Club for Growth Previews Its Senate Playbook

The group’s super PAC is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars supporting hardline Republicans.

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Rep. Jim Banks walks through the Capitol on January 3, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Club for Growth President David McIntosh took credit Monday for former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’ decision not to run for Senate in 2024. The 73-year-old, former two-term governor’s  move came after the anti-tax organization’s super PAC, Club for Growth Action, pledged to spend millions on GOP Rep. Jim Banks’ behalf if Daniels decided to challenge him for retiring Sen. Mike Braun’s seat.

“In Indiana, we endorsed Jim Banks, and did a sort of hit ad on Mitch Daniels to signal to him: If he did get in it would be a real race,” McIntosh told reporters. 

The Club for Growth’s early involvement in Indiana’s Republican Senate primary is a preview of its 2024 Senate strategy: spend millions in races boosting economic conservatives in Republican primaries. 

The organization is actively recruiting candidates in Montana and West Virginia, two battlegrounds former President Donald Trump carried by double-digit margins in 2020 (and where incumbent Democratic Sens. Jon Tester and Joe Manchin are considered especially vulnerable). Club for Growth’s investment could hit seven figures in each state: It spent more than $38 million in Republican Senate primaries during the 2022 cycle, according to the group’s spokesman Joe Kildea.

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  1. Ben Kissling

    Why don't you ever report on corporate lobby money going to Senators?

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  2. Hikingguy

    The Club for Growth is about more tax cuts for American billionaires. So are Republicans generally. They should run on that. See how it plays.

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    Pat @ Tavi Hall

    I think both Biebighauser and Marion Coatsworth-Hay are off in their assessment of the Club for Growth motives. They want to elect puppets, take a look at Ted Budd who they supported for congress and then senate. He never voted against them. Even voted against a farm bill that would have been helpful to his largely rural district. He's rarely gotten involved in making law, some folks have suggested he's not as sharp as other canidates. Puppet.

    Regardless of crazy, the Club for Growth wants their issues all the way down the line. And they want to spend their money where they can get that goal elected.

    Note: I'm not a fan.

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      Lchrisberg

      "Regardless of crazy, the Club for Growth wants their issues all the way down the line. And they want to spend their money where they can get that goal elected."
      Well, Duh! Can you name an organization that spends money against their objectives?
      I suppose you are angry at hungry people that buy food.
      I suppose you are angry with injured people that pay for medical services.
      I suppose you are angry at the uneducated for paying for schooling.
      Jeez....

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        Pat @ Tavi Hall

        No, I don't like the ads they run that are largely hit pieces that could be run about almost anyone running and aren't particularly based on how people will govern. In my experience even the positive pieces sent out were essentially lies about the background of the candidate. And as we saw in this last election, they also tilted towards the unelectable.

        In the end though, their money got the people of my state a senator who will put an out of state group ahead of them everytime. In a purple state, that's been a sure path to quick turn over, just ask Elizabeth Dole and Kay Hagan.

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  4. Kevin Dolan

    So I guess they don’t think the Dem majority is big enough?

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  5. Biebighauser

    I‘be always liked Mitch Daniels, but at 73 he is too old to enter the Senate as a freshman. We need younger candidates across the board.

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      Dave in Houston

      This is really the only negative mark he had.

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  6. DTruitt

    Why are conservative Republicans labeled here and elsewhere as “hardline” but that term is never applied to liberal Dems? Hardline is a judgmental pejorative.

    Typical media bias.

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    Marion Coatsworth-Hay

    All about elections, never about governing.

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    1. DTruitt

      If you don’t win the elections, you don’t get to govern.

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    2. CatoTheElder

      I agree, though in fairness, the Club for Growth’s aims are few and hardcore pro-business, with nary a thought about culture, foreign affairs, morality, justice, and the like. So they’ll take whatever transactory options seem best to boost economic growth, as they see it—a perspective in which monetary profits are always supreme.

      I’m not a fan, but at least we can tell what their motives are.

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  8. Stormer93

    To summarize: the "Club For Growth" is backing the guy Tester beat in 2018, and refusing to support the best available candidates in Michigan and West Virginia. I guess to them it's better to have a Democrat in the Senate than a conservative who's open to bipartisanship and doesn't bang their fist on the table?

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    1. Mike Dixon

      Ever more cartoonish in their "stances." It's arguable that those Democrat incumbents are also more amiable to bipartisanship than their favored fist-banger candidates...

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    DougAz

    It would be informative to see a Conservative lineup card of these.
    Club for Growth
    Mercers PACs
    Kochs PACs
    Theils PACs
    Leonard Leo's PACs
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Leo

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      Jeff Younger

      The Koch PAC (Americans for Prosperity) be going head to head with the CFG, which has been hijacked by the Trumpers. Let’s go Team Koch!

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    John D. Wright

    Great Article! I am very curious about the various Republican leaning donor organizations and what they are doing.

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