Party Elites Helping Insurgent Candidates in the Push to November

Tea Party favorite Rand Paul has backing from Steve Forbes and Jeb Bush.

ByABC News
July 27, 2010, 9:40 AM

July 27, 2010 -- Establishment money is helping to fuel the campaigns of anti-establishment candidates.

Consider Kentucky's Rand Paul, a favorite of small-government "Tea Party" activists. Since winning the GOP primary May 18, the ophthalmologist and first-time candidate has been busy working to rebuild his campaign coffers. This month, he collected $50,000 at a fundraiser with former presidential candidate Steve Forbes at New York's Harvard Club. Monday night, a fundraiser in Kentucky featured former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the son of a U.S. president and the brother of another one. Tickets started at $1,000 a person.

The fundraising with his party's elite hasn't altered Paul's push for "real reform in Washington," said his spokesman Jesse Benton. "It's great to see a broad coalition of people coming to support him because it takes a broad coalition of people to win a United States Senate seat," Benton said.

Four of the highest-profile insurgent candidates who won GOP primaries in this year's turbulent elections are beginning to tap donations from political action committees, along with the organizational strength and financial resources of their party's leaders, newly filed campaign reports and interviews show.

Until recently, candidates backed by the burgeoning Tea Party movement "were putting up very modest fundraising numbers ... because people who make big political contributions rarely want to bet on a long shot," said Dave Levinthal of the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign money. "But as some have won their primaries, their political legitimacy has attracted attention."

Examples:

• In Utah, Republican Mike Lee, who helped knock out three-term incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett at a GOP nominating convention in May, raised about $100,000 on July 13 at a Washington fundraiser with the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Dan Hauser, Lee's deputy campaign manager. Lee, who was backed by the California-based Tea Party Express, won the GOP nomination last month.

"Any time you finally have a nominee, the doors are a little bit more open than they were before," Hauser said. "We don't take the position that PAC money is inherently evil. As long as contributors understand Mike's stances, we will accept the money."