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South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham’s critics line up to take him on in GOP primary
A crowded primary field, with three candidates in the race so far, could help the veteran Republican senator survive by dividing the anti-Graham vote
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
COLUMBIA, S.C. (CFP) — U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham’s maverick ways have already drawn him not one, not two, but three challengers in the 2014 Republican primary — a crowded field that could help the senator survive by dividing the anti-Graham vote.
Senate challenger Lee Bright
The latest challenger, State Senator Lee Bright of Roebuck, valuted into the GOP primary on August 13 by calling Graham “a community organizer for the Muslim Brotherhood” — a rather opaque reference to Graham’s recent high-profile trip to Egypt with his close friend, Senator John McCain of Arizona.
McCain and Graham went to Egypt at the behest of President Barack Obama to meet with Egyptian officials after the miliatary’s recent overthrow of the elected government of President Mohammed Morsi, a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Also in the race is Nancy Mace, a Charleston businesswoman who has been having to answer questions about her role as part ownner of FITSNews, a irreverant Web site mixing South Carolina news with pop culture.
The site is run by Will Folks, who in 2010 claimed to have had an affair with Republican Governor Nikki Haley, which Haley vehemently denied.
Mace, who was the first female graduate of The Citadel, also claims Tea Party support, including a recent endorsement by the Tea Party Leadership Fund, a national group.
The third candidate in the race — so far — is Richard Cash, from Anderson County, an evangelical Christian missionary who owns a used car business and a fleet of ice cream trucks. On his Web site, he says “the origins and foundation of American greatness lies in Christianity, Capitalism, and the Constitution.”
Cash ran for the 3rd District U.S. House seat in 2010, winning the first round of the primary before losing the runoff to the eventual winner, Rep. Jeff Duncan.
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham
Graham, 58, who is seeking this third term in the Senate, has run afoul of some Tea Party groups for his efforts to reach bi-partisan compromises with Democrats, most recently for his support of an immigration reform bill that was opposed by most Republican senators.
His close political and personal friendship with McCain has also drawn fire, particularly over their blistering criticism of Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky for his filibuster over Obama’s drone strike policy. Tea Party groups tried, and failed, to oust McCain during his 2010 re-election bid.
However, over the past year, Graham has been highly critical of the Obama administration for its handling of the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and for the IRS’s targeting of tax exempt groups.
Graham has said that he expects a vigorous primary challenge and has already raised more than $6 million for his 2014 campaign. A colonel in the Air Force Reserve, his staunchly pro-military stands could also serve him well among an important constituency in his native state.
A crowded GOP primary field would seem to help Graham by dividing the opposition arrayed against him. However, South Carolina has a runoff system for its primaries, which means that if the anti-Graham field can keep him under 50 percent, he would have to face the second place finisher in a runoff.
On the Democratic side, the only announced candidate so far is Jay Stamper, 41, of Columbia, the managing director of a non-profit business development group.
Given South Carolina’s staunch Republican tendencies, the winner of the GOP primary will be considered a prohibitive favorite in November.
Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor takes direct aim at GOP challenger Rep. Tom Cotton
Freshman Republican’s entry into Senate race draws rebuke from veteran Democratic lawmaker
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
LITTLE ROCK (CNN) — U.S. Senator Mark Pryor and his new Republican challenger, Rep. Tom Cotton, are already aggressively going after each other 15 months before Arkansas voters go to the polls.
Announcing his candidacy August 6, Cotton repeatedly tied Pryor to President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in the Natural State.
U.S. Represenative Tom Cotton
“Mark’s been running for office for almost 25 years. Every time, he says Arkansas comes first,” Cotton told a crowd of supporters at a kickoff barbecue in his hometown of Dardanelle in the Arkansas River Valley west of Little Rock. “It’s not so. Over the last 4 ½ years, for Mark Pryor, Barack Obama comes first.”
“Do you agree with Barack Obama 90 percent of the time? If so, Mark Pryor is your man. If not, stand with me.”
But on the same day Cotton announced, Pryor went up with a new TV ad painting Cotton as an extreme right winger, rather than a mainstream Arkansas conservative.
“Tom Cotton should be running — not for higher office but from his own record,” a soothing female voice intones after ripping Cotton for his votes against the farm bill, reduced interest rates on student loans and the Violence Against Women Act.
Pryor’s ad also accuses Cotton of “blind ambition” — a not-so-subtle reference to the congressman’s decision to seek higher office just seven months after his election to the House.
Cotton alluded to his political ambitions in his announcement statement, noting that “some people say I’m a young man in a hurry.”
“Guess what? They’re right. We’ve got urgent problems, and I am in a hurry to solve them.”
A graduate of Harvard Law School who served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan as a captain in the U.S. Army, Cotton, 36, returned to Arkansas in 2012 to seek the 4th District congressional seat, which takes in rural areas south, west and northwest of metro Little Rock.
With funding from the Club for Growth and other national conservative groups, he easily won the seat, taking almost 60 percent of the vote in the general election.
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor
Pryor, 50, is scion of a prominent Arkansas political family. His father, David Pryor, served as governor and spent 18 years in the Senate before retiring in 1979.
Six years ago, Republicans didn’t even field a candidate against Pryor. But this time around, the GOP smells blood in the water, particularly because of Pryor’s deciding vote in favor of Obamacare in 2009.
However, Pryor has broken with Obama and the left wing of his party on a number of issues that are likely to help his re-election effort back home. His is just one of four Senate Democrats who still oppose same-sex marriage and also voted against a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun purchases.
In 2012, Obama lost Arkansas to Mitt Romney by nearly 24 points. In addition to Arkansas, Senate races in two other Southern states, Louisiana and North Carolina, feature Senate races in 2014 where Democratic incumbents are running in states Obama lost.
In a sign of how contentious the Arkansas Senate race will be, outside groups have already dumped more than $1 million into ads.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell draws Tea Party-backed challenger in Kentucky GOP primary
Matt Bevin, a Louisville investment advisor, hopes to duplicate Rand Paul’s feat by knocking off Senate leader with Tea Party support.
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
FRANKFORT, Ky. (CFP) — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has drawn a Tea Party-backed rival in the 2014 Republican primary, dashing hopes that he might sail into the general election unopposed.
Kentucky Senate challenger Matt Bevin
Matt Bevin, 46, who is a partner in a Louisville investment firm, is expected to announce his candidacy July 24 at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort before kicking off a three-day tour of the commonwealth.
McConnell’s campaign was quick to strike back at news of Bevin’s impending Senate run. Campaign manager Jesse Benton dismissed his candidacy as a “nuisance,” despite recent public polling showing large numbers of Republican voters in Kentucky open to a candidate other than McConnell.
Tea Party activists unhappy with Republican incumbents have been searching for potential challengers in a number of Southern states, including South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee. But McConnell is the first sitting GOP senator in the region to actually draw a serious primary challenger.
In 2010, Rand Paul, backed by Tea Party groups, shocked the GOP establishment in Kentucky by beating Secretary of State Trey Grayson in the Senate primary. He went on to win the seat in November.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
McConnell backed Grayson in that race. But once Paul got to the Senate, McConnell conspiciously cultivated Paul and his supporters. Among his moves was hiring Benton, who was not only Paul’s campaign manager but is married to his niece.
Paul has since endorsed McConnell for re-election, dashing the hopes of Tea Partiers who want to get rid of the top Republican in the Senate.
A group of 15 Kentucky Tea Party groups released a letter July 22 blasting what they called McConnell’s “progressive liberal voting record, his absolute iron fisted rule over the Republican Party in Kentucky and his willingness to roll over and cede power to President Obama and the liberals in Washington.”
If McConnell makes it through the primary, he will face Democratic Secretarty of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who, at just 34, is nearly 40 years younger than the 71-year-old McConnell.
Grimes won her post in 2011 with 60 percent of the vote, the best performance by a Democrat in any statewide race. However, McConnell’s campaign has already started a drumbeat tying Grimes to President Obama, who lost Kentucky by 23 points in 2012.
McConnell has already raised more than $9 million for the race, giving him a substantial advantage over both Bevin and Grimes.
Arkansas Senate race awash in money 15 months out
Senator Mark Pryor and his expected challenger, Congressman Tom Cotton, are raising millions, while outside groups pour money with abandon into Arkansas.
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
LITTLE ROCK (CFP) — More than 15 months before a single vote is cast for the U.S. Senate — indeed, before Arkansans even know for sure who will be running — outside groups from both sides of the political aisle have already dumped more than $1 million in ads onto TV viewers across the Natural State.
This spending wave is even more striking considering that Arkansas is the second-smallest Southern state, with fewer than 3 million people, and has only two major television markets.
Senator Mark Pryor
Incumbent Senator Mark Pryor, considered one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the 2014 election cycle, raised $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2013, with nearly $4 million in the bank, according to figures filed with the Federal Election Commission.
However, Pryor has already had to go up on TV to counter a negative ad from New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which poured $350,000 into Arkansas earlier this year.
Bloomberg’s spots lambasted Pryor for his vote against President Obama’s call for expanded background checks for gun purchases. In his reponse, Pryor said he was defending the Second Amendment against a proposal that wouldn’t have prevented any of the recent mass shootings.
All told, Pryor spent $700,000 in the second quarter, or nearly 60 percent of what he managed to raise during that period.
Representative Tom Cotton
Meanwhile, the man considered to Pryor’s likely GOP opponent, Representative Tom Cotton of Dardanelle, raised $611,000 during the second quarter and now has slightly more than $1 million in the bank.
Cotton, an Iraq war veteran in just his first term in the House, has been playing coy about whether he’ll give up his safe 4th District seat to challenge Pryor. He says he won’t make an annoucement on his plans until after the August congressional recess.
But national Democratic groups clearly think Cotton will run. In a pre-emptive strike, two outside liberal groups, Patriot Majority USA and the Senate Majority PAC, pummeled Cotton with $308,000 worth of TV attacks earlier this summer.
So far, Cotton has not felt the need to rebut those spots with ads of his own.
Another member of the state’s congressional delegation, Representative Steve Womack of Rogers, has said he, too, might run against Pryor. In the second quarter, Womack raised $123,000 with $600,000 on hand, putting him well behind Cotton.
A GOP primary is considered unlikely. Womack, who has been in the House since 2011, is not expected to make the Senate race if Cotton runs.
Pryor, scion of one of Arkansas’ most prominent political families, barely faced opposition when he ran for a second term in 2008. But Republicans are smelling blood in the water this time around, largely because of the senator’s vote in favor of Obamacare in 2009.
Obama is deeply unpopular in Arkansas, losing the state by 23 points in 2012.
Two outside conservative groups, the Club for Growth and Senate Conservatives Action, have already spent more than $500,000 in negative ads against Pryor.
The Club for Growth was one of Cotton’s major financial backers in his successful House race in 2012.
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