Cornyn: NRSC trying to avoid backlash by staying out of Senate primaries

The National Republican Senatorial Committee is trying to avoid weighing in on Republican primaries for Senate in hopes of avoiding the type of backlash the committee faced two years ago, NRSC Chairman John Cornyn said Saturday.

Cornyn’s counterpart, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (Wash.), has raised eyebrows this cycle by endorsing in contested Democratic primaries in Connecticut and Hawaii. In Connecticut, the DSCC is at odds with EMILY’s List, a prominent Democratic PAC that has endorsed a different candidate.

{mosads}”That’s a challenge,” Cornyn told The Hill. “I think in this political environment, as I found in 2010, that’s not a particularly welcome thing, so we’ve been trying to stay out of that.”

The NRSC faced public backlash and accusations of meddling in 2010 when it intervened in Senate races in Colorado and Alaska in favor of candidates the committee felt was best prepared to win a general election.

The committee also went head to head with Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and his Senate Conservatives Fund in Kentucky, California and New Hampshire, pitting the GOP establishment against the Tea Party wing of the party.

Republicans need to flip four seats in 2012 to regain control of the Senate (if President Obama wins reelection.). Cornyn said the NRSC’s strategy was to ensure it recruits good candidates for all its races.

“Hopefully the strongest candidate will win and be the best one prepared to win in November,” he said.

Republicans have landed top-tier recruits in Hawaii, Montana and North Dakota, while Democrats have scored big in Massachusetts, Arizona and Nevada. But Cornyn declined to say in which races Senate Republicans would spend big in 2012.

“I don’t want to tell Patty Murray where I’m going to put all my money,” he said. “I’ll make her find out herself.”

Cornyn spoke to The Hill shortly after delivering an address at the Conservative Political Action Conference where he lambasted Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama over voter identification laws, Guantanamo Bay, the Defense of Marriage Act and the Fast and Furious debacle.

“He’s more concerned with satisfying President Obama’s radical left-wing political base than he is doing his job,” Cornyn said. 

He posed a rhetorical question he repeated four times during his speech: “Is this really the kind of behavior that should instill complete confidence in President Obama?”