Behind the scenes, the wily McConnell and his veteran campaign staff are moving swiftly. Dems, tea party unite vs. McConnell

Tea party activists looking to oust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a GOP primary may get some help from an unlikely source: Democrats.

Big Democratic donors, local liberal activists and a left-leaning super PAC in Kentucky are telling tea partiers that they are poised to throw financial and organizational support behind a right-wing candidate should one try to defeat the powerful GOP leader in a 2014 primary fight.


The idea: Soften up McConnell and make him vulnerable in a general election in Kentucky, where Democrats still maintain a voter registration advantage. Or better yet, in their eyes: Watch Kentucky GOP primary voters nominate the 2014 version of Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock, weak candidates who may actually lose.

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“We are doing a lot of reaching out to some of the tea party folks across the state,” said Keith Rouda, a field organizer with the liberal group MoveOn and the Democratic super PAC, Progress Kentucky. “What we’re finding — at least in this stage of the race — we’re finding that our interests align. It’s unusual.”

Progress Kentucky has begun circulating petitions urging Republicans to jump into the race, and Democratic donors active in Bluegrass State and national politics are privately making it clear they’re willing to help bankroll a tea party candidate. Neither the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee nor the Kentucky Democratic Party is involved in the unorthodox efforts at this point, officials said.

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Sarah Durand, president of the Louisville Tea Party, said Democratic donors and activists have told her that they’d be willing to spend seven figures in a GOP primary to help a candidate willing to challenge McConnell. Durand said the challenge for tea party groups is to recruit a candidate who wouldn’t hand the seat to the Democrats, even though, she said, tea party leaders across the state are not satisfied with McConnell’s three-decade tenure in Washington.

“I guess the fear would be ending up in the Dick Lugar situation where you oust the incumbent and end up with a Democrat,” Durand said. “But I really think if Sen. McConnell can’t garner some enthusiasm within the tea party, which is going to be very difficult at this point, then he’s going to have a really tough road ahead in this election cycle.”

Behind the scenes, the wily McConnell and his veteran campaign staff are moving swiftly to snuff out any primary challenge.

McConnell’s staff has attended more than 100 tea party meetings in the state over the past two years, and the leader himself has stumped at three tea party rallies, including one with Sen. Rand Paul — the junior senator from Kentucky who was elected in 2010 on a tea party wave — in the state capital of Frankfort last August.

McConnell has held face-to-face meetings with several tea party types, including meeting Durand and her fellow activists for coffee right before the November election; her group is one that is skeptical of recruiting a primary challenger against McConnell.

McConnell has also been very quick to bring under his wing the two biggest forces in tea party politics in the state: Paul and freshman Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who initially was seen as a possible primary threat to the GOP leader.

After Paul defeated McConnell’s handpicked choice in the 2010 Senate primary, the GOP leader quickly courted the tea party favorite, dispensing political advice and staff to the first-time candidate and barnstorming the state with him in the general election that year.

In the 2012 House race to represent a conservative Northern Kentucky district, McConnell sat out a contested primary even though Massie’s opponent had significant support from the party establishment. McConnell later directly called Republicans to back Massie and headlined three fundraisers for the candidate ahead of his general election victory.

Now, Paul is supporting McConnell’s reelection bid. And much to the chagrin of tea party activists looking for a McConnell primary challenger, Massie has emphatically said he won’t take on McConnell. The conservative congressman is even scheduled to be a featured guest at a McConnell fundraiser in February in Northern Kentucky.

And one of McConnell’s first moves in his campaign was to hire a trusted aide of the Paul family — Jesse Benton — to run his campaign.

“Sen. McConnell is a true friend of the tea party and is working to help carry their voices in Washington,” said Benton , who led both Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign and Rand Paul’s 2010 Senate race. “As I talk to grass-roots activists across Kentucky, I am very pleased at my reception and the great relationship we are building.”

Still, interviews with tea party activists show that not everyone is pleased with McConnell, with several saying they’re eager to find a candidate to challenge him. Positions McConnell has taken during his five terms in office — whether helping to craft the 2008 Wall Street bailout or earmarking pet projects for his home state — continue to irk tea party types, even though he’s amassed a solidly conservative record.

And his central role in cutting the deal to avert the fiscal cliff rankles some on the right, since it raised marginal tax rates on families who earn more than $450,000 and increased Social Security payroll taxes. Since then, McConnell has been absolutely adamant that no new taxes can be considered as part of a future deal to raise the debt ceiling and slash big deficits.

Earlier this month, about two dozen tea party types attended a meeting in Elizabethtown, Ky., just outside of Louisville, and virtually all of them wanted to find a primary challenger to McConnell, according to participants.

But it’s far from clear whether they can recruit a serious McConnell alternative. In addition to Massie, other big names on the right, such as Phil Moffett, who lost a gubernatorial primary in 2011, have shown little interest in the race. Tea party groups — along with Democrats — are looking at whether self-funders or first-time candidates might jump in, though an unknown and untested challenger would face a tough test against the McConnell machine.

John Kemper, the defeated 2011 Republican candidate for state auditor, is helping lead a coalition of tea party groups — known as the United Kentucky Tea Party — to find a primary candidate against McConnell. Kemper himself isn’t ruling out a bid.

“I know they’re highly motivated for a change,” Kemper said of tea party groups. “We’ve had 30 years of Sen. McConnell here, and this last fiscal cliff deal really pushed some people over the edge and motivated people to actually do something about him.”

Added Scott Hofstra, chairman of the Central Kentucky Tea Party Patriots: “I’m not worried about putting up a weak challenger at all. It will be a strong challenger. … The tea parties in this state are very dissatisfied with Mitch McConnell’s leadership, and given a good, solid candidate, I imagine the tea party groups will support that candidate.”

Democrats are only too happy to stoke the angst on the right.

Progress Kentucky, the new liberal super PAC in the state, says it has circulated 22 draft petitions to encourage Democrats, Republicans and some independents to consider running against McConnell, according to spokesman Shawn Reilly.

“We wanted to show those potential candidates that ‘Hey, if you run against McConnell you’ll have support; you’ll have people behind you,’” Reilly said.

Other outside groups with unusual political affiliations are cropping up as well. Liberty for All, a super PAC that put cash behind Massie and other conservative Republicans, is signaling it’s prepared to spend money to boost a McConnell challenger. One of the group’s leaders, Preston Bates, is a former Democratic operative who worked for Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate who lost to Rand Paul in 2010.

Bates said he left the Democratic Party in 2010, adding that while he personally identifies more with his former party, his year-old group puts money behind viable small government and libertarian-minded conservatives.

“Generally, what we need is to stop electing Republicans that are out of touch with most general election voters,” Bates said.

Democrats in Washington are still waiting for a Democratic candidate to jump into the race, whether it’s actress Ashley Judd, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes or someone else.

When asked whether his party would engage in a GOP primary, Daniel Logsdon, head of the Kentucky Democratic Party, said he expected Democrats would explore “all avenues” to defeat McConnell in 2014. But he acknowledged the party would need to tread carefully about engaging in a GOP primary and said no such decisions have been made.

“I think [Democrats] would see a tea party challenge as something that helps us get rid of [McConnell] in 2014,” Logsdon said.