Republicans close to Mitch Daniels (R) say opposition from the Club for Growth is poised to push the former Indiana governor into the 2024 Senate race.
The Club for Growth, a free-market advocacy group, is running television advertisements in Indiana declaring “moderate Mitch” is “wrong” for the Hoosier State’s open Senate seat despite a history of governing as a fiscal conservative. The club’s ad buy is small, appearing to function as a signal to Daniels that he would face strong opposition from grassroots conservatives should he mount a Senate bid. The goal, apparently, is to discourage him from launching one.
Republicans supportive of Daniels say the former two-term governor, 73, is actively mulling a 2024 Senate campaign, warning the Club for Growth’s attack could have the opposite of its intended effect.
“If anything, this ad will make his running more likely. It’s personal. It’s a gross distortion. And it insults Indiana, whose reputation soared higher under Gov. Daniels than ever before,” said Mark Lubbers, a GOP operative in Indiana and Daniels confidant.
“In the last 15 years, no fewer than 25 Republican governors have modeled their service on Mitch Daniels,” Lubbers added. “His conservative record is crystal clear, and not in the fairy tale world that David McIntosh lives in, but the real world of running a state.”
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McIntosh is the president of the Club for Growth and a Republican former congressman from Indiana intimately familiar with Daniels. He ran for Indiana governor in 2000 but was unsuccessful. Daniels was elected governor four years later, and some of his backers argue McIntosh has an ax to grind. After leaving the governor’s mansion, Daniels spent nearly a decade as president of Purdue University.
McIntosh said in an interview with WISH-TV, an Indianapolis television station, that Daniels’s brand of conservativism is outdated and vowed to spend freely to defeat the former governor in the Republican primary.
“As even Mitch Daniels admits, his brand of Republicanism is out of date,” McIntosh said. “Hoosiers need new leadership to tackle the problems that Mitch and other moderates created over 50 years. Daniels will be this cycle’s Pat McCrory if he decides to run, and Club for Growth Action will spend whatever it takes to ensure voters know his real record.”
McCrory, a conservative pragmatist, is the former North Carolina governor who lost his bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in the Tar Heel State in 2022. The Club for Growth was heavily involved in that race on behalf of now-Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC). In the club’s opening shot at Daniels, who served as former President George W. Bush’s budget director, he is cast as a Reagan-era politician too accommodating of Democrats.
“The man, the myth,” the voice-over in the Club for Growth’s television spot says. “Here’s the truth — in big government, Big Pharma, and big academia, Mitch Daniels forgot how to fight, an old guard Republican clinging to the old ways of the bad, old days.”
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) is retiring after one term to run for governor.
Among the possible contenders to succeed him are Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN); Rep. Trey Hollingsworth; Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita; Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN); and Jennifer-Ruth Green, a black Republican who lost her bid for the 1st Congressional District last year but impressed many GOP insiders.
Supporters of Daniels are optimistic he will jump into the race and predict he would have little trouble raising money for what could be a contentious and crowded primary. Indiana is a red state, and whoever wins the nomination will have an advantage in the general election.
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“I think Mitch is more likely than not to do it. I don’t think it’s a political decision. I think it comes down to whether he thinks he can make a difference, and it seems to me he believes the answer is ‘yes’ — at least at the moment,” a Republican operative in Indiana said.
“I keep getting calls from donors ready to dump seven figures into super PACs, and I’m not even a fundraiser,” this operative added. “Mitch’s depth of relationships going back to the Reagan administration, his corporate America days, Bush administration, through his two terms as governor, then at Purdue — it’s just overwhelming.”
