Tea Party speaks against Sen. Lugar's next term

Indiana’s longest-serving U.S. senator is facing growing opposition within his own party for next year’s Republican primary.

Increasingly more conservative members of the Republican Party, many of whom also associate themselves with the Tea Party movement, plan to challenge six-term Senator Richard Lugar, R-Ind., by backing Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

Lugar, who is regarded as a politically centrist senator in Washington circles, is being pressed to adopt a platform adhering more closely to traditional conservative principles such as fiscal discipline and smaller government.

Members of the organization FreedomWorks, a conservative organization based in Washington, D.C., have led the effort to support a re-election defeat of Lugar.

While FreedomWorks members haven’t formally announced their endorsement of a particular candidate, they say Lugar has detracted from Tea Party ideals.

Media Coordinator for FreedomWorks Jackie Bodnar expressed her organization’s dismay about Lugar’s voting record, which in recent years has included affirmative votes for the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees and the New START Treaty with Russia.

“Given Lugar’s voting record, it is clear that he is not a strong fiscal conservative,” Bodnar said. “We have been working with our local activists ... but we have not endorsed or supported anyone as of right now.”

Even though FreedomWorks has not formally endorsed a candidate, Mourdock has garnered support from Tea Party members in his run against Lugar in the Republican primary.

Mourdock has been a prominent voice within conservative political circles in Indiana particularly since his public opposition to the government-funded bailout of Kokomo-based Chrysler in 2009. 

In 2010, Mourdock was re-elected as State Treasurer with nearly 63 percent of the
popular vote.

In Howard County, where Kokomo is located, he won more than 61 percent of the popular vote.

The Tea Party’s task to unseat the six-term senator is daunting. During the last Indiana election in which Lugar was up for re-election, he ran unopposed by any major political party and received 87 percent of the popular vote.

According to campaign finance records, Lugar currently has more than $2.3 million at his disposal to campaign for a seventh term. Mourdock, who officially announced his plans to run against Lugar in February, had raised $125,000 by late March.

However, no guarantee of political victory for either side is certain, said Yanna Krupnikov, an assistant professor of political science at IU.

“Citizens who vote in the primaries are often different than those who vote in the general election, and it is difficult to say what will happen and what the political context will be at the time of voting,” Krupnikov said. “I do think it will depend on the extent to which both sides are able to mobilize their base voters.”