Conservative groups signal interest in McConnell primary challenger

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Several national conservative groups put Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on notice Wednesday that they may back
a Tea Party primary challenger to him in 2014, giving the Kentucky senator an
unwanted headache as he heads into reelection. 

{mosads}The Senate Conservatives Fund, the Club for Growth and the
Madison Project all said they’ll look at endorsing Kentucky businessman Matt
Bevin over McConnell.

“We’re open to supporting Matt Bevin’s campaign and
will be waiting to see if the grassroots in Kentucky unite behind him. The only
way to defeat Mitch McConnell is to inspire the grassroots to rise up and fight
for their freedoms,” SCF executive director Matt Hoskins said in a
statement.  



“We will also be watching to see if Mitch McConnell
debates the issues, or if he conducts a dirty smear campaign. If McConnell
doesn’t respect the voters enough to defend his own record, he doesn’t deserve
to be in the Senate,” Hoskins added.

The Club for Growth also fired a shot across McConnell’s bow.

“The Club for Growth PAC met with Matt Bevin many months
ago, and we’d like to hear more about his candidacy and the differences between
him and Senator McConnell on the issues,” said Club for Growth President Chris
Chocola in a statement. 

Bevin, an Army veteran and investment firm executive,
officially launched his campaign on Wednesday.

“The Club’s PAC will watch Kentucky’s Senate race – as it
would with any race – over the coming months to determine if our involvement is
warranted,” Chocola said.

Bevin, 46, will need support from outside groups if he hopes
to have a chance at toppling McConnell, who has nearly $10 million cash on hand
for his reelection fight and has already gone up with ads characterizing his
primary opponent as “Bailout Bevin.”



Joining SCF and the Club for Growth, The Madison Project
hammered McConnell for an attack ad on Bevin in a statement that characterized
the offense as “the scorched earth politics of personal destruction.”



McConnell’s ad refers to the $200,000 in state grants Bevin
obtained to help his family’s Connecticut-based bell-making company rebuild
after a 2012 fire, as well as a number of tax liens the company was assessed
with for failing to pay $116,000 in taxes.

The company was characterized in 2011 in a local newspaper
as the number one tax delinquent firm in East Hampton, Conn.

A spokesperson for Bevin said that he hadn’t taken over
complete control of the company until August 2011, after which he paid off the
back taxes, and personally loaned the company $1 million to help do so. The
spokesperson also said that Bevin had paid back most of the state grants.

“It’s great to see Senator McConnell suddenly concerned
about taxes and bailouts, especially when he has voted for every federal
bailout under the sun,” Drew Ryun, head of the Madison Project, said in a
statement.

Ryun cited McConnell’s support of a deal to avoid the
so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ – which the Republican leader negotiated with Vice
President Biden — as particularly egregious.

Ryun defended Bevin as someone “who paid back all the
taxes owed on his uncle’s business with his personal wealth and put his own
fortune on the line to save a cherished eight generation business that burned
to the ground overnight.”



Even as national conservative groups put McConnell on
notice, a coalition of 15 Kentucky Tea Party groups said it was “proud and
excited” to endorse Bevin outright. 

 “It is time to send a true conservative Kentucky
Senator to Washington,”  the United Kentucky Tea Party said in a
statement. 

Updated at 4:25 p.m.