Renowned conservative commentator Erick Erickson says he may mount a primary challenge against Georgia GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss in 2014.
Erickson said on his radio show Tuesday that he’s upset with Chambliss for expressing a willingness to break the no-tax-increase pledge he signed with Americans for Tax Reform (ATR),
Georgia Tipsheet reports.
Influential Republicans have been urging him to give it a go, Erickson said. “For a week now, I’ve been getting calls to see if I would challenge Saxby Chambliss, once he really got into the whole ‘raising taxes issue,’” Erickson said.
“Well, the pace quickened. I got a lot of people pledging a lot of money in the last couple of days if I did something like this. And I’ve been very adamant: I wasn’t going to do it. But after a few conversations today with a few heavy hitters in Washington, D.C. and some here in Georgia, I should at least consider it.”
As for Chambliss, he told Georgia television station WMAZ last week that avoiding the fiscal cliff is more important than his anti-tax pledge. “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge,” he said.
ATR President Grover Norquist took sharp aim at New York GOP Rep. Peter King, who also renounced the pledge, saying King was trying to “weasel out of it.”
Erickson lives in Macon, Ga., where he was a one-term city councilman. He’s editor of the conservative blog RedState.com and contributes to CNN.
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