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Tea Party comment from a Welch aide turns heads (Updated)

Several Democrats have e-mailed me today to point out a comment that Republican Steven Welch’s campaign chair made to Talking Points Memo, in which Guy Ciarrocchi told that Welch “shares many goals of, and support among, tea-party activists.”

“In fact,” Ciarrocchi said, “Steve has met with the leaders and has met them at their bus trips; offering coffee & donuts, as well as words of encouragement.”

The immediate hope among some Democrats was that this could signal Welch is not only staying in the 6th District primary against Jim Gerlach, but also that he might make a hard-right turn in an effort to gin up support against the GOP incumbent. If so, this would seem be at least a rhetorical shift from the Welch campaign, which until now has painted a more moderate image of its candidate than the Tea Party crowd brings to mine.

There’s a couple things to keep in mind here. One, Ciarrocchi is a former Gerlach aide, and we don’t know if he’s ready to go up against his old boss. Two, Welch has yet to indicate for sure whether or not he’ll still run. And three, it would be difficult for Welch to win support from the conservative grassroots like this when there’s already a true Tea Party activist, Patrick Sellers, in the race.

So, with all that said, I’d caution Democrats not to read too much into this. Nothing is clear until Welch makes a final determination about staying in the race or getting out.

For now, I’ve got a call into Welch’s campaign manager to clarify some of this.

Here’s the full TPM report for your interest.

UPDATE—Welch campaign manager Brenden Benner e-mailed the following statement:

“Since the beginning of his campaign, Steve has been engaging voters throughout the district, as well as talking with conservative and tea party activists. This is nothing new, and he continues to share his message which he made on the day he announced his run for Congress: we need to put a stop to runaway spending and big government bailouts, and return to the conservative principles our nation was founded on.“

January 12, 2010 at 2:00 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Jim Gerlach, PA-6, Steven Welch

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