Chuck DeVore’s primary loss still pays off for him—and his conservative boosters

The most visible tea party candidate in California, Chuck DeVore, lost his bid for the Republican Senate nomination Tuesday night, but not before pushing the GOP dramatically to the right.DeVore, who was endorsed by a national tea party group in March, finished third to Carly Fiorina, garnering 19 percent of the vote to her 56 percent. Rep. Tom Campbell, the race’s moderate candidate, topped him, finishing second, with 22 percent.Despite his defeat, though, political observers and tea partiers still regard DeVore as something of a success. They see his influence carrying into the general election, as Fiorina tacks left to win over a wider swath of the state’s electorate. His showing also suggests that if the tea party here doesn’t have the clout of its counterpart in other regions of the country, it is nonetheless a growing force.In a race fueled by Fiorina’s spending, DeVore survived until primary day by depending heavily on volunteers to get out his message, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter to answer voters’ personal questions, and the video site YouTube to air his campaign ads for free.

The tea party faithful liked DeVore because of his commitment to the conservative issues they’re endorsing. “It’s about fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, individual liberty, free markets and limited government,” said Sally Zelikovsky, founder of the Bay Area Patriots, one of nine Bay Area tea party groups.

Barbara O’Connor, former director of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento, said the tea party latched onto DeVore because they considered him the conservative antithesis to Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is running for her fourth term.

Not Your Ordinary Tea Party from Lauren Callahan on Vimeo.

“[The tea partiers are] running against the liberal devil of Barbara Boxer, who’s been in office for a long time and is in the leadership and has been a real significant member of the ‘larger government will take care of you’ Democratic mantra,” said O’Connor.

Corey Cook, an assistant professor of politics at the University of San Francisco, said DeVore and the tea party pushed the race “way to the right,” forcing Fiorina and Campbell (and Whitman in the gubernatorial race) to take more conservative positions on issues than they might have, which gives their Democratic opponents plenty of leverage for November.

“It’ll be reminder after reminder [from Democrats] in the general election,” Cook said. “That’s the game. That’s the challenge. How do they say, ‘No, I didn’t mean what I just said’?

Since many Californians vote moderate to liberal, “Carly will have to come back to the center to win in the general,” said O’Connor.

DeVore spokesman Joshua Treviño echoed Cook’s view that DeVore drove Fiorina to the right, “[making] the entire conversation different.”

“Had Chuck not been in the race, Fiorina would have stayed as a moderate Republican, and she and Campbell would have fought the race on the grounds of left-liberal pragmatism,” Treviño said. “There would have been zero evidence of conservative representation in the race.”

Cook said that DeVore’s loss wasn’t a total loss for the candidate or California’s tea party movement. “Did [DeVore] affect the debate? Absolutely. Did he raise own profile? Absolutely. Did he raise the tea party profile in California? Absolutely.”

“It depends on whether you buy into the notion of good defeats,” Cook continued. “It’s a pretty good defeat, as things go.”

Most of all, Cook said DeVore “helped shape the race”—and in doing so, his candidacy helped Boxer.

“I know the Boxer campaign is sure happy [DeVore] had the campaign he had,” Cook said. “They’re dodging the bullet. With Tom Campbell, she’s done. She does not defeat Campbell. With Fiorina she has a real chance.”

DeVore made the same point in an appeal to voters before the primary, using an online press release to ask Fiorina how she would “defend her profound vulnerabilities in a general election.”

“With her liberal record, her serial self-contradiction, and her brazen self-reinvention, she is the only one of the three Republican candidates for U.S. Senate who offers Boxer an opportunity to talk about something other than the issues,” the statement said.

As for the local tea party presence, Zelikovsky said she hopes the Bay Area Patriots’ influence will help “the best conservative candidates” win in November. “And they can then bring the conservative principles we stand for into practice,” she said, “into making government work again for the people.”