GOP split persists for ’18 races
Outsider Senate hopefuls undaunted despite Moore’s defeat
RENO — Republicans who hope their Senate disaster in Alabama will scare voters away from other outsider, long-shot conservatives should spend some time with Michele Evans.
Three thousand miles from the scene of Republican Roy Moore’s defeat, the Nevada Republican doesn’t see a connection between Moore and her preferred Senate candidate, Danny Tarkanian, who is trying to unseat incumbent Dean Heller after several failed election attempts.
Evans isn’t swayed by the arguments from Republican Party leaders, who warn that conservative candidates with problematic track records like Tarkanian or former Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward can’t win general election battles and will lead the GOP to lose seats in 2018.
“We risk losing more with Heller,” said Evans, the 51-year-old vice president of Active Republican Women of Las Vegas.
The clash between GOP leaders and voters who, like Evans, feel betrayed by them will come into sharp relief in a series of Republican primaries in early 2018. The outcomes will help determine Democrats’ prospects for taking back control of the Senate, as Democrats have to defend 10 seats in states Trump won.
Ward, who lost a primary challenge to Sen. John Mccain in 2016, has appeared on Infowars, a radio show that traffics in conspiracy theories and held a hearing about the theory that exhaust trails from jets might be poisoning people, leading opponents to dub her “Chemtrail Kelli.”
Like Moore, Ward and Tarkanian have the backing of Steve Bannon, the former Trump White House adviser who has vowed to wage political war against Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell by backing challengers to some incumbents. Mcconnell’s allies have sought to send a message that candidates who align with Bannon will pay the price.
“Steve Bannon is toxic, and we saw that in Alabama,” said Chris Pack, a spokesman for Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC supporting McConnell’s candidates.
Andrew Surabian, a senior adviser to the pro-trump Great America Alliance super PAC and a Bannon ally, noted that Bannon is supporting long-established elected officials in states such as Montana and West Virginia. He doubted the Alabama loss would move Republican voters.
“The only people it carries weight with are people inside the Beltway,” Surabian said.
Richard Jones, a retired engineer active in Republican politics in Summerlin, prefers Tarkanian to Heller, whom he described as a “RINO,” or Republican in Name Only. Referring to Tarkanian’s previous losses, Jones said: “If the only rap is he’s tried and tried and tried, that’s not that negative from my point of view.”
Tarkanian is trying to turn GOP voters’ distrust of Washington and Mcconnell into an asset.
“Mitch Mcconnell’s argument is we need to support a guy like Dean Heller, who will do what’s politically expedient for himself over what’s best for our country because he has a better chance of being elected than I do,” Tarkanian said in an interview at Mimi’s Cafe in south Reno. “I think that is why people are sick and tired of politicians.”
Heller was appointed to his Senate seat in 2011 and was elected narrowly in a year when Barack Obama won Nevada by 6 percentage points. He staked out a softer position on immigration than other Republicans who lost that year. And he voted against the repeal of Obamacare earlier this year.
And on Wednesday, he stood prominently behind Trump in the Rose Garden as the party celebrated the passage of the tax overhaul legislation sought by both conservatives and centrists in the GOP.