SALON

Monday, Feb 25, 2013 9:19 PM UTC

A Massachusetts Ted Cruz?

A special Senate race to fill John Kerry's seat has the Tea Party struggling to find a candidate

By

Topics: Tea Party, U.S. Senate, 2013 Elections, John Kerry, Ted Cruz,

A Massachusetts Ted Cruz?Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) (Credit: AP/Pat Sullivan)

It’s probably never been very easy to be a conservative or Republican in Massachusetts, but as things look like they’re slipping away just two days before a key deadline in a once winnable special Senate election, it has to be extra frustrating.

Potential candidates have until Wednesday to collect 10,000 signatures, leaving little hope of expanding the narrow Republican field after a slew of potential candidates have withdrawn or declined to run for the seat vacated by new Secretary of State John Kerry.

“It’s hard to find anyone that we can support,” lamented Carlos Hernandez, the state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots.

The biggest setback for Republicans came at the beginning of the month when former Sen. Scott Brown declined to run, dashing the GOP’s best hopes for taking the seat. It wasn’t as bad for Tea Party activists. Even though the conservative movement helped get Brown’s campaign off the ground in 2010, with Tea Party Express alone spending almost $350,000 on his behalf, he’s fallen out of favor for his moderate votes in the Senate.

But on top of Brown came more abstentions: From former Gov. Bill Weld and former state Sen. Richard Tisei, to ex-Lt. Govs. Kerry Healey and Jane Swift, former state Treasurer Joe Malone, and Mitt Romney’s son Tagg, people were beginning to wonder if Republicans could find a candidate at all.

Tea Party groups had their eye on Sean Bielat, a former Marine who gave Democratic Rep. Barney Frank a run for his money in 2010 and ran again in 2012, but their hopes were soon dashed when Bielat appeared to enter and then withdraw from the race, all in the same day.

Former Tea Party Express coordinator Joe Wierzbicki, who is now the executive director of the Conservative Campaign Committee PAC, said his team “scrambled” into action on Valentine’s Day when Bielat made the move, setting up the legal framework to spend on the candidate’s behalf, emailing their members, and preparing to cut a check.

”AND … Literally 4 minutes later as I was distributing our press release announcing our endorsement of him, we saw the story in the Boston Globe that he has just announced he is NOT running after all,” Wierzbicki said in an email to Salon. Bielat later apologized for the confusion.

Wierzbicki’s next choice is former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, who has said he’s interested in a run, but can’t pay people to gather the necessary 10,000 signatures, raising doubts about his viability.

“You can understand that we want to make sure we don’t go through a drill like THAT again, so we’ll want to see some commitment by Sullivan and evidence he will be able to collect the requisite number of signatures by February 27th to qualify for the ballot,” Wierzbicki explained.

Other Tea Party leaders wanted Fox News psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow, who said he would run if there were no primary challenge. “He said that he’d get in if Scott Brown wasn’t in, and Scott Brown’s not in, and I’m shocked that he’s not in,” Hernandez said.

That leaves the two candidates who are expected to get the 10,000 signatures to make the ballot. There’s Gabriel Gomez, a former Navy SEAL and private equity investor in Boston who has been hiding from the press since announcing his intentions to run in a YouTube video.

Meanwhile, state Rep. Dan Winslow is also running and said yesterday that he had collected “nearly 25,000” signatures, more than double the amount needed to secure a spot in the April 30 primary.

But Tea Party groups haven’t been fired up about either candidate. “I mean, I’m assuming right now that this is all we’re going to get and I don’t even know what these candidates stand for,” Hernandez told Salon.

He said Tea Party activists will grudgingly support whoever emerges as the Republican nominee if it will help flip control of the Senate away from Harry Reid, but that he and fellow activists feel a bit used by the GOP.

No matter who wins the GOP primary, it will probably be an uphill climb against presumed Democratic nominee Rep. Ed Markey in the June 25 general election.

“I think it’s close to a lost cause,” Massachusetts Republican strategist Rob Gray told the Washington Post a few weeks ago. “Most people, including the ‘B’ tier of candidates, felt that [former Sen. Scott] Brown had a chance to win the special, but no other Republican probably did.”

And Democrats insist they are ready, saying they won’t make the same mistakes they did in 2010.

Alex Seitz-Wald

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 5 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
63 points64 points | 3 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
55 points56 points | 14 comments
vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
52 points53 points | comment
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
37 points38 points | 4 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
37 points38 points | 8 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations