The Club for Growth on Wednesday announced its first crowdsourced political endorsement, calling it “the first time in history” a political group had “used the Internet to solicit a viable primary challenger to an incumbent member of Congress.” Chris Chocola, the group’s president, said the Club endorsed Bryan Smith, an Idaho Republican, after his name came up “in a significant way” in public submissions to the website PrimaryMyCongessman.com.
Smith will try to position himself as the more conservative candidate in a race against incumbent and fellow Republican Rep. Mike Simpson, an ally of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. While it is endorsing Smith, the Club for Growth has not yet decided whether to provide him with the full financial heft it has provided to other, more conventional candidates. And “it’s too early to tell” whether the group will allow the public to choose a second Republican primary candidate in another congressional race, Chocola told the Washington Examiner.
