The executive director of the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) Alex Latcham attacked the hundreds of thousands of Texas voters who voted for Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) in the GOP senatorial primary on Tuesday night, a head-scratching missive that undercuts the SLF’s stated mission of backing Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) for reelection.
Hunt came in a distant third place in the primary behind Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the primary, a disappointing finish for the congressman after a month or so ago some polling suggested he might be on the rise. What’s more, Paxton seems to have finished about a percent behind Cornyn despite almost all polls showing Paxton actually leading—something that can be construed as a bit of an underperformance on his part and an expectations-defying good night for Cornyn. Cornyn and his allies like SLF had to spend about $71 million to do it—Paxton and his allies, in contrast, only spent about $4 million—but nonetheless one could argue that given the expectations and where things were in this race that Cornyn basically did what he needed to do on primary night to keep his narrative and hopes alive heading into the runoff.
Cornyn himself, and others, spoke nicely about Hunt and thanked him for his service and his work in the race. Hunt, for his part, says he is not done in politics and will aim to make a comeback down the road in a future election.
But the SLF, the super PAC controlled by Senate Majority Leader John Thune, made a shocking move in the aftermath of it all on Tuesday night that infuriated Texans and conservatives nationwide by making a blistering attack against the guy they just crushed in defeat.
SLF blasted out a press release late Tuesday with this headline: “SLF Statement on Wesley Hunt’s Career-Ending Vanity Tour.”
In the statement, Latcham—Thune’s handpicked man to work with big-dollar donors—blistered Hunt.
“Congratulations to Wesley Hunt on an abysmal third place finish in Texas’ Republican primary,” Latcham said.
He continued:
Instead of fighting for President Trump and conservative priorities, Wesley launched a career-ending vanity tour without any substance or political reasoning. While Wesley’s amateur consultants got wealthy on his senseless campaign, Republican voters are now forced to endure an even longer primary runoff election.
First off, with 94 percent reporting per the New York Times—more still to be counted—Hunt has just shy of 290,000 votes in this primary. Hunt’s vote total is well more than 11 times the approximately 25,000-vote margin between Cornyn and Paxton, meaning his supporters will be instrumental in deciding who wins this in the end in a few months. It’s certainly possible that Hunt never had a chance to win this race from the get-go—maybe he did, maybe he didn’t—but the notion that a few hundred thousand votes is somehow so insignificant that this candidacy should have been dismissed like this is unintelligent and unhelpful. Clearly, Hunt had something to say that a lot of people cared enough about to go out of their way to go vote for this guy—there were not enough votes for him in the end to win or advance to the runoff as Cornyn and Paxton have done, but the idea that these people should be dismissed out of hand is something that should be considered frankly offensive to anyone who cares about elections and voting in this country and especially to those people.
Secondly, the notion that this was not heading to a runoff if Hunt had not run is also questionable. There were several other basically no-name candidates that amassed about 85,000 more votes at current count—that will likely surge past 100,000—which is well more than a few percent in this race. Hunt is not necessarily the cause of the runoff, even though he might have been. That total of the other candidates is several times the margin between Paxton and Cornyn, suggesting that a runoff was inevitable no matter what.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who did not comment for this piece when asked about Latcham’s attack through multiple staffers, had sent out his own message about Cornyn’s performance in the primary that directly undercut Latcham’s core message of his attack. Scott said the race was heading to a runoff anyway, and congratulated Cornyn on his performance:
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the notion that Hunt’s campaign advisers somehow got rich off this race is laughable given that the amount of money spent to back Cornyn is absurdly higher than what was spent on Hunt—the pro-Cornyn effort has been easily the highest dollar amount ever spent on a senatorial primary in American history at north of $70 million—and Cornyn’s consultants and outside groups backing him, like SLF, are filled with people lining their pockets here. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black—but that point is less important than the fact this was a straight up insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who voted for Hunt at the moment Hunt lost and those voters and Hunt himself were downtrodden. It’s a classless move, and Senate Republicans need to be better than this if they are ever going to convince voters in Texas—and nationally—of their theory of the case that they deserve another term in the majority in the U.S. Senate.
It’s quite clear from the difference in tone from both Scott about the runoff being inevitable anyway and Cornyn himself about Hunt in particular that many Senate Republicans do not consider Latcham’s attack on Texas voters to be a smart political move. Many Republican staffers and members of Congress who do not have a dog in this fight between Cornyn and Paxton have messaged Breitbart News in the ensuing hours calling Latcham’s behavior “dumb,” and questioning how or if it helps Cornyn in his efforts to win the runoff after the primary on Tuesday night.
But this where things get somewhat more perplexing. Clearly, Cornyn, Scott, and probably Thune do not think Latcham’s behavior was warranted here but none of them are saying that directly. Cornyn himself has not replied to multiple messages from Breitbart News sent directly to the senator asking him to weigh in on this and give his thoughts, and his spokesman has similarly ignored comment requests for a statement directly from the senator, though Cornyn’s campaign spokesman Matt Mackowiak did send a post on social media on Tuesday evening making clear the senator has a very different take on Hunt without directly addressing the Latcham statement:
Scott has not answered through spokespersons when asked for a statement on his thoughts on the matter, but it’s likely that he would not approve of Latcham’s behavior. And Thune’s official U.S. Senate office deferred comment requests on the matter back to the SLF team, whose spokesman Chris Gustafson told Breitbart News he could not comment on Thune’s behalf but also claimed that Latcham’s statement was not meant as an attack on the voters of Texas who voted for Hunt.
“I want to clarify that Alex was speaking directly to Rep. Hunt and his staff, not Texas voters,” Gustafson told Breitbart News.
Gustafson has not replied again when asked if Latcham apologizes to the hundreds of thousands of Texans he maligned with his behavior on Tuesday night. It’s also worth noting that Latcham is only in the position he is in because Thune wants him there—if Thune did not want him there, he would not be there. So, again, if these Senate Republicans want to win over voters nationwide in an uphill election year for Republicans, they need to be a lot classier than they are being right now. Why should anyone vote for a Republican for U.S. Senate if this is the kind of mentality the voters will get in response? Maybe it’s time for the Senate Republicans to be a lot more humble and kind to voters than this. Thune came out publicly on Wednesday morning and said he wants Cornyn to be the guy for the Republicans in Texas:
But when Latcham is doing things like he did in Thune’s name to hundreds of thousands of Texans who voted for Hunt, it’s hard to see what Thune is asking to happen, happening quickly or cleanly. In fact, many conservatives were ready to get with Cornyn until that moment on Tuesday night, but given this offensive behavior they are now rushing back over to Paxton for the time being. It’s not too late for Thune to fix this either. Hopefully, he, Cornyn, Scott, and others weigh in and do something about this behavior from Latcham and fix it. Time will tell how serious Thune is.
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