NRCC wastes money in losing effort

The NRCC jumped into the open primary and received a professional butt kicking in response. This was a monumentum waste of money that could have been spent elsewhere where it is needed.


From the AP

Arizona GOP primary won by conservative
9/13/2006, 5:53 a.m. ET
By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
The Associated Press

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Former state lawmaker Randy Graf won the GOP primary for an open U.S. House seat despite lobbying from the National Republican Congressional Committee against his candidacy.

His closet rival, state Rep. Steve Huffman, received a late-campaign boost from the committee, which in a rare move broke its neutrality in a primary race by spending more than $122,000 on TV ads on his behalf. Party officials had expressed concerns Graf may be too conservative to win the seat in November.

But that move prompted a local Republican backlash, drawing a joint letter and a joint news conference in Washington by Huffman's four GOP opponents expressing their "unified outrage" at the national committee.