The tea party has spent six years causing trouble for establishment Republicans in primaries, and Donald Trump mopped the floor with them on his way to the party’s presidential nomination. But suddenly, with the 2016 primary season winding down, the establishment is going on offense, pushing back hard against candidates backed by the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, including defeated GOP Rep. Tim Huelskamp — setting the stage for a titanic intra-Republican fight during the next Congress.

A collection of Republican donors and operatives loosely organized around several super PACs decided this summer to adopt newly aggressive tactics against GOP “obstructionists” — or as John Hart, a former aide to ex-Sen. Tom Coburn, calls them: “Rebels In Name Only” — after years of growing tea-party influence in Republican primaries and the halls of Congress.


Low-profile House candidates from Kansas to Georgia watched in astonishment this summer as hundreds of thousands of super PAC dollars poured into their primaries. The top aide for Roger Marshall, the Republican who beat Huelskamp in his Kansas primary, remembers sitting in his car when his phone pinged with news that donors unknown were about to inject a half-million dollars into rural Western Kansas.

“Who are these people?” Brent Robertson, Marshall’s campaign manager, thought at the time, weeks before his candidate became one of the few House primary challengers to knock off an incumbent this year.

Different groups and people involved have slightly different priorities, but the biggest goals were to both win specific primaries — Huelskamp’s clashes with House GOP leadership were well-known — and send a broader message.

“The establishment’s position was always ... [focused] in competitive seats, in situations where we believed [a different] candidate gave us a strategic advantage. It was never ideological. But now you’re seeing more and more activity in these safe seats,” said Brian O. Walsh, a GOP strategist and former National Republican Congressional Committee political director involved in these efforts.

“It’s like when you have a health problem,” Walsh continued. “First, you try to ignore it, see if it gets better. Then you try to treat it with meds. Now you just have to radiate it.”

That message comes at the end of the 2016 primary season but just a few months before a new Congress has to govern with a new president. The groups hope to show that 2018 primaries could be on the horizon if conservative rebels stand in the way of congressional Republicans’ legislative strategy.

“You have to get beyond saying only ‘no.’ You have to be effective. You have to propose solutions and govern,” said Rob Engstrom, the political director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who noted that his group has backed House Freedom Caucus members in the past.

To “non-governing” members, “we want to put you on notice,” said a spokesman for Strong Leadership for America PAC, a new group that plans to focus on Republican and Democratic primaries, founded by donors who generally support the “No Labels” effort, which targeted Huelskamp with its first half-million dollars.

Conservatives in the House, used to playing offense, say they are under siege.

“Absolutely, we’re being targeted, absolutely,” said Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, a House Freedom Caucus member who’s seen a group called Right Way PAC drop $211,000 on negative radio ads and mailers (and promise more to come) ahead of his late-August primary. “Over and over again [this year], you see the same thing with them. Look, the Freedom Caucus hasn’t challenged anyone who’s a sitting member. We’ve only played in open seats, but isn’t that interesting that K Street and Wall Street are playing against members?

“This isn’t a game for this year, but a game for next year. This isn’t just a short game, this is a long game,” said Gosar, who’s still expected to win his primary. “There’s no stopping them.”

On this, Gosar and one of the new establishment-oriented PACs agree.

“This is a long game,” the Strong Leadership for America spokesman said. “Kansas was just one race, and it doesn't fundamentally change anything, but if we scale it up over time, we can fundamentally change the dynamic [in Washington]."

Huelskamp’s loss in Kansas and the result in an open Georgia race the week before, where small-town Mayor Drew Ferguson defeated a Freedom Caucus-endorsed state senator, Mike Crane, represented a sharp and expensive turnaround from some earlier 2016 primaries.

Candidates backed by the conservative Club for Growth held an Indiana open seat and even captured former House Speaker John Boehner’s open district, a huge symbolic victory delivered in spite of some spending by Right Way Initiative, a nonprofit affiliated with the super PAC of the same name.

ESAFund and its sister nonprofit Ending Spending, which has a long primary-spending track record dating back to 2010, weighed in again heavily this summer. The group has backed hard-line conservatives like Sen. Ted Cruz and South Carolina Rep. Mick Mulvaney in the past, and its principal goals include eliminating earmark projects, “reducing the size, scope and cost of government” and “electing a governing majority,” said PAC President Brian Baker.

“The key thing to understand is that we support only strong, principled fiscal conservatives with a plan to do just that — and grandstanders need not apply,” Baker said. “We have a long track record of engaging in both primary and general elections to support or oppose candidates to achieve our goals.”

Rep. Jim Jordan, the Freedom Caucus chairman, sees things differently.

“Let’s make one thing clear, Washington special-interest groups poured money into these races against conservatives to stack the deck next year in favor of their agenda of comprehensive immigration reform, reauthorizing the Export-Import Bank, and raising the debt ceiling without making substantial cuts to spending,” Jordan said in a statement. “In these cases they were successful, but I believe the American people will speak out against this Washington-centric agenda going forward.”

Roger Marshall, pictured on primary night with his wife, Laina, defeated Rep. Tim Huelskamp in the Republican primary to represent a district spanning much of central and western Kansas. The campaign got a big boost from donors who injected a half-million dollars into the bid to oust Huelskamp. | AP Photo

Just before Nevada’s June primaries, Ending Spending dumped $1.6 million into GOP state Senate leader Michael Roberson’s congressional race. Roberson was considered a more electable candidate, but he ended up losing to Danny Tarkanian, whose family name is gold in Nevada due to his father’s long-ago exploits coaching the University of Nevada, Las Vegas basketball team.

But Ending Spending’s huge outlay caught the eye of conservative groups concerned about GOP candidates like Roberson, who last spring helped Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval shepherd a tax hike through Nevada’s Legislature.

The Club for Growth didn’t endorse Tarkanian, but it gave the primary a “hard look” because it so opposed Roberson, said Doug Sachtleben, a spokesman for group.

It set the stage for a summer of conflict.

Within a month, the Club and Ending Spending found themselves on opposite sides of two major GOP primaries: Huelskamp’s in Kansas, and an open, safe-seat primary to replace retiring Rep. Lynn Westmoreland in a rural stretch of Georgia.

Focusing on open, safely Republican seats has for years been a major part of the Club for Growth’s strategy to boost the number of conservative allies in Congress. Earlier in 2016, the Club, along with the House Freedom Fund, spent nearly $370,000 in a safe Indiana primary, which narrowly gave Jim Banks, a Club endorsee, a place in the next Congress.

But ESAFund spent more than $1.6 million in the two races in Kansas and Georgia, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent more than $1 million as well. Though the Club for Growth also spent heavily, the establishment-backed candidates, Marshall and Ferguson, both won.

The Club vows to push back soon.

“The establishment has decided to gear up bigger, better and earlier, pouring in a lot of money,” said Sachtleben, who also pointed to two more Club-backed candidates in Florida and Arizona, races that will be decided later this month. “There’s a strong effort to undo any progress conservatives have made, and it’s going to take an effort to match that and overcome. It’s going to take a conservative response that’s already looking at 2018 and that needs to get serious, to get new seats and take back seats.”

That makes two sides ready to brawl in 2018.

Right Way Initiative and its super PAC also “intends to be a factor for a long time in deep red districts where one of the candidate choices represents constructive conservatism,” said Dan Flynn, a spokesman for the group who was involved in strategizing Huelskamp’s defeat in Kansas.