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signatures, leaving little hope of expanding the narrow Republican field after a slew of potential candidates have withdrawn or declined to run for the seat vacated by new Secretary of State John Kerry.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
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • 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

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations