Election-year GOP split over home-state projects – SFGate

Republicans can’t seem to reach an official party line this election year on the old Washington custom of using the federal budget to benefit the folks back home.

The disagreement is a byproduct of divisions between conservative and establishment Republicans, and is on display in three races that will help determine whether the GOP wins control of the U.S. Senate for the final two years of Barack Obama’s presidency.

All three states lean Republican, but Democrats hope that knockdown Republican primaries give them an opening in November. Democratic victories in any of the states would frustrate Republicans’ hope of gaining the six seats they need to reclaim the Senate majority.

“There’s all this pressure on Republicans on spending, most of it self-generated,” said GOP strategist Todd Rehm of Georgia. “It creates a bind between wanting to campaign as a fiscal conservative while still meeting people’s expectations for economic development help.”

Kingston is one of three U.S. House members vying for promotion to the Senate in Georgia, along with Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey. Two other top GOP hopefuls — Karen Handel and David Perdue — saddle the congressmen with responsibility for the nation’s balance sheet, noting their previous votes for deficit budgets and debt-limit increases.

But Kingston, the only candidate with a budget leadership post, gets hit from both sides.

At the most recent debate, Handel, a former secretary of state, and Perdue, a former Reebok and Dollar General CEO, blasted Kingston because a planned Savannah port expansion in Kingston’s district lacks financing. Previously, the candidates focused their ire on Obama for not financing the project.

Gingrey and Broun hammered Kingston for helping negotiate recent changes to the federal flood insurance program. Echoing national conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, Broun and Gingrey said taxpayers shouldn’t back flood insurance at all.

Kingston called his colleagues’ flood insurance position oversimplified. He noted that the fix generates more revenue from higher premiums, while capping annual increases to protect households and businesses from unmanageable payments, which he said “cause too much economic disruption.”

As for the long-sought port development, Kingston avoids accusing his opponents of hypocrisy on fiscal restraint, instead chiding them for not working for the federal support they want. “They have no fingerprints on anything,” he said. “I’ve been engaged from the beginning.”

Rehm, the strategist who said he’s undecided in the Georgia primary, said the tit for tat puts all Republicans in an impossible position as they campaign and govern. “It’s a structural impediment to the good, old-fashioned horse trading that defines the legislative process,” he said.

Kingston acknowledged some frustration but said it’s part of politics: “If you serve for 21 years, then someone can always cherry-pick your votes.”