Tea Partiers target Delaware Senate race

Tea Party Express has Delaware Rep. Mike Castle squarely in their sights in the state’s Sept. 14 Senate GOP primary. Castle is facing off against insurgent candidate Christine O’Donnell in the race and the winner will take on the Democratic nominee for the Senate seat previously held by Vice President Joe Biden.

Fresh from its victory in Alaska’s GOP Senate primary, where the group helped Joe Miller defeat incumbent GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Tea Party Express sees a chance to make Castle the latest victim of Tea Party ire.

The group plans to invest $250,000 in advertising to help O’Donnell’s struggling campaign, which has $20,374 in the bank and owes $9,950 according to its most recent Federal Election Commission report.

According to The News Journal of Wilmington, O’Donnell still has $11,751 in campaign debt left over from her unsuccessful 2008 run against Biden.

The Tea Party Express’ advertising labels Castle as a RINO, or Republican In Name Only, who “voted with the radical liberal agenda of Barack Obama 60 percent of the time.” According to the American Conservative Union, Castle took the conservative position on various House legislation 56 percent of the time in 2009 and 28 percent of the time in 2008.

“According to Club for Growth, Mike Castle is the lowest-ranked Republican in the House,” said Tea Party Express spokesman Levi Russell. “I don’t think he would argue he’s a conservative, and I don’t think anyone else would.”

He continued, “In a primary you get to choose the best candidate, and if you look over Mike Castle’s voting record, he has betrayed the conservative movement every time there has been a close vote.”

O’Donnell faces an uphill climb in the race in the face of strong GOP establishment opposition, which describes her as dishonest and as someone who is unelectable in the state. Castle, the state’s former governor, by contrast, has been the only Republican to consistently win statewide office in Delaware since the 1990s.

“She is not a viable candidate for any office in the State of Delaware,” state GOP party chairman Tom Ross said, speaking to the Associated Press about O’Donnell. “She could not be elected dog catcher.”

A Tea Party Express poll of GOP voters who say they are most likely to vote found O’Donnell trailing Castle by two only points  ̶  43 to 41 percent.

National Journal’s Hotline OnCall, however, says the poll should be “taken with a grain of salt” because it surveyed only 300 GOP voters and has a margin of error of +/-5.7 percent.

Political guru Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, believes Delaware has very little in common demographically with Alaska and other western states where Tea Party backed candidates have pulled off upsets.

Delaware has trended increasingly Democratic over the past 30 years, and he believes it has a lot more in common with neighboring Pennsylvania where Tea Party backed candidates performed poorly in that state’s May primary.