Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, on Tuesday fended off a primary challenge from a well-funded right-wing businessman, putting him on track to win a 12th term.
Mr. Cole, first elected to Congress in 2002, has long been a fixture in Oklahoma politics and an influential legislative voice behind the scenes in Congress. The Associated Press called the results less than an hour after polls closed, giving Mr. Cole a landslide lead.
Mr. Cole rose to the helm of the influential appropriations panel in April and secured a coveted position on Capitol Hill in charge of allocating federal spending. Ranking members of the committee can direct federal funds not only across the government but also to their own districts.
But as the party has shifted to the right in recent years and become increasingly doctrinaire on cutting federal spending, the appropriations gavel has evolved into a political liability for the party. Mr Cole’s opponent, Paul Bondar, is an anti-spending conservative businessman who has sought to use the MP’s 15-year tenure on committees against him. Mr. Bondar argued that Mr. Cole’s time on Capitol Hill had disconnected him from his district and criticized his voting record as insufficiently conservative.
“Tom Cole joined Democrats in voting for billions of dollars in new deficit spending,” the television ad’s narrator says. “Paul Bondar opposes new federal spending.”
Mr. Bondar pledged early on to pour much of his personal wealth into his campaign. The primary had cost more than $8 million as of late last week, making it one of the most expensive House primaries of the year and the most competitive primary challenge Cole has faced in years.
“It was like an old-fashioned bar fight,” Mr. Cole told Roll Call. “The guy who wins the bar fight isn’t the guy with the most money, it’s the guy with the most money. He’s the guy with the most friends. I have a lot of friends in that area.
Mr. Cole’s predecessor on the committee, Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, also faced well-funded primary challenges when leading the panel, but she was also able to leverage her presence in the district. Status easily beats it.
Ultimately, Mr. Cole’s status as a veteran of the region’s politics, as well as Mr. Bondar’s own political shortcomings, chief among them his recent move to the state from Texas, won him. Bondar admitted intermittently that he was calling from Texas in an interview with a local television reporter that was widely circulated in the region.
“Without a map, he couldn’t find his way around this area,” Kerr said of his opponent in an interview earlier this month. “I’m not a nobody. My family has been in this area for 175 years, 175 years on my mother’s side and 140 years on my father’s side.
