Drawing the most GOP ire by far is the Senate Conservatives Fund run by Ken Cuccinelli. Tea party sits out midterms air war

TV viewers in battleground Senate states have been bombarded with ads the past few months from virtually every group under the sun. All but one, that is: the tea party.

Several conservative outside groups that propped up tea party candidates and gave the GOP establishment fits during the primaries have yet to air a single TV ad during the homestretch of the election in key states, according to a review of campaign finance records and media tracking sources. By contrast, five of the leading conservative groups spent roughly $11 million on air during the thick of the primary season, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Their preferred candidates lost overwhelmingly to contenders backed by the party establishment in primaries.


The conservative groups have long insisted their mission is to elect Republican nominees in their own mold — as opposed to Republicans, period — even if that means exacerbating the party’s civil war. Their absence from the airwaves, especially since Labor Day, suggests they really mean it.

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It also underscores the lingering hostility between national conservative groups — particularly the Senate Conservatives Fund — and GOP leaders in Washington, a sign that the battle will once again be renewed after the elections and as the 2016 presidential race kicks into gear.

Some of these outside groups, like the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth, have opted instead to bundle several hundred thousand dollars from their donors to a handful of Senate GOP nominees. They argue that it makes little sense to advertise late in the campaign season when TV stations charge higher rates to outside groups.

But that hasn’t stopped other GOP and Democratic groups from spending tens of millions of dollars on general election TV ads. Other groups made their ad reservations for the weeks before the election earlier in the year, when they could lock in lower rates. And some that waited were still willing to pay a premium for late-booked ads.

GOP critics say the groups’ spending decisions expose their true purpose: to exploit intraparty dissension to boost their own relevance. Electing a Republican Senate is secondary at best, detractors say.

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“Fortunately, the D.C. purity-for-profit groups are a distinct minority compared to the conservative grass-roots voters across the country who are working hard to hold the Democrats accountable and win back a Senate majority,” said Brian Walsh, a Republican consultant and former spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Drawing the most GOP ire by far is the Senate Conservatives Fund, the group founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint and now run by ex-Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

Last year, the group was a leading provocateur of the Obamacare fight that led to the government shutdown, blasting Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander on the airwaves for failing to back its strategy. It blistered McConnell in his primary, investing more than $1 million, and it dropped at least $600,000 against Sen. Pat Roberts, including in the final weeks before his battle against tea party challenger Milton Wolf. Along with the Club for Growth, it led the charge to oust veteran Sen. Thad Cochran in the ugliest primary of the year, with both groups spending roughly $5 million in independent expenditures in that contest. But they fell short in all three contests.

After McConnell won his primary against businessman Matt Bevin, the Senate Conservatives Fund called for unity.

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“Now it’s time for Republicans to unite for victory in November,” Matt Hoskins, executive director of Senate Conservatives Fund, said in May.

But SCF has not yet bankrolled an ad to help McConnell or attack his Democratic opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes.

After Cochran’s June defeat of tea party favorite Chris McDaniel, the Senate Conservatives Fund went so far as to dub seven Republican senators the “shameful seven” for donating to a Cochran-allied group that pounded McDaniel on the airwaves.

Since then, SCF has done little to help Republican candidates in critical states compete on TV.

Officials with the Senate Conservatives Fund said that it was bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars for four Senate candidates — Joni Ernst of Iowa, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Rob Maness of Louisiana — as well as helping several Republican House hopefuls. The group has raised $2.2 million from its donors for those Senate and House candidates and spent $2.5 million on their behalf, officials said.

Of those four Senate candidates, Ernst and Cotton are in two of the most competitive races; Sasse is a shoo-in, while Maness is a long shot to get into a two-way runoff, which will most likely include Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu and Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy. The group launched an ad in the summer attacking Landrieu over criticism that she spends little time in the state and earlier in the cycle attacked Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas on TV.

But undecided voters in states like Iowa and Arkansas haven’t seen any TV commercials from the Senate Conservatives Fund — or its affiliated super PAC, Senate Conservatives Action — lately.

”Right now our focus is on raising them hard dollars,” said Mary Vought, a spokeswoman for the group. “As you know, candidates get lower rates so they can buy 30-40 percent more TV with the money we raise for them. And as a former candidate, Ken Cuccinelli has continually said that a candidate will always choose direct dollars to their campaign over anything else.”

An official with the group added: “If the D.C. establishment is crying over not having enough money to spend on TV, they only have themselves to blame. It’s their fault they have weak candidates who are underperforming in their states (see Kentucky, Kansas) and are now being forced to spend more money than expected in deeply red states.”

A top GOP operative responded that “no one in the establishment is crying about not having enough money” but criticized SCF for backing deeply flawed, losing candidates then not spending “one cent to help elect a Republican in a general election.”

The Club for Growth, for its part, has been willing to invest in GOP candidates it has not officially endorsed, even as it too has avoided TV advertising in the thick of the general election.

Barney Keller, a spokesman for the group, made a similar point that the “hard dollars” that the group has bundled for Senate GOP candidates is worth “far more” to candidates. Keller said the group has bundled $850,000 from its donors to GOP Rep. Tom Cotton in Arkansas, and another $550,000 to Dan Sullivan, the Republican running in a dead heat in Alaska. It spent an additional $1 million in independent expenditures early in the cycle in those races, including attack ads against Pryor before Cotton even got into the race.

Moreover, Keller said, the group has bundled $800,000 to nine candidates it has not endorsed, including McConnell, Cory Gardner in Colorado, David Perdue in Georgia, Scott Brown in New Hampshire and Thom Tillis in North Carolina. It also spent heavily to back Sasse in Nebraska.

“We expect to end the cycle with three wins out of four Senate endorsements, and we’re very pleased with that,” Keller said. “We’re looking forward to a larger pro-growth caucus in the Senate next year.”

Other groups have been far less engaged.

FreedomWorks, the tea party-minded group, spent roughly $1 million targeting several Republicans in primaries, including McConnell and Cochran. In North Carolina, it backed Tillis’ tea party opponent, Greg Brannon. The Madison Project spent fewer dollars opposing candidates backed by the Republican establishment.

In the general election season, the groups have spent next to nothing on TV. Officials at both organizations did not respond to requests for comment.