DeMint said earlier this month that he had no plans to get involved in the race. DeMint PAC considers helping Akin

ST. LOUIS — Sen. Jim DeMint’s political action committee is torn over whether it should put its big bucks behind a risky bet: Todd Akin’s Senate candidacy against Sen. Claire McCaskill.

With Akin declaring on Tuesday that he’s staying in the race, the DeMint’s PAC is polling its donors to ask if they should dump precious resources behind a conservative congressman who has been abandoned by much of his party. And DeMint officials are making their pitch in terms favorable to Akin, calling him a “true conservative who is more interested in joining the fight than the club” and whose election could determine the balance of power in the Senate.


In a memo to donors Tuesday morning, Matt Hoskins, executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, said “circumstances have changed” since the uproar immediately following Akin’s damaging remarks about rape. Akin is staying in the race, and Hoskins says it’s still “winnable.”

“So this brings us to the question of what SCF should do and we want to know what you think,” Hoskins said. “Knowing that Todd Akin will face Claire McCaskill in November and the race could decide control of the Senate, should the Senate Conservatives Fund endorse Akin and help him raise the support he needs to win?”

At a St. Louis, rally flanked with several dozen supporters behind him Tuesday, Akin said defiantly he now has one mission: making McCaskill a one-term senator.

“A lot of people in politics say, ‘Can you win?” he said, prompting his supporters to shout, “Yes!”

“When you do the right thing, you end up winning anyway,” he said.

If DeMint’s PAC dumps money into the Akin campaign it would be going where the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican National Committee and Crossroads GPS have refused to go. All three of those groups vowed not to put another dime into Akin’s race after his comments last month that “legitimate rape” rarely leads to pregnancies because female bodies can shut them down.

Akin’s campaign seems eager for the money, and circulated the DeMint memo, asking supporters to vote in an online survey where DeMint’s PAC raises the question of getting involved in the Missouri race.

The potential Akin-DeMint alliance comes as Republicans in Washington and Missouri are entering a new phase with the six-term congressman and his controversial Senate candidacy. After his damaging remarks on rape and pregnancy — for which he apologized — Mitt Romney on down to rank-and-file Republicans and conservative pundits called on him to drop out of the race before the Tuesday deadline. But Akin has withstood the pressure campaign, and his name will be on the November ballot.

Now, Akin is trying to turn the pressure campaign on its head: He’s enlisting high-profile Republicans, like Newt Gingrich, to call on national Republicans to flip-flop on their posture and put money into his race.

The same goes for DeMint, who told POLITICO earlier this month that he had no plans to get involved in the race.

While both Akin and DeMint are staunchly conservative, the congressman has defended earmarking in the past, though he now supports an earmark ban, lining up with DeMint on that issue. McCaskill’s campaign released an online video earlier this week accusing Akin of reversing his position in order to win campaign cash from DeMint. Appearing with Gingrich at a campaign stop Monday, Akin insisted he and DeMint are on the same page, and he claimed that his position has been consistent.

Still, Hoskins himself criticized Akin’s earmark position just a couple months back during the primary season.

“Akin isn’t weak because he’s too conservative,” Hoskins was quoted as saying in a POLITICO article in July. “He’s weak because he’s too liberal on spending and earmarks.”

But Akin’s latest promises seems to have satisfied DeMint officials who were neutral in the three-way Republican primary that Akin won.

“This isn’t the first time the Republican establishment has attacked and abandoned a conservative nominee, and it probably won’t be the last,” Hoskins said in the Tuesday memo. “But we’ve helped candidates win races without their support before, and we can do it again if we’re willing to fight.”