The conservative, anti-incumbent sentiment that dominated the 2010 congressional elections is back, and it’s threatening to unseat two veteran Republican senators. The GOP is eager to recapture the Senate majority in the 2012 elections, and party leaders are optimistic about their chances given that 23 Democratic seats are up for grabs and a half-dozen of those races are considered toss-ups.
Republicans need five additional seats to take effective control of the chamber. The GOP captured control of the House last year.
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But the restless electorate the GOP hopes to harness to help win those seats is also threatening longtime Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Richard Lugar of Indiana, who are being targeted in Republican primaries by the Tea Party movement and other conservative groups. Republicans will likely end up retaining those seats, but it may not be Hatch and Lugar who win them.
“For voters, the seniority argument doesn’t get you anywhere right now,” Jennifer Duffy, senior editor for the Cook Political Report, told The Washington Examiner.
Hatch and Lugar, who both took office in January 1977, are under attack by conservatives who believe the lawmakers’ lengthy voting records support excessive government spending and government intrusion.
The two are being assailed for siding with the Democrats on a number of initiatives, including the 2007 Wall Street bailout.
Both senators are under attack by FreedomWorks, the Tea Party-backed grass-roots organization that fights for more limited government and less spending.
The group is working in Utah to recruit a candidate more conservative than Hatch and it is considering getting involved in the effort to block Lugar’s re-election bid by backing a competing GOP candidate in the Hoosier State.
“Our strategy is really to try to build a caucus in the Senate of fiscal conservatives who have respect for the constitutionally limited role of government,” said Russ Walker, FreedomWorks’ vice president of political and grassroots campaigns.
Duffy said Hatch may be in better shape politically than Lugar, who already has a primary opponent backed by many state party officials.
“Lugar hasn’t had a head start,” Duffy said. “This is all kind of new to him.”
Although Hatch is all but guaranteed to be challenged from the right, he has no declared opponent yet and the senator has had a year to prepare for a challenging re-election bid.
Hatch’s former GOP colleague, Sen. Robert Bennett, lost his re-election bid in May 2010 when the delegates at the state’s GOP convention voted him down in favor of two more conservative candidates. Hatch is now working to ensure that his supporters are signing up to be among the 3,000 delegates who will pick GOP Senate primary candidates next May.
But Hatch was not helped by a new state poll, released Monday, that showed 59 percent of registered voters believe it is time to elect someone new to the seat.
“It’s one thing to have Republican delegates unhappy with you,” University of Utah political science professor Matthew Burbank said. “But it looks like lots of people in the state say he’s been there too long. That makes it difficult because even if he gets to a primary in his state, he could lose that.”
