. in targeting conservative groups,” said Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund. “It’s all meant to intimidate.” Aides to Mr. McConnell had no comment.
In other races, the party’s mainstream elements have been pushing back quickly, albeit with less brute force.
In Alaska, Joe Miller, the Sarah Palin-backed candidate who in 2010 tried to unseat Senator Lisa Murkowski, a moderate Republican, is running again this year and faces a crowded Republican primary. But when he sat down with the staff of the National Republican Senatorial Committee to gauge its support, members came armed with polling data and warned him that he was too unpopular to win.
In West Virginia, the Chamber of Commerce is working to neutralize opposition to Shelley Moore Capito, the leading Republican candidate. They have already claimed one casualty: A former State House member, Pat McGeehan, who claims to hold the record for the most “no” votes cast. He dropped out.
“Pat is a little bit on the ...” said Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, trying to find diplomatic words. “I’m just going to say he has a little bit of an ideological edge to him. We certainly let it be known by running our ads and so forth that Shelley would be a better candidate.”
In South Dakota, Senator John Thune, a member of the Republican leadership, has thrown his support behind Mike Rounds in the race for the seat being vacated by Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat. Mr. Rounds, a former governor, is being opposed in the primary by several candidates, including one, Stace Nelson, who was banned from the Republican caucus in the State House after being too combative with other members.
Ground zero in the establishment-strikes-back fight may be the House race in Idaho between Representative Mike Simpson, an eight-term member, and Bryan Smith, a lawyer who has the backing of the anti-tax, anti-spending group the Club for Growth. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has started running ads depicting Mr. Simpson as the true conservative, rebutting Mr. Smith’s claim that he is a “RINO” — Republican in name only.
Mr. Smith said he had anticipated the pushback, but was seeing encouraging support locally. “I always knew that a 15-year incumbent who’s a close ally of John Boehner’s was going to outraise me,” he said before ticking off some recent triumphs. “We’ve raised over half a million dollars. Last week I got two more endorsements from the Republican Party on the county level.”
Mr. Reed, of the chamber, said he had it on good authority that his message to the more recalcitrant Republicans was sinking in.
“Boehner has told me that in the House caucus meetings there are a lot more guys sitting up straight,” he said. “They aren’t sitting in the back with their feet up on the chairs hurling spitballs.”
Mr. Black, the Virginia state senator, said he bore no ill will toward the friends who endorsed his opponent. But he does question what kind of shape his party is in if its leaders go on attacking the movement that is the source of so much grass-roots energy. “So many of the big-money interests are very antagonistic toward the base,” he said, “and I’m not sure where the Republican Party is headed.”
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