Journal Record Legislative Report (Oklahoma City, OK)

October 6, 2004 Wednesday

Conservative group speaks against electing Brad Carson to Senate
By Ray Carter

If Oklahomans elect Democrat Brad Carson as senator instead of Republican Tom Coburn, they will essentially negate the influence of the entire state delegation, the leader of the American Conservative Union warned Tuesday.

"If the voters of Oklahoma, the voters here, want to cancel out the votes of Jim Inhofe in the Senate and every other member of their congressional delegation, they have a way of doing that," said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union. "That's by voting for Tom Coburn's opponent. But if they believe in the values that they expressed by sending those men to the Senate and to the House and to electing Don Nickles so many times, then the choice is Dr. Tom Coburn."

Keene was in Oklahoma City to announce the ACU's endorsement of Coburn, a former three-term Congressman. The endorsement was the latest in a long list for the Muskogee physician, who also has the support of the National Federation of Independent Business, the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (PAC), and the political arm of the National Taxpayers Union.

Keene said Coburn's track record in the House justified the ACU's endorsement.

"He really made a difference in the House and I think he could really make a difference in the Senate," Keene said. "He's the real deal. He's says what he means and he keeps his promises and I can tell you that in Washington these days, that's a fairly rare combination. We live in an age of blow-dried professional politicians, but Tom is a citizen politician, the kind of politician that the founding fathers envisioned when they suggested that we would be better governed by an elected Congress than by a king."

In comparison, Keene said Carson was a "smooth talker," but said Carson also had a record "that all the smooth talk in the world can't cover up: He's a big spender. He believes in higher taxes and he's fought for higher taxes."

He noted that Carson voted against the Bush tax cuts twice.

"But to be fair, like (Democratic presidential nominee) John Kerry, he voted for them before he voted against them," Keene said.

He said Carson has also opposed making the Bush tax cuts permanent, noting the original tax cut package were scheduled for automatic repeal in 2011.

Keene said Carson had also opposed spending limits in Congress, indicated support for increasing fuel taxes, and was "in the top 10 percent of all congressional spenders."

Carson's ACU lifetime rating of 42 is twice as liberal as the next lowest-scoring member of Oklahoma's delegation, Keene said.

"All Oklahoma members are conservatives except for Brad Carson," Keene said.

In comparison, Coburn had a lifetime rating of 97 during his six years in Congress in the 1990s.

Keene said Carson supported increasing federal spending by more than $590 billion above its current level while Coburn managed to reduce wasteful spending by billions through dozens of amendments to dozens of bills.

"The fight for smaller government and limited spending is not always an attractive fight," Keene said. "You can't just say we're going to have this one vote and everything's going to be fine. It's really trench warfare because the spending takes place on 100 different programs. There are proposals every single day. And what you need in the House - and you need the same thing in the Senate - is you need members who are willing to go down there and fight on every single one of them."

Although Carson has touted himself as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat, Keene disagreed, saying Carson was conservative "in the sense that say Hillary Clinton is more conservative than John Kerry."

"But in the real world, Mr. Carson cannot claim to be a conservative by any stretch of the imagination," he said.

Traditionally, he noted that the U.S. Senate has increased spending on all major bills above the amounts requested by the president and approved by the U.S. House of Representatives, leading to skyrocketing deficits and national debt.

Keene predicted Coburn "is a conservative who will make a great senator and frankly, I think, will make more of a difference in the Senate than would most of the people you could send there."

The Carson campaign did not respond to request for comment.