Republican George Allen, who prides himself in being a strong conservative, is facing fierce opposition from Tea Party activists who are actively pushing alternative candidates in the race for Virginia’s open U.S. Senate seat.
Allen has even drawn the dreaded “RINO” label — Republican in Name Only — from groups intent on toppling the frontrunner before the GOP primary in June. Last week, the Virginia Tea Party Patriots launched a campaign that paints Allen as a high-spending, Bush-era conservative, and promised to share that message with Republican voters in the coming months.
His campaign also stumbled recently when it inadvertently included a Tea Party activist as an Allen backer in a list of endorsements. She publicly denied that and right-wing conservatives seized on the slip up as a disingenuous attempt to link himself to the movement. Allen’s campaign apologized for the error.
Allen’s likely opponent in the 2012 general election, former Gov. Tim Kaine, is eager to link Allen to the Tea Party movement. In an email to supporters over the weekend, Kaine’s campaign manager said Allen “has approached this campaign with the same divisive, Tea Party politics that has doomed real reform in Washington.”
That causes eyes to roll in Tea Party circles.
“Of course Tim Kaine is going to try to paint George Allen as Tea party; George Allen wants to paint himself as Tea Party,” said Karen Hurd, executive director of the Virginia Tea Party alliance. “But we don’t think so.”
Tea Party groups point to Virginia’s spending growth under during Allen’s four years as governor in the mid-1990s and the budgets he voted for as a Senator from 2001 to 2007 as blemishes on his resume.
But Allen has picked up more than 1,500 endorsements, including the backing of popular Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, in his effort to display a wide range of support for his campaign. Allen has declined to attack the rest of the GOP field and remains focused on tying the current administration to Kaine, who served as President Obama’s handpicked chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Allen and Kaine remain neck-and-neck in most polls and will debate for the first time Wednesday afternoon in Richmond.
“We continue to be encouraged and thankful for the vast support we’re receiving throughout the commonwealth from grassroots activists, elected officials and community leaders,” Allen spokesman Bill Riggs said.
A handful of candidates with Tea Party roots — Jamie Radtke, Tim Donner, David McCormick and Earl Jackson — have challenged Allen’s bid. Radtke, a former Tea Party leader, has garnered the most attention, but none of the candidates have raised more than one-tenth the $3.7 million Allen brought in through September.
But unless the Tea Party mobilizes around a single candidate, they’re likely to split votes and thwart any chance of a real threat to Allen, said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst with the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“The Tea Party isn’t really fond of the Bush legacy and Allen was around for a lot of the Bush years. But so far it hasn’t seemed to have been a major handicap for him,” Kondik said. “I don’t think Allen will have any challenge with his base. They’re going to be fired up to vote against Obama.”
