Michigan GOP Poised to Botch Senate Pickup Opportunity

The brain trust of the Michigan Re­pub­lic­an Party, en­er­gized earli­er this year by the sur­prise re­tire­ment of Demo­crat­ic Sen. Carl Lev­in, quickly set out to ac­com­plish twin ob­ject­ives: Re­cruit an elect­able, well-fin­anced Re­pub­lic­an can­did­ate, and do it quickly so that Rep. Gary Peters, the de facto Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee, was not af­forded a free pass to cam­paign un­con­tested.

With Labor Day around the corner, Re­pub­lic­ans in Lans­ing are fail­ing on both fronts.

Party heavy­weights poured them­selves in­to court­ing the only top-tier can­did­ates on their bench: Rep. Mike Ro­gers, chair­man of the In­tel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, and Rep. Dave Camp, chair­man of the Ways and Means Com­mit­tee. Ro­gers, after some ex­ten­ded de­lib­er­a­tion, an­nounced in June that he would stay in the House. And Camp, who back in April all but ruled out a run, now says he’s re­con­sid­er­ing. But many Lans­ing in­siders don’t ex­pect Camp to run, and those who do con­cede that he’s not likely to launch a cam­paign un­til some­time after the new year.

Mean­while, Peters, who an­nounced his can­did­acy May 1, has been barn­storm­ing the state for the past three months and build­ing a cam­paign in­fra­struc­ture to sup­port his statewide ef­forts. The third-term con­gress­man, who rep­res­ents the vote-rich De­troit sub­urbs as well as the city’s east­ern half, has been ex­pand­ing his polit­ic­al pres­ence — and his fun­drais­ing op­er­a­tion — to oth­er areas of the Wol­ver­ine State. Two months after launch­ing his cam­paign, Peters an­nounced rais­ing $1 mil­lion and hav­ing nearly twice that sum in his war chest.

It’s still early and state Re­pub­lic­ans cau­tion that tra­di­tion­ally there is little move­ment un­til the bi­an­nu­al Mack­in­ac Re­pub­lic­an Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence in Septem­ber. But without a top-tier can­did­ate — and watch­ing help­lessly as the op­pos­i­tion or­gan­izes and funds its op­er­a­tion — the Michigan GOP may be fum­bling away its best chance in two dec­ades to win a U.S. Sen­ate seat.

“They’re in trouble; they’re al­ways in trouble when it comes to the U.S. Sen­ate,” said In­side Michigan Polit­ics Ed­it­or Bill Bal­lenger, re­fer­ring to the Re­pub­lic­an Party’s his­tor­ic­al in­eptitude at win­ning U.S. Sen­ate races. “The only time they’ve won since 1966 is Spen­cer Ab­ra­ham in 1994. And only two dif­fer­ent Re­pub­lic­ans have won since Eis­en­hower was elec­ted pres­id­ent. So, they’re al­ways in trouble.”

But it’s not just his­tory work­ing against the Michigan GOP. The state has turned de­cidedly blue in re­cent years, with the Demo­crats win­ning there in each of the past five pres­id­en­tial elec­tions. The statewide in­fra­struc­ture that se­cured Pres­id­ent Obama’s elect­or­al vic­tor­ies in 2008 and 2012 is still in place. And al­though Obama won’t be atop the tick­et in 2014, Michigan Demo­crats will be util­iz­ing the same donor lists and voter-turnout op­er­a­tion that achieved double-di­git wins for Lev­in in 2008 and Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2012.

With so little mar­gin for er­ror, Michigan Re­pub­lic­ans re­cog­nize that they won’t win with a me­diocre can­did­ate. But as of now, party eld­ers say, that’s all they’ve got.

Former Sec­ret­ary of State Terri Lynn Land, the only ma­jor de­clared can­did­ate on the GOP side, is well-liked and has been a party stal­wart for dec­ades. But she in­spires little con­fid­ence among the donor class, and top Re­pub­lic­ans still cringe at her short-lived gubernat­ori­al bid in 2010, which she dropped after a ter­rible de­bate per­form­ance. Land has been meet­ing with top GOP donors and as­sem­bling a cam­paign op­er­a­tion, but party in­siders have not co­alesced around her can­did­acy. They are, in­stead, hold­ing out hope for a head­liner can­did­ate, someone with na­tion­al grav­itas who can raise ser­i­ous money and put Demo­crats on the de­fens­ive.

Enter Dave Camp.

The Ways and Means chair­man, who will give up his gavel after this con­gres­sion­al term be­cause of term lim­its, has emerged as the last best hope for the Michigan GOP. Camp is smart, seasoned, and well-re­spec­ted across the aisle. He rep­res­ents one of Michigan’s most geo­graph­ic­ally ex­pans­ive con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts, mean­ing he has name re­cog­ni­tion across a vari­ety of me­dia mar­kets. Most im­port­antly, Camp is a proven fun­draiser, with more than $3 mil­lion in his con­gres­sion­al ac­count that could be trans­ferred to a U.S. Sen­ate cam­paign.

Camp is ser­i­ously con­sid­er­ing the race, and people close to the con­gress­man say there’s a very real chance he runs. But they also say he won’t de­cide any­time soon. This gives hope to party lead­ers in Lans­ing; it also tem­por­ar­ily re­lieves the pres­sure of need­ing to pro­duce a top can­did­ate.

“It’s still a wait-and-see. Just be­cause we haven’t co­alesced around a single can­did­ate doesn’t mean it’s a neg­at­ive at this point,” said former Michigan GOP Chair­man Saul Anuzis, who is act­ively re­cruit­ing Camp in­to the race and says the con­gress­man would “in­stant­an­eously be­come the front-run­ner” if he gets in.

Anuzis said he and fel­low party lead­ers feel “no ur­gency” at this point be­cause of the time frame Camp has giv­en them for mak­ing his de­cision. “We all know that Camp will not make a de­cision be­fore end of year or early next year,” he said. “So there’s an un­der­stand­ing that we still have a three-to-four month win­dow, maybe more, to wait out his po­ten­tial can­did­acy.”

Top Re­pub­lic­ans have no choice but to ac­com­mod­ate Camp’s timetable, but they ap­pear com­fort­able with it non­ethe­less. That’s be­cause he has the lux­ury of en­ter­ing late with lots of money, where­as oth­er can­did­ates start­ing from scratch need to spend the sum­mer meet­ing donors and build­ing a war chest.

Aside from Land, the list of po­ten­tial al­tern­at­ive can­did­ates in­clude Hol­land May­or Kurt Dyk­stra, who is ex­pec­ted to an­nounce his bid at next month’s Mack­in­ac gath­er­ing; Oak­land County Dis­trict Court Judge Kim Small, who has met with GOP of­fi­cials in Wash­ing­ton about a run; and phys­i­cian Rob Steele, who has floated his can­did­acy for vari­ous of­fices since los­ing a 2010 con­gres­sion­al race.

The X-factor con­tin­ues to be Rep. Justin Amash, the liber­tari­an Re­pub­lic­an who has long been con­sid­er­ing the race. Amash, whose polit­ic­al pro­file has been raised in re­cent weeks thanks to de­bate over the Na­tion­al Se­cur­ity Agency’s sur­veil­lance policies, was once seen as a likely can­did­ate but is in­creas­ingly viewed as un­likely to leave the House. Amash has not been spe­cif­ic about the tim­ing of his even­tu­al an­nounce­ment. But he, like oth­er pro­spect­ive can­did­ates, is be­ing urged by the state party to ac­cel­er­ate his de­cision-mak­ing pro­cess after the Mack­in­ac gath­er­ing in late Septem­ber.

If Amash were to run, he would be the be­ne­fi­ciary of massive out­side spend­ing from tea-party and liber­tari­an-al­lied groups.