• Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    IN-Sen: Richard Mourdock Beats Senator Richard Lugar in GOP Primary

    Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock has beaten long-time incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Richard Lugar in today’s Republican Primary Election.

    Sen. Richard Lugar’s 36-year Senate career is now history.

    Lugar was defeated in today’s Republican primary election by Treasurer Richard Mourdock, ending his bid for a seventh term in the U.S. Senate.

    It wasn’t even close.

    With 70 percent of the vote counted, Mourdock had 60 percent to Lugar’s 40 percent.

    Mourdock will face Democrat U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly and Libertarian Andy Horning in the November election.

    This is not really a surprise.

    Senator Richard Lugar was too old, too establishment, too liberal for Indiana and stayed in office way too long. Indiana voters just wanted somebody else and a Senator who more closely identified with them.

    Here is a video highlighting Senator Lugar’s career:

    As I have said for months, the handwriting was on the wall, it was time for Lugar to retire.

  • IN-Sen,  Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    In-Sen: Richard Mourdock Leads Sen. Richard Lugar By 10 Points

    Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaks with reporters off the Senate floor before a series of votes on Capitol Hill in Washington. Lugar’s allies have largely disappeared from the television airwaves just days before Tuesday’s primary, a sign that even friends of the six-term Republican think he’s in trouble and could lose to tea party-backed challenger Richard Mourdock

    According to the Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll.

    A new poll shows Treasurer Richard Mourdock building a commanding lead over Sen. Richard Lugar.

    The Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll, conducted by two prominent Republican and Democratic pollsters, shows Mourdock with a 48 percent to 38 percent lead over Lugar.

    It looks like Senator Lugar is fading under the weight of a vigorous campaign by Richard Mourdock.

    As I have said over and over, Lugar should have gone out a winner and retired.

  • Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    IN-Sen: Richard Mourdock Attacks Sen Richard Lugar for Support of Teapot Museum

     

    Richard Mourdock talks about the differences between himself and Senator Lugar on the issue of Earmarks.

    Here is the text of the ad:

    Richard Mourdock: Every Year, Congress finds new ways to spend our money… and Sadly, Senator Lugar went along with it: voting for the Bridge to Nowhere, a rainforest in Iowa, even a teapot museum. When Senator Lugar recently had the chance to stop wasteful earmarks, he voted no. We’re fifteen trillion in debt and it has to stop. I’m Richard Mourdock and I approve this message because Dick Lugar won’t vote to end wasteful spending and earmarks. I will.

    Indiana deserves a conservative U.S. Senator who actually lives in Indiana.

    Richard Lugar has served his state and country for decades, but it is time for him to go.

  • Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    IN-Sen GOP Poll Watch: Richard Mourdock and Sen. Richard Lugar in Dead Heat

    According to the latest Basswood Research Poll.

    A new poll conducted for the Club for Growth showed Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) and his primary challenger, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, in a statistical dead heat.

    Mourdock had a small advantage over Lugar, 34 percent to 32 percent, in the Basswood Research poll released Tuesday. But Mourdock’s 2-point lead is within the poll’s 4.4-point margin of error.

    The conservative, anti-tax organization has not endorsed Mourdock, but the Club for Growth President Chris Chocola has frequently criticized Lugar’s record. Earlier this month, the club sponsored television advertisements blasting Lugar across Indiana.

    “An incumbent who sits at 32 percent in his own party’s primary, and trails a much less known challenger, is in a world of trouble,” Chocola, a former Indiana Congressman, said in a statement. “Senator Lugar is a very decent man, but it’s clear from the poll that after 35 years, Hoosier Republicans are eager for a more conservative alternative.”

    About one-third of those polled, 34 percent, said they were undecided about the GOP Senate primary field.

    Basswood Research conducted the poll of 500 likely Republican primary voters July 23-24.

    Richard Lugar is in trouble and although he has a ton of campaign cash, money will now flow to the Tea Party favorite and younger Mourdock.

    Time for Lugar to retire and bow out gracefully.

  • Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    IN-Sen: Richard Mourdock’s June Swoon a Boon to Sen. Richard Lugar?

    Apparently so.

    Lugar’s political bulwark is his home city of Indianapolis. Within a two-mile radius just south of downtown you can find three stadiums — including NFL and NBA venues — two major interstates radiating out across the compass, critical Internet and cyber optic terminals, and one of the largest insulin manufacturing sites in the world. A cataclysmic nuke strike in Lugar’s backyard would devastate the American security psyche.

    The rap on Lugar that prompted a Tea Party-induced rebellion at what many believed would be his valedictory political run into the defining realm of statesmanship was that his globe-trotting had eclipsed his domestic political operations back home. They want Lugar at Lincoln Day dinners instead of seeking security solutions to padlocked anthrax labs in Kampala and Nairobi, or securing Soviet-era nukes and sarin that could destroy our cities.

    Mourdock told The Hill early this month, “People in Indiana want to see fiscal controls, they want to see someone who’s with them regularly back there, not just someone sitting in Washington, D.C., thinking about the lofty issues of foreign affairs.”

    Mourdock’s problem today is that at a time when he needed to stand and deliver, his second quarter FEC report turned out to be a political nuke.

    Heading into the June 30 FEC deadline, the conventional wisdom is that he needed to report somewhere between $500,000 and $1 million to get into the money game and attract national support. But what happened to the Mourdock campaign in June is as potentially devastating as Jill Long Thompson’s extremely low profile after she won the Indiana Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2008.

    Mourdock’s June swoon went like this: On June 8, seven of 10 members of the Indiana Republican Central Committee who endorsed Mourdock were replaced during reorganization. His chief of staff, Richard Bramer, lost a race for 8th CD vice chair, and his field coordinator, Diane Hubbard, lost her bid to be 9th CD chair.

    Senator Richard Lugar has delivered the goods to Indiana and if Mourdock does not raise the funds will be re-elected to another 6 year term at age 80.

    Dick Lugar’s demise may have been exaggerated.

  • Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    In-Sen: Richard Mourdock Vs. Sen, Richard Lugar – A Rebellion Inside the Walls?

    Experience the excitement of Richard Mourdock’s announcement that he’s running against “Barack Obama’s Favorite Republican”- Dick Lugar.

    Perhaps, but there is a lot of Tea Party in the Mourdock video, no? Read this interview at National Review.

    NRO: What happened to Richard Lugar?

    MOURDOCK: First of all, as I always say, I have great respect for Senator Lugar. Anyone who serves almost 50 years in public life deserves the respect of everyone. But I think, and I hear it often, that Senator Lugar is now perceived here in Indiana as having a worldview rather than a Hoosier view. I think there comes a time — and I don’t care who you are, Democrat, Republican, man, or woman — that if you spend enough time in Washington, D.C., you become disconnected from your electorate. I certainly think that’s happened in this case, and that’s one of the reasons we’re running as strong as we are.
     
    NRO: As you travel around the state, do people react more to an explicit ideological argument, that Lugar isn’t conservative enough, or is it more that no matter his politics, he’s been there a long time and it’s time for a change?

    MOURDOCK: I hear both sentiments. I’m among the first to note that during the period of the Reagan presidency, Senator Lugar voted more with President Reagan than any other Republican senator. Well, that’s great, but since then he’s also voted for [Supreme Court justices] Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor, and he was even the only Republican to vote for [President Obama’s deputy-attorney-general nominee] James Cole barely a week ago.

    Mourdock has secured support inside and outside of the mainstream Republican Party in Indiana.

    Time for Senator Richard Lugar to accept his well-deserved thanks for his decades of service and retire.

  • Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock,  U.S. Senate 2012

    IN-Sen: Sen. Richard Lugar Should Retire Says Club for Growth

    Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 29, 2011. Lugar is the third most senior senator and the most senior Republican member of the Senate, serving since 1977

    Time for Indiana GOP Senator Richard Lugar to retire.

    The president of the Club for Growth encouraged longtime Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) to retire Tuesday rather than seek another term in 2012, warning that the group could get involved in the effort to oust Lugar in a primary.

    In an interview on ABC’s “Top Line” webcast, Club for Growth President Chris Chocola said while no decisions have been made as to whether the club will officially weigh in on the race between Lugar and Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R), “we do have some concerns about Sen. Lugar and his service.”

    “We think it would probably be best if he would retire at this point,” Chocola said of Lugar, who has vowed to beat back a primary challenge and win another term in 2012. “We haven’t made any decisions at this point, but we are looking at it very closely, and it’s one of the races very high on our radar.”

    The handwriting is on the wall for Senator Lugar. He can either retire with grace or be defeated in a bruising and expensive GOP primary election.

    Time for a new generation of leadership, Senator.

  • Mitch Daniels,  Richard Lugar

    IN-Sen Video: Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels Supports Sen Richard Lugar for Re-Election But…..

    Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

    Why, of course, you would expect Mitch Daniels to endorse Indiana U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (towards the end of the video above). Mitch Daniels is a political protege of Lugar.

    Daniels had his first experience in politics while still a teenager when, in 1968, he worked on the unsuccessful campaign of fellow Hoosier and Princeton alum William Ruckelshaus, who was running for the U.S. Senate.[8] After the campaign Ruckelshaus helped Daniels secure an internship in the office of then-Indianapolis Mayor Richard Lugar. In 1971, Daniels worked on Lugar’s re-election campaign and then joined his mayoral staff. Within three years, he became Lugar’s principal assistant. After Lugar was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976, Daniels followed him to Washington, D.C. as his Chief of Staff.[15]

    Daniels served as Chief of Staff during Lugar’s first term (1977–82); and, during this time, he met Cheri Herman, who was working for the National Park Service. The two married in 1978 and had four daughters; they divorced in 1993 and Cheri married a second husband. Cheri soon divorced her second husband and remarried Daniels in 1997.[6]

    In 1983, when Lugar was elected Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Daniels was appointed its Executive Director. Serving in that position (1983–84), he played a major role in keeping the GOP in control of the Senate. Daniels was also manager of three successful re-election campaigns for Lugar. In August 1985, Daniels became chief political advisor and liaison to President Ronald Reagan.[15]

    Daniels even met his wife as a result of his service with Lugar. But, note what Daniels specifically said under the radar:

    Daniels said that he never intervenes in primary elections, admires Lugar, hedged on whether he would appear with Lugar (i.e. campaign with him) and implied that perhaps Lugar deserves another term – “if he wants it.”

    Sounds to me that in a subtle way, Mitch Daniels is telling his old mentor that it is time to retire and NOT want to run for re-election.

    But, make no mistake about it, Mitch Daniels WILL do ads for Senator Lugar if he runs for re-election.

  • Richard Lugar,  Richard Mourdock

    IN-Sen Video: Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock Announces Race Against Sen Richard Lugar

    Republican Senator Richard Lugar is in trouble against Richard Mourdock. 

    Barring an unexpected decision to retire before November 2012, Lugar will face Indiana voters for the sixth time as the incumbent. He recently raised an estimated $400,000 from one event and has amassed a campaign warchest in excess of $2.3 million. Expect that total to swell in coming months.

    He’s also raised something else – the hackles of Indiana Tea Party members and a primary challenger, Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

    According to the conventional wisdom, Lugar’s seniority, establishment connections, well-funded campaign treasury, and easy access to sympathetic national media coverage should make him a shoo-in for a seventh term.

    Don’t count on it. Lugar made  a big mistake by claiming last year that the Tea Party needed to “get real.” He might as well have put on a dunce cap because such remarks often hint at the very attitudes of overweening pride of incumbency and blindness to genuine voter dissatisfaction that have driven many a respected incumbent into retirement – think Tom Daschle, Jim Wright, Tom Foley and Robert Bennett.

    Saying things like that is how you become the latest installment of that old, familiar Washington story – former senator.

    My bet is that Lugar retires within the next six months.