Hitting .500 after going to bat for Tea Party-leaning Republican candidates in Indiana and Nebraska, the Washington-based Club for Growth is doubling down in Texas, where U.S. Senate hopeful Ted Cruz is one of a dozen candidates nationwide enjoying sizable campaign donations from the limited-government advocacy group.

The Club for Growth PAC announced on Wednesday that it has spent almost $2 million in the past few days — not the $1 million announced last week — in an effort to derail Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the front-runner in the race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

A super PAC affiliated with U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and other groups with Tea Party leanings also are backing Cruz, the former state solicitor general. So is Sarah Palin. They are attempting to portray Dewhurst as a tax-friendly moderate, a deadly label for a candidate appealing to Republican primary voters.

"David Dewhurst and his allies are trying to destroy free-market champion Ted Cruz with negative attacks, but we won't let him," said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola in a statement.



Perry's playbook?

Alluding to Club for Growth and other outside groups, Dewhurst has adopted an approach

that sounded as if it could have come from Gov. Rick Perry's campaign

playbook, even though he was referring to some of the most conservative organizations in the country.

"These outside PACs from Washington have now spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 million saying untrue things about me," Dewhurst said after he and Perry voted in Austin on Wednesday. "And I think the people of Texas are more interested in what Texans think than what a group of self-serving, special-interest individuals in Washington trying to handpick their U.S. senator by saying nothing but untrue things about my record."

John Drogin, campaign manager for Cruz, said, "Dewhurst's opposition to a conservative organization whose only mission is to reduce out-of-control government spending and taxes is not surprising given Dewhurst's own record of proposing new taxes and increasing government spending $72 billion."

The Club for Growth's Texas fusillade follows last week's Indiana victory, with Club for Growth favorite Richard Mourdock dispatching longtime U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar.



Setback in Nebraska

In Nebraska this week, however, the results were different. State Sen. Deb Fischer, a relative unknown, won the Republican nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, defeating two better-funded candidates, including state Treasurer Don Sternberg, who had received about $750,000 from Club for Growth, and state Attorney General John Bruning, considered the establishment candidate.

In Texas, Club for Growth is trying to propel Cruz into a July 31 runoff with Dewhurst. A third candidate, former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, also may have a shot at facing Dewhurst one-on-one.

It appears likely that Dewhurst will win at least 45 percent of the vote, but will not be able to scale the 50-percent barrier needed to win outright, said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones. A runoff between Dewhurst and Cruz appears increasingly likely, Jones said.

"Dewhurst's principal fear," he said, "is that runoff turnout will be very low and that Cruz will

be able to successfully frame the race as a contrast between an establishment conservative

(Dewhurst) and a movement conservative (Cruz), with the latter position potentially appealing to a majority of the 500,000 to 750,000 voters who could be expected in the runoff."

joe.holley@chron.com