Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Tea Party support for Joe Heck wanes

Joe Heck Veterans Town Hall

Justin M. Bowen

Rep. Joe Heck speaks to Veterans at the American Legion Post 40 in Henderson on Wednesday, June 8, 2011.

Congressman Joe Heck

Newly elected congressman, Joe Heck, is photographed outside his offices in Las Vegas Wednesday, November 3, 2010 Launch slideshow »

It was always a marriage of convenience.

Republican Rep. Joe Heck campaigned, won, and has served Nevada’s 3rd Congressional District with the support of the Tea Party, even though he’s never pledged himself to the movement. He just generally agreed with its ideals.

But the support that helped him narrowly win the seat is, at least partially, giving way.

“I don’t trust him,” Art Gisi, vice president of a Tea Party group called the Grass Roots Tea Party of Nevada, said at a Las Vegas event to kick off Sharron Angle’s book tour last week.

“I told him that once: If you get elected, you’ve got two years,” Gisi said. “Look at his record.”

“If someone’s going to run against him, I will give them a chance,” said Tiffanie Sharp, who volunteered for Heck’s campaign in 2010, but said she’s become especially disillusioned with him since he voted to raise the debt ceiling.

That’s the kind of talk that anywhere else, might get a Republican into serious trouble. Heck, however, is protected by the makeup of his district.

The 3rd Congressional District is a swing district. And Tea Party challengers do better in areas that are strongly conservative, or in contests where the only choice is between conservatives.

Also in Heck’s favor: Even if the Tea Party wanted to field a candidate to challenge him, it would be hard pressed to find a compelling one.

“They just don’t have a deep Republican bench,” UNLV political science professor David Damore said. “But probably what hurts (Tea Party members) the most is that they’re still not a cohesive unit. They have a lot of groups with ‘Tea Party’ in the title, but there’s no clear leader.”

Still, the frustration among those who identify themselves as Tea Party members doesn’t seem to be universal.

“Like a typical freshman, (Heck) has been pushed and pulled,” said Rebecca Overton-Hooker, who said she would vote for the congressman again. “It takes you a little time to get the hang of this job.”

That said, there doesn’t appear to be much rhyme or reason to how long it took Tea Partyers to grow disillusioned with Heck, since lately, he has toed the GOP party line.

Heck’s vote to support a debt ceiling compromise may have upset the Tea Party, but it wasn’t the first time he’s decided to go along with Democrats: Earlier this year, he bucked his party to support a home mortgage assistance program even some Democrats didn’t want to preserve.

That time, he went it alone; on the debt ceiling vote, a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate voted the same way Heck did.

Heck’s office declined to comment for this article.

Part of the shift in sentiment may be prompted by events in the 2nd Congressional District special election as much as his voting record.

Tea Party fervor was sparked after Angle — the movement’s favored candidate — was boxed out of the race. Angle has also signaled that she intends to run again, further raising hopes among Tea Party members.

As Cathie Lee Profant, who will be president of the Grass Roots group, put it: “She’s our Tea Party girl, she’s our favorite … Anything she does, she will always have the Tea Party behind her.”

Yet she’s unlikely to pose a threat to Heck. Being from Reno, Angle is more likely to challenge 2nd District candidate Mark Amodei for the Republican nomination in 2012, than Heck.

And although Tea Party members are upset with Heck, they admit that unless he draws a more conservative primary challenger they’ll likely end up voting for him.

“Even though we might not support Joe in the primary, if he won the primary, we would support him in the general,” Profant said.

“I would vote for him at that point,” Sharp agreed. “But in the primary, no.”

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