As he revs up his campaign to reclaim his old Senate seat, Republican George Allen of Virginia is pitching himself as the conservative stalwart ready to battle the liberal Washington elites. In three bids for statewide office, one as governor and two earlier runs for the Senate, Allen’s anti-Washington, anti-tax talk has won over Virginia’s sizable community of fiscal and social conservatives. And he’s counting on that strategy working again in his 2012 Senate run.
But some conservative activists, including Tea Party leader Jamie Radtke, one of several candidates challenging Allen in the Republican Senate primary, aren’t buying Allen’s anti-establishment pitch any more.
Radtke and other Tea Party activists have been hammering Allen from the right, pointing out that the national debt rose by $3 trillion during Allen’s single term in the U.S. Senate and that he voted multiple times to increase the limit on how much the government can borrow to pay its bills.
“It’s a moderate form of conservatism, and we don’t like that,” said Kurt Feigel, president of the Lynchburg Tea Party and a Radtke supporter. “He’s got to overcome that, and I don’t know how he’s going to do it.”
But Allen, still widely known and admired among Republicans in Virginia, shrugs off such talk. He noted recently that he has been asked to speak at Tea Party events for the past few years, appearing at three separate tax day rallies in one day last April.
“We’re seeing great enthusiasm across the state,” said Allen spokeswoman Katie Wright. “Gov. Allen is not taking anything for granted.”
One of the Tea Party’s key planks is a so-called “Repeal Amendment,” which would allow two-thirds of states to overturn federal law – an initiative for which Allen said he advocated as governor.
“He’s been espousing these views for close to three decades now, and for anyone to say that he’s just recently come up with them … is ignorant of history,” said Ben Marchi, former state director of the conservative group Americans For Prosperity.
Donors appear to be taking notice. Allen raised more than $1.5 million in less than 10 weeks in the first quarter of this year, receiving donations from every county in the state.
“That tells you [that] Tea Party people are contributing to George Allen’s campaign in droves,” said Daniel Cortez, a spokesman for the group Tea Party Patriots for George Allen. “And there’s a reason for that.”
“The question really,” Cortez said, “is which candidate not only is best qualified to represent Virginia but who can beat Tim Kaine?”
Kaine, also a former governor, is a Democrat running for the Senate.
