IN-Sen: Wednesday was not a good day for Marlin Stutzman’s campaign for the GOP nod. The AP’s Brian Slodysko broke the news that his Senate campaign had spent thousands of dollars on a Stutzman family vacation to California; Stutzman’s spokesman said the candidate was there for campaign work, though he didn’t go into detail. Slodysko also reports that since 2010, Stutzman has billed his campaign about $130,000 in airfare and hotels, far more than rival and fellow Rep. Todd Young’s $27,000 during this time.
Stutzman has been running as a conservative farmer and attacking Young as a creature of Washington, but this story suggests that Stutzman has enjoyed the perks of politics a lot more than he’s let on. At the very least, Stutzman has to deal with this story instead of focusing on Young and with Election Day just two weeks away, Stutzman can’t afford to be distracted.
However, Stutzman has another big problem. Young’s allies have been spending big in the lead up to the primary, and two groups are dropping more money. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a new spot promoting Young as a strong conservative; there’s no word on the size of the buy, but the Chamber has already spent $1 million here. The Senate Leadership Fund is also returning to the airwaves with a $515,000 buy. Their commercial accuses Stutzman of voting against key national security funding.
Stutzman’s own allies don’t seem to be in any hurry to help him fight back. The deep-pocketed Club for Growth endorsed Stutzman a long time ago but they’ve never aired any ads for him. The Club is helping Jim Banks in the primary for Stutzman’s old House seat and they just announced that they would spend $1 million to try and stop Donald Trump in Indiana. However, when asked if they’d be devoting resources to help Stutzman, the group’s president only said that they would “be watching closely and will make a decision as needed.” That’s not a very encouraging message for Stutzman, especially this close to Election Day.
The Club hasn’t sounded very enthusiastic about Stutzman in a long time. Back in December, Nathan Gonzales noted that the Club omitted Stutzman from their end of the year fundraising email. While the Club made it clear that Stutzman remained their endorsed candidate, they offered up only a bland “[t]hroughout the campaign season, the Club’s PACs shift priorities among the endorsed candidates, especially as new ones are added,” to justify why they were leaving Stutzman out.
Stutzman replaced most of his senior campaign team last fall, a good indication that things were not going well for him at all. Stutzman’s fundraising plunged afterwards and while there haven’t been any big shakeups since then, it sounds like the Club is still convinced that Stutzman just isn’t a good investment. Stutzman’s team still hasn’t announced his first quarter haul, which indicates that they’re not proud of how much money they’ve raised in 2016. By contrast, Brian Howey says that “[n]o non-incumbent Hoosier has ever raised as much money as Young has in this primary race.” There haven’t been any polls here at all, but it definitely feels like things are going Young’s way.