Family Research Council's Tony Perkins Could Run for Louisiana Senate Seat in 2014
Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins could run for one of Louisiana's Senate's this year.
Perkins served in the Louisiana legislature for eight years before joining the conservative Christian political advocacy group in 2003. The former legislator only served two terms as representative, keeping a pledge he made to his constituents that limited his time in office. He also ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2002, when he lost in the primary.
Should Perkins jump into the primary, he would be running against the "GOP establishment's choice" Rep. Bill Cassidy, who Politico reported "has been singled out as a rising star by Rove's Crossroads groups." The winner of the primary would face current Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)
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Bob Fischer, South Dakota businessman and Republican donor, who organized a meeting in October with Perkins and Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, is said to be one of the primary backers behind the FRC president's run.
This is not the first time that Perkins' name has been floated for Senate. In a April 2013 Daily Caller story, Gary Marx, the executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition said that he would support a Perkins' run.
"Tony Perkins is a thoughtful public policy leader, credible candidate for U.S. Senate and someone who has represented Louisiana values in Washington DC and not the other way around," Marx said. "He would be a strong addition to a burgeoning conservative caucus in the U.S. Senate, should he choose to go down that path."
Much of the energy fueling a potential Perkins run is frustration by the Republican conservative wing, which is eager to see the issues it champions, such as marriage and abortion, placed back in the center of the party's agenda, according to Politico.
At a summit last month in Virginia, many of the religious rights' top donors, lobbyists and organization heads met to strategize how they might go about mobilizing their base to show up at the polls and how the group might be more strategic about its fundraising.
The meeting also tried to reconcile divisions between the more fiscally-focused conservatives and their more socially-minded counterparts, and included Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint and American Enterprise Institute Arthur Brooks sharing on a panel entitled, "Why conservative leaders and organizations must unite and work together to achieve shared goals."
Gary Bauer told Politico that there are "enough people out there that are pro-life and pro-family that have the resources to fund political efforts on those issues, and for a variety of reasons they just haven't stepped up and so we have to do a better job of getting them to step up."
He also said it was up to people like him to acknowledge "that we've been behind the curve and that we need to do a better job of strategic fundraising and working together in order to get more traction on these issues."
The Christian Post attempts to verify news about Perkins' potential run with the FRC were not returned by press time.
