Tea Party, Christian Right candidates fare poorly in primary

His candidate didn't win, but Iowa Tea Party Chairman Ryan Rhodes said the movement's message did well in the Iowa primary election.

“Most of the candidates in the race started stealing the Tea Party lines,” said Rhodes, who doubled as political director for 3rd District Republicans hopeful Dave Funk. “When their ads look like yours, you're doing something right.”

The success the Tea Party had in having its message adopted by Republican candidates tells University of Iowa political science professor Tim Hagle that the 2010 election is more about economic issues than social issues.

It's beginning to look like 1992 when Bill Clinton defeated President George Bush by campaigning on an “It's the economy” slogan.

The Tea Party had some victories. Council Bluffs City Councilman Matt Schultz, who won the GOP nomination for secretary of state came out of the Tea Party movement. Its candidates won in northern Iowa where Tom Shaw of Laurens won a GOP primary and in the Quad Cities, Roby Smith defeated Sen. David Hartsuch, R-Bettendorf.

The Iowa Family PAC, which made several primary races referendums on same-sex marriage, didn't enjoy the same success as the Tea Party.

“It would have been a lot more fun to win,” admitted Bryon English, spokesman for the Iowa Family PAC. Candidates it endorsed for governor, secretary of state and secretary of treasurer – Bob Vander Plaats, George Eichhorn and Jim Heavens, respectively – were defeated.

Candidates either endorsed by the PAC or seen as aligned with it, fared poorly, too. Anti-gay marriage candidates Democrat Clair Rudison in Des Moines and Republican Roger Billion in a Warren-Madison-Dallas County House district lost. Likewise, Wes Enos, campaign director for Mike Huckabee in 2008, lost Jasper-Poweshiek County Senate district.

Those defeats made clear to Carolyn Jenison, executive director of One Iowa, the state's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender advocacy organization, that gay marriage isn't motivating Iowa voters.

“Iowans are not interested in writing discrimination into our constitution,” she said. “They are concerned with creating jobs, improving our schools and moving our state forward.”

English rejected that.

“As soon as we see Democratic candidates running on a platform of promoting homosexual marriage, higher taxes, larger government and smoking marijuana in their TV ads, we'll know the culture has changed,” he said.

The Iowa Family PAC is not interested in changing its agenda even if it means four more years of Democrat Gov. Chet Culver, who backs same-sex marriage, stem cell research and a woman's right to choose.

“Just because Branstad is not Chet Culver doesn't make him a great candidate,” he said.

The PAC will focus on electing sympathetic candidates to the Legislature where the decision whether to place a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot will be made.

That would be easier, English said, if the group had a “champion” at the top of the ticket.

That could still happen, English said, if Branstad has an “awakening of the Holy Spirit (and) changes his heart.”