The Club For Growth is declaring victory from the defeat of Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) at this past weekend’s Utah Republican convention, when the incumbent was denied renomination after three terms. And what’s more, they are pointing to a whole record of successes in Republican Senate primaries so far this cycle.
In an interview with TPMDC, Club executive director David Keating estimated that the group spent about $180,000 against the incumbent Senator.
“Well, we put a lot of work into it. I think as far as I could tell, we were the only organization that was trying to defeat Bennett at the convention,” said Keating. “So we put a lot of effort into the caucus itself. What we hoped to do, and it seemed to work well, was to drive up knowledge about Bennett’s record — and to tell people that there even was a caucus, which a lot of people didn’t seem to know.”
After the March caucuses, in which many non-Bennett supporters were elected as delegates, the Club didn’t stop working. Keating said the group then sent the 3500 delegates a 36-page briefing book on the Senator’s votes, continuing the anti-Bennett campaign up through the convention.
Will Senate Republicans get a message from this, after Bennett was targeted for being insufficiently conservative?
“I certainly hope so,” said Keating. “I think so. This has never happened before. A Republican from Utah has never lost a bid for their party’s renomination. It never happened, zero, ever. they’ve gotta take a look at that and think wow, this is something that never happened before in utah. it can happen in other places too. Now Utah has a unique method of selecting a party nominee but still it shows that if the voters are educated about someone’s record if it’s not up to snuff they can be vulnerable, too.”
The Club is now neutral in the Republican primary between the top two finishers at the convention, attorney Mike Lee and businessman Tim Bridgewater, seeing a victory by either one as a win after beating Bennett. In addition, Keating pointed to how the Club backed former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) — a former Club leader — in his Republican primary challenge against Sen. Arlen Specter, only to see Specter switch parties. And the Club also backed Marco Rubio in the Florida Senate race, with Rubio now having clinched the nomination after Gov. Charlie Crist switched from Republican to independent.
Said Keating: “So three key Senate primaries, the candidates that we wanted to see get the nomination are going to get it.”
