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The New York Times/ ­- Politics, Ter, 17 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
Once Every 36 Years, Primary Fight for
Indiana Senator
INDIANAPOLIS — At age 80, Richard G. Lugar, one of
the longest­-serving members of the United States
Senate, is getting a crash course in what a campaign
looks like. At his campaign office here the other day,
Mr. Lugar smiled politely while volunteers boxed up
thousands of yard signs to distribute to Indiana’s 92
counties. He spoke with admiration of the
sophistication of his campaign’s mobile, computerized,
microtargeting phone bank, with which, he explained,
volunteers “can just press a button and they’re on line
with somebody.” He described how his campaign had,
in essence, gone “to school” on the methods of
campaigns around the country. Mr. Lugar, who has not
had a primary challenger since he first won election in
1976 and last contended with a race where the margin
was close in 1982, is locked in a Republican primary
fight for the seat he has held for six terms with the May
8 election fast approaching. A poll conducted late last
month, the Howey/DePauw Indiana Battleground Poll,
showed Mr. Lugar leading Richard E. Mourdock, the
state’s treasurer, 42 percent to 35 percent among
likely primary voters, an advantage that is within the
poll’s margin of sampling error of plus or minus five
points. Craig Dunn, the Republican chairman in
Howard County, said he was stunned last year when
he asked the 15 members of his local steering
committee how many would vote for Mr. Lugar. “Not a
hand went up,” said Mr. Dunn, who has supported Mr.
Mourdock, as did, his campaign said, nearly
three­-quarters of the party’s county chairmen back
when he announced plans to run more than a year
ago. (Mr. Lugar’s supporters say those numbers have
since shifted and shrunk.) “This never would have
happened to Dick Lugar in his prime,” Mr. Dunn said.
Mr. Lugar sees his troubles as a product of forces
outside Indiana. “You can say, ‘Why in the world are
we having such a time?’ ” he said. Then he offered an
answer to the question: “Because there are others in
America who are very interested in this, sort of as a
battleground, or I’d even say a playground, for their
thoughts.” To hear others tell it, Mr. Lugar, the product
of a more genial era of politics, faces a confluence of
opposition. Tea Party groups and organizations like
the Club for Growth and the National Rifle Association
are questioning his conservative credentials, some
pointing to positions he has taken in favor of the bank
bailout, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominees,
the New Start nuclear arms control treaty, and more.
Meanwhile, some Indiana residents, including active
members of the Republican Party, say they wonder
whether Mr. Lugar, in all those years in Washington
and around the world in his influential role on the
Foreign Relations Committee, has failed to come
home enough for ordinary Lincoln Day dinners and the
like. Along the way, some say, he lost touch. And just
below the surface is an uncomfortable question about
age and how long in Washington is too long. Beyond
Indiana, much is at stake. Democrats hoping to hold
on to a majority in the Senate see a glint of opportunity
to take a Republican seat — a possibility that polls
suggest is more likely if Mr. Lugar loses and leaves Mr.
Mourdock, 60, to face Representative Joe Donnelly, a
Democrat, in November. Tea Party members view the
potential defeat of Mr. Lugar as a crucial chance to
prove their muscle as some observers try to declare
their movement over. “If we win, the Tea Party goes
into a higher level as a credible force,” said Greg
Fettig, a supporter in Indiana. Last fall, he said, 55 of
the state’s Tea Party groups convened and
overwhelmingly favored Mr. Mourdock. Organizers at
FreedomWorks, a national group that has helped build
the Tea Party movement and has assisted efforts here,
have already begun likening this race to Mike Lee’s
defeat of Senator Robert F. Bennett, a fellow
Republican, in Utah in 2010. But others say that the
strength and unity of the Tea Party here have been
overblown, and that Mr. Lugar, a former Eagle Scout,
Rhodes scholar and Navy officer, has clear wells of
strength. These include more money in the bank than
his opponent and support from Mitch Daniels, the
popular governor who, as a student, worked for Mr.
Lugar when he was mayor of Indianapolis in the 1960s
and ’70s and stayed on for years. Mr. Daniels, who
asked Mr. Lugar to be godfather to one of his
daughters, fended off assertions that Mr. Lugar might
not be conservative enough or had compromised too
often across party lines. Mr. Lugar’s supporters say he
has pressed for less government spending and a
balanced budget amendment, and fought President
Obama’s health care overhaul and regulations that
stifle business. “It’s ironic and it’s just inaccurate to
suggest that somehow he’s not very strongly
Republican in his viewpoints,” Mr. Daniels said. Lately,
Mr. Lugar has taken blow after blow. A challenge that
he did not meet a residency requirement for
candidates because he lives much of the time in
McLean, Va., failed. However, he was required to
change his voter registration to the farm his family has
owned for decades, rather than the Indianapolis house
that he sold in 1977. Then his office announced that he
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