Stockman has a penchant for making inflammatory statements. | AP Photo Texas tea party sours on Stockman

HOUSTON — It’s the epic GOP primary that wasn’t.

Tea party activists hoped to oust Texas Sen. John Cornyn this year in an early-March contest that could have burnished their credibility heading into the midterms. Instead, Cornyn’s best-known challenger, Rep. Steve Stockman, has gone missing on the campaign trail, dogged by unflattering stories about his past and his ethics.


It’s a disappointment for many national political watchers who had pulled out the popcorn for this race. Stockman has a penchant for making inflammatory statements — one of his bumper stickers read: “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.” In December, he tweeted a picture of a can of “liberal tears,” calling it the “best gun lubricant around.”

While that kind of rhetoric resonates with a corner of the GOP base, establishment Republicans trying to avoid intraparty warfare are relieved to see Stockman’s campaign founder. And as Cornyn sails toward the nomination and back to the Senate, even the most ardent Texas tea party activists are distancing themselves from the firebrand congressman — and wishing he would quit saying he’s one of them.

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“I think it’s horrible,” said JoAnn Fleming, a prominent Texas tea party leader, of Stockman’s campaign. “We didn’t support Congressman Stockman, we haven’t had one conversation with him, he is a no-show at events. I’ve made it clear that Stockman’s unwillingness to be honest … disqualifies him from our organization to even consider him.”

Cornyn, the Senate minority whip, is generally considered conservative, but he has inspired plenty of frustration among the grass roots in deep-red Texas.

They didn’t like his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program; they took issue with his backing of the fiscal cliff deal; and they were furious when, last fall, he broke with tea party hero Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, over a procedural motion tied to defunding the health care law. Just last week, Cornyn sided with senators who wanted to proceed with a vote on raising the debt ceiling, again putting him at odds with Cruz and grass-roots activists.

Tea party leaders say there are other candidates who show promise in the seven-way primary contest, set for March 4. But they acknowledge it’s unlikely that any of the contenders could topple Cornyn — though they are hoping for the long-shot prospect of a runoff. Cornyn is well-funded and has strong name recognition in the massive Lone Star State, a place with 20 media markets, where running statewide is astronomically expensive. The senator also has a team with close ties to conservative activists, and he has made overtures to the grass roots as well.

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“There’s always going to be some differences over tactics,” Cornyn told POLITICO in an interview before addressing a recent dinner gathering of more than 600 Republicans at a Harris County GOP dinner here. “We all agree on the same goals, by and large.”

Multiple attempts to contact representatives for Stockman were unsuccessful.

The congressman initially shook up the race when he filed a literally last-minute challenge to Cornyn right before the deadline hit in December, emerging as the only challenger in the primary with some name recognition.

But signs of trouble for Stockman quickly surfaced.

The day after he mounted his challenge, Club for Growth, a prominent group that has been funding tea party candidates, said it was staying out of the Texas race. Other tea party-linked groups, such as FreedomWorks and the Senate Conservatives Fund, have since stayed neutral, while Cornyn has been endorsed by influential conservative groups such as the National Rifle Association and Texas Right to Life.

Since entering the contest, Stockman has made few appearances on the campaign trail, and he went largely off the grid for nearly two weeks last month (later it was revealed that he was overseas on business), missing a slew of votes in the House and time on the road in the process.

( Also on POLITICO: Steve Stockman rips press over MIA claim)

“This is kind of an unusual primary in a way,” Cornyn said. “I have seven opponents. One of them decided to leave the country. The others I haven’t really seen much of. There’s just not as much interaction between candidates in the primary as I’m used to.”

It’s unclear how many campaign events Stockman has held, but Texas news reports characterize them as “rare.”

But on Twitter, Stockman’s presence is never in doubt. He is a prolific tweeter on both his Senate campaign account, @StockmanSenate, and his official one, @SteveWorks4You. Much of the campaign account is devoted to haranguing Cornyn. Stockman tweeted a Valentine’s Day picture, for example, that charged that Cornyn — who in fact is a vocal critic of the Affordable Care Act — “is cheating on you, with Obamacare.”

A series of strange stories about the congressman have filtered out since he entered the race — including one concerning an arrest in the 1970s, reportedly for drugs, though his campaign has denied it. Meanwhile, countless fact-checks have raised questions about his credibility. And he had to remove the endorsements page from his website after it became clear he was touting endorsements from past races and attempting to pass them off as support for the primary. He has sought to paint himself as the next Cruz, although the state’s junior senator has stayed out of the race.

Cornyn, who was introducing tea party favorite Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at the dinner in Houston, was careful to invoke Paul and Cruz at several turns during the speech (“Every morning, Ted and Rand and I wake up, we get outta bed and we push back on the Obama agenda”). He also pitched the audience — which included state officials, party activists and some grass-roots types — on the importance of nominating electable candidates.

“Obviously, all conservatives share the same goals: to retire [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid, regain the majority in the U.S. Senate and change the direction of the country to restore the American Dream,” said Cornyn, a mild-mannered former judge whom Paul described as a “gentleman.” “Only candidates who win elections get to govern … only when we win elections and we govern can we have a chance to save the direction of our country.”

Stockman has a history of several upset wins despite controversial tactics, some of which have resulted in run-ins with the Federal Election Commission. But the consensus among tea party types is that Stockman, who served one term in Congress in the 1990s and was elected again, from a different district, in 2012, can’t win on a statewide level.

“I didn’t ever really care for him to begin with. He just won office. Why the heck is he challenging a different [position]?” said David Jackson, 53, a conservative activist who works in oil and gas and attended Cornyn’s speech. Jackson, who is supporting one of the incumbent senator’s lesser-known primary challengers, added, “I feel that by the fall, we’ll all come back to ‘kumbaya’ and vote for Cornyn.”

Tea party activists said they were especially concerned about the stories raising questions about Stockman’s past and his trustworthiness — such as the endorsements flap involving his website, concerns about his finances and questions regarding his whereabouts.

“Those are the type of things that bother me as a tea party person who looks for principle and character as much as our agenda,” said Dale Huls, an executive board member of the Clear Lake Tea Party, near Houston, who isn’t a Cornyn fan. “We want good people up there.”

Toby Marie Walker, a leader of the Waco Tea Party, is weighing a protest vote for Stockman. Asked whether he can win, she responded, “To be honest, no.”

“I really don’t know anybody that’s all in” for Stockman, she said. “We’ve heard rumors about campaign finance issues, ethics issues. That’s part of the reason I think people are a little skittish putting a name next to it. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Stockman has received some cover in the media from Larry Ward, the political director for the Constitutional Rights PAC, a small organization that posted $920 in cash on hand at the end of December and has endorsed Stockman.

Ward expressed hope that the congressman would force a runoff, pointing to a poll from the very conservative publication Human Eventsthat showed Cornyn leading Stockman 43 percent to 28 percent. While there’s not much polling available on this race, a private December poll from the GOP firm Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research showed Cornyn up over Stockman, 50 percent to 6 percent.

“There’s such anti-establishment fervor this year that’s gonna play in 2014,” Ward said. “I think you’ll see people outspent 10-to-1 winning. It’s not about the money. It’s about the passion of the voters.”

Of course, in a huge state like Texas, money means a great deal. Stockman, who is not seeking reelection to his House seat, came into the race with significant campaign debt. He had about $36,000 in cash on hand at the end of the year in his Senate campaign account. Cornyn had banked $6.5 million.

“There’s only so many endorsements you can throw around behind a race that are long shots,” Ward said. “I don’t mind doing it because, quite frankly, I think Cornyn, [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and [House Speaker John] Boehner need to go down, and I’ll throw weight, whatever I can, behind an opponent that has a legitimate shot.”

The night before Cornyn’s speech in Harris County, attorney Joseph Wyly was one of dozens of conservatives who turned out at a rally in Dallas for a tea party-linked state senate candidate.

The 27-year-old noted that it’s “great to have tea party activist candidates.” But he can’t bring himself to vote for Stockman.

“Steve Stockman,” he said, “is lacking the professional and legal stature of Cornyn.”