'I went in there and was already playing defense,' a Republican says. Inside Club for Growth's art of war

The California congressional candidate sat patiently for two hours as the questions just kept coming. His soft-spoken, bearded inquisitor took handwritten notes as he probed every aspect of the candidate’s past: where he had lived, the schools he attended, his grades, any run-ins with authority. The only thing missing from the interrogation was a naked bulb swinging from the ceiling.

For David Harmer, a cerebral banking compliance attorney running an underdog House race, the scrutiny was worth it: At the end of the process, he was a Club for Growth candidate.


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Among the conservative outside groups that have shaken up GOP politics over the past half-decade, no organization matches the intensity of the Club’s endorsement process. Nor, for that matter, does any group match the Club in its ability to upend primaries and drag the Republican Party and its candidates to the right.

This midterm season, the Club for Growth is the pre-eminent institution promoting Republican adherence to a free-market, free-trade, anti-regulation agenda. It has endorsed only seven candidates so far, including three who are challenging Republican incumbents, and will back each of them to the hilt. The Club’s choices — and its screening process — are in essence a road map for the electoral agenda of economic conservatives in 2014.

About half a dozen hopefuls tramp through the Club’s offices in downtown Washington each week to plead for the group’s support, subjecting themselves to an interview and vetting process that several described as intrusive, even offensive, in its scope.

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Doug Hoffman, whom the Club endorsed for Congress as a Conservative Party candidate from New York in 2010, called the experience a “baptism by fire.” Another — a Republican who won the support of other national conservative and tea party groups, but not the Club — used less flattering terms for his interlocutors.

“They’re not even pleasant,” the Republican said: “I went in there and was already playing defense. It was very prosecutorial.”

There’s a reason why candidates keep lining up for the hazing: Club for Growth Action spent $17 million supporting candidates last cycle, according to finance reports. That doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of earmarked dollars from Club supporters that pour into favored candidates’ campaign accounts.

The group often puts that money behind seemingly long-shot opponents to entrenched GOP lawmakers or Democratic incumbents. Harmer, who called his interview a “very painstaking, from the cradle up to the minute, review of my life,” said the Club’s support was essential to bringing him within a hair’s breadth of defeating a Democratic incumbent in a blue-leaning Bay Area district in 2010.

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Would-be presidential candidates, several of whom the Club helped elect in the first place, go out of their way to maintain its good favor. At a recent hush-hush retreat for Club donors, prominent conservative White House hopefuls including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul were in attendance, as well as Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, himself a former Club for Growth president.

If there are corners of the Republican establishment where the Club’s name remains toxic, the man who helms the group is placidly indifferent. Chris Chocola, a tanned, 52-year-old former Indiana congressman who sports a low-key demeanor and a pin on his chest reading “Everything is Fine,” said in a recent interview that the Club is more confident than ever of its methods.

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“If we do things that make people uncomfortable or tick them off, that’s fine. But if we do things that surprise people, that’s not fine. We should be very predictable,” said Chocola, who presides over an 11-person staff housed in a nondescript office suite. “We have a model that has matured over time and we’ve learned from election cycles what we think our role is and how it’s done, and we try to stick to it.”

‘Calculated risks’

There’s a reason for the scarcity of Club endorsements this year. Where other conservative groups have sought to create havoc in as many primaries as possible — the Senate Conservatives Fund, for one, has endorsed plainly flawed, underdog challengers to incumbents in Kansas and Kentucky — the Club prefers to engage in fewer races and have a dramatic impact in each.

Chocola, a well-coiffed man of substantial personal wealth who spends his winters in Florida, ticks off a simple calculus the Club uses. The most appealing targets are open seats in conservative states, he says, followed by districts and states where Republican incumbents are failing to meet the Club’s ideological standards. Third on the priority list are seats held by incumbent Democrats.

In every district or state where the Club might get involved, the group takes a poll to ascertain whether there is a path to victory. It polls far more potential targets than it ever gets involved in, strategists say; nearly every survey is conducted by the media-averse GOP pollster Jon Lerner, who is viewed by his peers in the consulting world as a gray eminence with outsized influence at the Club.

So far this year, the Club has picked a few candidates in each target category: It has backed primary challengers to Reps. Mike Simpson of Idaho and Ralph Hall of Texas, as well as Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton, whom the Club endorsed for his first House race, has won the group’s support in his bid against Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor. The Club has backed former Alaska Attorney General Dan Sullivan’s campaign against Democratic Sen. Mark Begich, and endorsed conservative college president Ben Sasse for Nebraska’s open Senate seat.

The group has also endorsed Michigan Rep. Justin Amash for reelection.

If Lerner’s data show that a race is not competitive or potentially competitive, the Club will not endorse simply to make a point. The group turned a very public cold shoulder to Texas Rep. Steve Stockman when he announced a hopeless primary challenge to Sen. John Cornyn. Chocola gave a downbeat assessment of Kentucky investor Matt Bevin’s high-profile primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, which has drawn support from other national conservative groups but not the Club.

“If McConnell got beat, they’ll probably elect somebody worse as their leader,” Chocola shrugged, referring to Senate Republicans. “Our plan to change leadership is to elect a whole bunch of Mike Lees and Rand Pauls and Ted Cruzes and Tom Cottons … and they’ll elect one of their own. That’s how you change leadership.”

“Bevin is a business guy who says the right things and if he wins, I’m sure he’ll be great,” Chocola said. “We have other priorities right now.”

Meet the inquisition

In any race, the Club insists on an in-person interview with a candidate before issuing an endorsement. If winning the endorsement is hard, getting an interview is not: Idaho litigator Bryan Smith caught the Club’s attention simply by suggesting himself as a candidate on the Club’s “Primary My Congressman” website. He is now one of the Club’s seven endorsed candidates this year in his race against Simpson.

Chocola himself participates in many interviews, along with Andy Roth, the Club’s long-tenured vice president for government affairs, and communications director Barney Keller, a former spokesman for New York gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio and the Massachusetts Republican Party.

Prior to 2012, the Club’s chief inquisitor was David Keating, the veteran executive director who interviewed Harmer back in 2010. Known for pressing candidates about not just their policy preferences but their personal journeys toward conservatism, Keating asked questions about their experiences and intellectual development that some candidates resented. Keating still advises the Club, but moved on in 2012 to lead a campaign finance advocacy group.

Today, candidates say, the Club seems less interested in gaining a window into their souls than in picking a sure thing: Chocola & Co. pepper supplicants with hypothetical scenarios, prompting them to assess potential fiscal deals and pushing them to name the current members of Congress they consider most like-minded. Biography sometimes seems to matter less than ideology: The Club has endorsed multiple candidates this cycle who have worked as plaintiffs’ lawyers, a profession that has typically been anathema to conservatives.

“They provide circumstances to candidates and really force them to question how they would vote,” said one candidate running this cycle. “Specifically, if you were given the choice of having a debt ceiling hike, when you get X amount of savings from a tax cut plan.”

The Club is unconcerned with social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. When those subjects come up in interviews, strategists say, it’s solely to assess a candidate’s viability in a Republican primary.

Chocola takes a wry view of the interview process. “If you meet enough of them, they all sound the same, right?” he says. “Why are you running for Congress? ‘Because I want to save the world for my children and grandchildren.’”

The point of the Club’s scrutiny is to get past that first layer of babble. “Can they prove to us, in real life application, that they can apply [their views] to situations they may face as members of Congress?” Chocola explains. “It’s amazing how many candidates walk in and really say, ‘Well, I’m just running for U.S. Senate, I don’t really know this stuff.”

Getting burned

Now a decade and a half old, the Club burst upon the scene in earnest in 2004 by backing Toomey’s primary challenge to then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter. Specter, who ultimately switched parties in 2009, survived that race with the help of President George W. Bush and the national Republican establishment. Ever since then, much of that establishment has loathed the Club.

These days, national Republicans’ hostility towards the Club has less to do with Pennsylvania — Toomey is now a well-regarded member of the Senate GOP conference — than with Nevada and Indiana.

In those states, the Club backed feeble Senate primary candidates who went on to lose winnable general elections. In 2010, it was Nevada legislator Sharron Angle, whose ineptitude as a candidate helped Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid win another term. Two years later, it was Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock, who defeated moderate Sen. Dick Lugar in a primary and then imploded in the general election.

Chocola concedes that Angle and Mourdock made mistakes as candidates — but not mistakes, he insists, that the Club could have anticipated. How, Chocola asks, could the Club have foreseen that Mourdock would make a disastrous comment about rape and abortion in the final weeks of his Senate race?

“To do it all over again, you know, we would have probably gone out and punctured his tires on the way to the debate,” Chocola says dryly. He shrugs: “If we won every race, I wouldn’t be here right now, because our board would fire me. Because we’re risk-takers. We take calculated risks, but we’re in the business of taking risks.”

The Club didn’t endorse some of the GOP’s most legendarily buffoonish nominees – Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell or Missouri’s Todd Akin – but establishment fixtures still blame the group for fostering a culture of savage nomination fights, and for its total intransigence in the face of criticism.

Eric Hovde, a conservative investor who self-funded a campaign for Senate in Wisconsin in 2012, blamed the Club for playing a “totally destructive role in the race.” The group gave an early endorsement to former Rep. Mark Neumann — a seasoned conservative warrior whose former chief of staff works at the Club — and announced its firm opposition to the candidacy of former Gov. Tommy Thompson.

But when Neumann appeared to be losing steam against both Thompson and Hovde, the Club persisted in attacking both of them, blasting Hovde as a “tax-hiking … liberal.” Hovde wrote a letter to the Club’s leadership and members of the board asking them to relent. They declined even to meet with him.

In the end, Thompson won the primary with scarcely a third of the vote and lost the general election.

“I sent them a detailed letter saying, if you go about doing this, you’re never going to elect Mark Neumann. … If you attack me, all you’re going to end up doing is nominate Tommy Thompson,” Hovde recalled. “Everything I said happened to a tee.”

No apology

From the Club’s perspective, it’s all worth it. The group’s ideological rigidity and willingness to set the establishment on fire have paid dividends over the long term, regardless of any short-term setbacks. Party elites have largely given up on the blanket argument that incumbents deserve a free pass in primaries, opting instead to litigate nomination fights and discredit challengers on a case-by-case basis.

Imagine a Republican Party without the Club for Growth, and the GOP would likely control a few extra Senate seats. Dick Lugar would still be casting votes. But the Republican conference might also include Charlie Crist instead of Marco Rubio and David Dewhurst, the bland Texas lieutenant governor, instead of Cruz. As for Hovde, his indignation is of no moment to the Club, which stands by its criticism of the financier as a squish on taxes who donated money to a liberal Democratic governor.

Asked if there were any past endorsements he wishes the Club could take back, any data points he wishes he could remove from his critics’ arsenal, Chocola disputed the premise of the question.

“We make our decisions based on principles,” he said. “If they don’t betray our principles, we don’t regret it — win or lose.”

Even the Sharron Angle endorsement, Chocola argued, was consistent with the Club’s larger mission. “She would be great as a senator,” he said. “She didn’t always run the most effective and efficient campaigns. We watched that race for a while and it became clear to us that she was going to win the primary and we thought, ‘Let’s help.’”

He added, just to be crystal clear: “We don’t really regret anything.”

For all his stubborn refusal to acknowledge any missteps, the former Indiana lawmaker describes himself as a “very reasonable” man. The unreasonable people, Chocola says, are the Republicans who think they should get a pass on keeping their commitments.

“We have an unsustainable fiscal situation [and] every Republican has run on fixing that. What have they fixed since 2000? Any of it?” Chocola asks rhetorically. “You people that are in Congress promised to do these things, and the reasonable types over here are saying: please just do them. Do what you said you would do.”

The establishment reaches acceptance

Chocola’s blithe dismissal of the Club’s misfires is still maddening to members of the national Republican elite. The Club’s determination to stir up nomination battles continues to cause heartburn among more mainstream power brokers, who question whether Chocola could even pass his own group’s purity test. Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who is working against the Club in his home state’s Senate race, blistered Chocola in a column last week as a mere “former two-term congressman” who now makes a living attacking conscientious lawmakers.

“Chocola attacked Sen. Cochran for voting to increase the federal debt ceiling,” Barbour wrote. “What Chocola doesn’t say is that he himself voted to increase the federal debt ceiling every time it came up while he was in Congress. … How hypocritical can you get?”

The Club is unfazed by attacks on Chocola. Keller, the Club spokesman, dismissed Barbour’s charge of intellectual dishonesty and called Chocola’s voting record “completely irrelevant” to the Mississippi race. “Chris Chocola’s not on the ballot in Mississippi, and regardless, the Club has been entirely consistent on this issue,” he said.

And despite continued consternation about the Club’s efforts, there are big segments of the GOP that have concluded — a decade after that first Toomey-Specter race — that this group is here to stay and that the Pandora’s box of costly GOP primaries cannot be closed.

Some are even taking heart that the Club’s candidate preferences for 2014 overlap in some places with the establishment’s druthers. The Club may be at war with the Chamber of Commerce in Idaho and Mississippi, but they’ve picked the same Senate challengers as the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads in Alaska and Arkansas.

At least, the thinking goes, they’re not on board with Bevin, the McConnell challenger, or Milton Wolf, the Kansas radiologist challenging GOP Sen. Pat Roberts. (After multiple other conservative groups backed Wolf, a local newspaper reported that he posted X-rays of dead patients on the Internet.)

Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, a decidedly mainstream Republican who counts Chocola as a friend, said the Club appears to be “much more strategic in their thinking” this cycle. In the past, Cole said, “they have sometimes pursued counterproductive strategies” — but there’s not much to be done about that.

“I don’t think you can manage them,” said Cole, who allowed that he and Chocola smoke the occasional cigar together. “You just have to deal with them as a factor in politics and that they can materialize at any moment in your race.”

To the incumbents the Club is hunting down, it certainly doesn’t feel like the group has gone wobbly. Simpson, the Idaho Republican targeted heavily for defeat this year, took a fatalistic view of the Club’s role in his race. “It is what it is,” he said, much as one might react to a bad weather forecast.

“We’ll put out the truth after they put out their statements,” said Simpson, who had amassed a 58 percent lifetime rating since his first election in 1998.

Former Florida Rep. Allen West, a hero to national conservative activists and a Fox News fixture, responded with a sigh when asked about the Club’s refusal to endorse him for a Democratic-held House seat in 2010. He chalked it up to his deviation from the group’s views on trade.

“They’re big free-trade guys over at the Club for Growth. I believe you have to have trade that is fair, first and foremost,” West said, who managed only 64 out of 100 on the Club scorecard.

West, no political shrinking violet, added: “I can’t go out there and be 100 percent for everybody. But I think if there’s a certain target ring that you hit, you should be able to get support from folks.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified one member of the Club's endorsement list.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Andrea Drusch @ 04/07/2014 07:59 AM CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story misidentified one member of the Club's endorsement list.