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GOP candidates courting Tea Party conservatives

DeWine paying a price for past votes and actions seen as too moderate.

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By William Hershey and Jack Torry
Washington Bureau Updated 12:32 AM Sunday, February 7, 2010

WASHINGTON — To understand the difficulties that former Republican Sen. Mike DeWine has with Tea Party activists, just check with Bonnie Oleksa.

Oleksa, a Tea Party organizer who lives a few miles north of Mansfield, describes herself as a conservative. She looks back fondly on President Reagan’s two terms. She knocked on the front doors of neighbors imploring them to vote in 2006 for Republican gubernatorial candidate J. Kenneth Blackwell.

But DeWine? She derisively dismisses him as “recipe boy,” a reference to the baking recipes distributed by DeWine’s wife, Fran. Oleksa refused to vote for DeWine in 2006 when he lost his re-election bid to Democrat Sherrod Brown. And she will not vote for DeWine this November in the race for state attorney general against Democrat incumbent Richard Cordray.

“Why do you think we have Sherrod Brown?” Oleksa said. “Because DeWine was such a loser. An F rating from the National Rifle Association. He voted with Ted Kennedy. He screwed up conservative court nominees. True conservatives loathe Mike DeWine.”

In an election year in which Republican candidates in Ohio and across the country are performing well in polls against Democratic opponents, DeWine and Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rob Portman are groping for the right notes to persuade the conservatives who dominate the Tea Party that they march with them.

With the input of key longtime aides, DeWine has traveled across the state to meet with Tea Party activists. Just last week, he distributed a two-page summary of what he calls his “conservative voting record” as a member of the U.S. House and Senate.

“They’ve been good meetings, and I intend to have more of them,” DeWine said. “Their message is essentially less regulation, keep taxes low and keep spending down. I certainly agree with those goals for state government.”

Portman, too, is energetically trying to win the same voters in his Republican primary race against Tom Ganley, a Cleveland area auto dealer. Portman said he has “a lot of friends who are Tea Party people” and they “are very concerned about the growth of government and the fiscal recklessness in Washington.”

The danger for both Portman and DeWine is they could lose by winning. Analysts warn that while the Tea Party activists are enthusiastic and committed, they represent a small slice of voters in Ohio, and many do not share their anti-government, anti-spending views.

“The minute you become identified as their friend, you become less appealing to mainstream voters,” said Dennis Eckart, a former Democratic congressman from Cleveland.

Political analysts as well as the conservatives and libertarians who dominate the Tea Party suggest that DeWine has a daunting task, even though he is staunchly opposed to abortion and backed President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

But many conservatives have not forgiven him for joining with six other Republicans and seven Democrats in 2005 to forge a compromise that made it more difficult for the Senate to kill judicial nominations with a filibuster. Conservatives wanted Senate Republicans to use their majority to change rules and confirm any judge by a simple majority rather than the 60 votes required by a filibuster.

Conservatives also sharply objected in 2004 when DeWine supported an extension of a ban on the sale and production of 19 military assault weapons.

“DeWine really has a track record of being a moderate,” said Rob Scott of Kettering, founder of the Dayton Tea Party, adding that “a lot of people in the movement, their hair just stands up” when they talk about DeWine’s efforts to end judicial filibusters.

In his letter to party conservatives, DeWine tried to assuage their worries. He pointed out that the judicial compromise cleared the way for the Senate to confirm the U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito — both of whom are among the court’s most conservative members.

“There are folks who have issues and concerns with particular stands Mike took,” said Kevin DeWine, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party and a cousin of Mike DeWine. “Mike has the opportunity to explain those things.”

Even those close to Mike DeWine admit it will be a monumental task for him to win over unhappy conservatives with one House Republican aide acknowledging, “The gun people don’t like him.”

By contrast, Portman seems to have a better chance at winning some Tea Party activists. At first glance, Portman, a former congressman from the Cincinnati suburbs, is everything Tea Party activists dislike — an establishment Republican who served as budget director and trade representative to former President George W. Bush.

But Portman reminds them that he was a strong supporter of the 1997 budget agreement that transformed years of deficits into four consecutive years of surpluses. He receives strong marks from the NRA, and supported the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

“Rob Portman is being embraced more by the Tea Party movement because he’s good on most issues that Tea Party conservatives find important,” said Jason Rink of Columbus, co-founder of the Ohio Freedom Alliance, a coalition that includes Tea Party members on its leadership team.

But Rink conceded that “Tom Ganley is sort of an ideal candidate for the Tea party movement.” Unlike Portman, Ganley fits the description of the political outsider, having never run for office, prompting an admiring Oleksa to say that “he’s not a slick polished politician.” Portman, she said, “is just a retread.”

To Ganley, Tea Party activists and other conservatives are the key to defeating Portman.

“The numbers are huge,” campaign manager Jeff Longstreth said, “and the energy is through the roof.”

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