Nunn gets boost from Lugar’s PAC

Georgia Democrat Michelle Nunn is getting some cross-party love from former Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.).

Lugar’s political action committee, the 19th Star PAC, donated $5,000 to Nunn’s Senate campaign in early December, according to the group’s latest Federal Election Commission report.

Lugar and Nunn’s father, former Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), worked together closely on nuclear nonproliferation issues while both were in the Senate.

This isn’t the first time one of Nunn’s former GOP colleagues has donated to his daughter — former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) also gave $500 to her campaign and attended a fundraiser for her, The Washington Post reported last month. 

Nunn, who’s running as a centrist, has raised an impressive $3.3 million in the first five months of her Senate campaign. She’ll face the winner of a crowded GOP primary that has a number of candidates running for the Tea Party mantle.

She touted the donation as evidence of the bipartisan coalition she’s working to build. 

“I am immensely honored and grateful for Senator Lugar’s generous support in this race. His tenure in U.S. Senate embodied the type of pragmatism and problem-solving Georgians are yearning for in Washington,” Nunn said in a statement. “Both in the Senate and in the international community, Senator Lugar’s collaborative approach made us safer and moved our country forward. We need more leaders like Senator Lugar – not less, and I will strive to follow this legacy in the U.S. Senate.”   

{mosads}Lugar lost his 2012 Indiana Senate primary to a Tea Party candidate who went on to lose the general election. A number of his PAC’s other donations went to other GOP senators currently facing Tea Party challenges, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (Texas), and Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Thad Cochran (Miss.), and Pat Roberts (Kansas).

Democrats have cited Lugar’s race as the model for what they hope will happen in Georgia, where a flawed, Tea Party-affiliated GOP candidate wins a primary before losing in a Republican-leaning state.

Bloomberg first reported the donations.