by Danielle Kurtzleben and Alex M. Parker

DeMint's Innovative funding approach emphasizes ideological quality over quantity

Jim DeMint, a South Carolinian who is one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate, doesn't shrink from bucking his party's leadership. In 2001, for instance, he was one of the chief GOP foes of President George W. Bush's key education initiative, "No Child Left Behind." He fought Bush's 2008 emergency bank bailout, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). And lately, he has gone his own way to spend more than $1.5 million in support of Republican Party insurgents like Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada, and Christine O'Donnell in Delaware.

Now heading into an easy election for a second Senate term, DeMint is emerging as a de facto chief of a Senate Tea Party caucus and likely power player in the 2012 GOP presidential nomination process. He "wants to be the leader of what he hopes to be the dominant faction in his party," says Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate. But there are a lot of sharp elbows in politics and DeMint's actions, which are provoking a backlash from the Republican leadership, highlight the divisions within the party heading into the midterm elections and beyond.

DeMint has been flexing his legislative muscles in the Senate. He objected to the fast-tracking of legislation by threatening to block any bills that hadn't been made publicly available at least two days before the Senate's adjournment last Thursday. The move, which Senate staffers claimed was unprecedented, slowed down what is normally a routine process to pass noncontroversial measures. In an E-mail sent to all Senate offices, DeMint said the request had come from the Senate Republican Steering Committee, a conservative Senate group that he chairs. His office said he was simply trying to ensure that no costly measures had sneaked in.

As lawmakers headed home to campaign, DeMint has emerged as a key player in some of the most closely watched races. Using a so-called leadership political action committee, a special type of fundraising committee, DeMint has backed campaigns of self-described Tea Partyers who challenged and defeated the Republican Party's establishment frontrunners.

DeMint is breaking new ground in how he is using one of his two leadership PACs, the Senate Conservatives Fund. His other leadership PAC, MINT PAC, has been far less active than the Senate Conservatives Fund, with less than one-quarter of the Conservative Fund's receipts and expenditures, according to the latest FEC filings. Because PACs are limited by law to a maximum contribution of $10,000 directly to candidates ($5,000 each for the primary and general elections) per election cycle, leadership PACs traditionally spread their money widely and evenly.

DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund has contributed $55,000 directly to various candidates this cycle under those rules, but that is spare change compared with what it has spent in "independent expenditures," which are not subject to legal limits. Independent expenditures go toward political communications like advertisements, mailings, and survey research in support of or against specific candidates, without coordinating with those candidates or their opponents.

DeMint's PAC has spent around $1.5 million this cycle advocating for the election of 15 candidates, according to the PAC's spokesman, Matt Hoskins. In at least seven of the cases, the PAC spent more than $100,000 on behalf of the candidates.

These include nearly $230,000 for Nevada GOP Senate nominee Angle, more than $223,000 for Colorado GOP Senate nominee Ken Buck, and $164,000 for Florida GOP nominee Marco Rubio. More than $130,000 went for Utah GOP nominee Mike Lee, who is in line to succeed Sen. Bob Bennett , who lost his renomination bid at the state party convention in May (though DeMint's PAC did not spend money on Lee's behalf until after Bennett had been eliminated). Almost $122,000 was spent on Indiana state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who made a failed bid for the Hoosier Republican Senate nomination.

This money has mostly gone toward E-mail campaigns, as well as Internet and radio advertising. Most of DeMint's chosen Senate candidates fit three major criteria: They are more conservative than other Republican candidates; they have received Tea Party support on the local or national level; and, with one exception, they are not incumbents. "To see a leadership PAC making independent expenditures is highly unusual," says Anthony Corrado, professor of government at Colby College in Maine. "Generally it's the case that the party handles the independent expenditures."

Hoskins says that the Senate Conservatives Fund's spending patterns make more sense than those of other PACs. "The question that should be asked is why are the other ones not" using independent expenditures, says Hoskins. "Why are they not using their PACs the way their PACs were structured to be used?"

Unlike other senators' leadership PACs, DeMint's has made waves within his party by pursuing what Corrado calls "more of an ideological approach to its giving than a partisan approach." The depth of DeMint's financial commitment to outsider, strongly conservative candidates suggests a focus not on the quantity of Republicans who win seats this fall but on their ideological quality.

That emphasis has often put DeMint afoul of party leaders this cycle. For example, he backed Tea Party favorite Rand Paul in Kentucky's Senate race when Mitch McConnell , the state's senior senator, favored Paul's primary opponent. When fellow senators endorsed Delaware Republican Rep. Mike Castle the state's Senate primary, DeMint backed Castle's opponent, O'Donnell. And when mainline Republicans backed former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte in that state's Republican Senate primary, DeMint endorsed conservative attorney Ovide Lamontagne.

DeMint, for his part, denies that his PAC's spending is intended to buy influence from a potentially new crop of senators. "DeMint has told every one of these candidates, 'You owe me nothing. Your debt is to your country,' " says Hoskins. He adds that the discord that DeMint has caused among establishment Republicans is proof of his selfless motives: "If he was trying to build influence in Washington, this isn't the way to do it."

DeMint may have hit on a winning strategy; 10 of the 15 candidates promoted by the Senate Conservatives Fund are still standing after primaries, and most are either in competitive races or have a good chance of winning in November. Plus, now that these candidates are official Republican nominees, they are receiving support from the likes of McConnell and the Republican Party. DeMint's fund has also shown that it is an effective fundraiser; it tweeted on September 20 that it had raised $95,000 for Alaska Republican Senate candidate Miller in the 48 hours after Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced she would be a write-in candidate for the seat, having lost the Republican nomination to Miller in August.

Still, even if it proves successful, Hoskins is uncertain whether this highly targeted use of leadership PACs will catch on among other politicians. "If members of Congress want to use their PACs to effectively elect candidates, they will use them for independent expenditures," he says. "Whether they will, I just don't know. The jury's out."

 

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