Consultant Tom Cole, the veteran Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the highly effective Appropriations Committee, fended off a major problem on Tuesday from a well-funded right-wing businessman, placing him on observe to win a twelfth time period.
Mr. Cole, who was first elected to Congress in 2002, has lengthy been a fixture of Oklahoma politics and an influential legislative voice behind the scenes in Congress. The Related Press referred to as the race lower than an hour after polls closed as Mr. Cole led by an awesome margin.
Mr. Cole ascended to the helm of the influential Appropriations panel in April, assuming a coveted place on Capitol Hill that put him in control of the allocation of federal spending. Prime members of the committee can steer federal {dollars} not simply throughout the federal government, but additionally to their very own districts.
However because the G.O.P. has veered to the correct in recent times and change into more and more doctrinaire about slashing federal spending, the Appropriations gavel has morphed right into a political legal responsibility for Republicans. Mr. Cole’s opponent, Paul Bondar, an anti-spending conservative businessman, tried to weaponize the congressman’s 15-year tenure on the committee in opposition to him. Mr. Bondar argued that Mr. Cole’s time on Capitol Hill had left him out of contact along with his district, and attacked his voting file as insufficiently conservative.
“Tom Cole voted with Democrats for billions in new deficit spending,” a narrator on a tv commercial mentioned. “Paul Bondar opposes new federal spending.”
Early on, Mr. Bondar dedicated to pouring giant quantities of his private wealth into the race. With greater than $8 million spent as of late final week, it grew to become probably the most costly Home primaries this yr — and probably the most aggressive major problem Mr. Cole had confronted in years.
“It’s like an old school bar struggle,” Mr. Cole told Roll Call. “The man who wins a bar struggle isn’t the man with probably the most cash; it’s the man with probably the most pals. And I’ve a whole lot of pals in that district.”
Mr. Cole’s predecessor on the committee, Consultant Kay Granger of Texas, also faced a well-funded primary challenge when she led the panel, and in addition was ready to make use of her stature within the district to defeat it simply.
Ultimately, Mr. Cole’s standing as a political veteran within the district, in addition to Mr. Bondar’s personal political foibles — chief amongst them his latest transfer into the state from Texas — allowed him to prevail. A halting interview Mr. Bondar gave to an area tv reporter through which he confessed to dialing in to the decision from Texas was broadly circulated within the district.
“Can’t discover his manner across the district with out a map,” Mr. Cole mentioned of his opponent in an interview earlier this month. “It’s not like I’m an unknown amount. My household’s lived on this district 175 years on my mother’s facet and 140 on my father’s facet.”
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