Lamar Alexander
Gordon BallNASHVILLE - U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and his Democratic challenger, Gordon Ball, finally share something in common.
Both now have controversies on their hands.
In Alexander's case, he is facing renewed criticism from his vanquished GOP primary rival, tea party conservative Joe Carr, who so far has refused to endorse him.
And Carr says he doesn't plan to unless the two-term senator reverses what Carr calls Alexander's support of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and controversial Common Core education standards.
Ball, meanwhile, has his own problem. He's grappling with a story that appeared on the website BuzzFeed on Monday. It accused the successful Knoxville lawyer of plagiarizing language on positions from at least four sitting Democratic senators' websites.
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney gleefully leaped in and called on Ball to quit the race.
Nothing doing, the Ball campaign said.
In Alexander's case, Carr said Monday that after the Aug. 7 primary he met with Alexander in a Murfreesboro restaurant. He recalled telling the senator "you're completely out of touch" on illegal immigration and Common Core.
"I need you to modify your support," Carr said he told Alexander. "He said that's great" and replied Carr should speak with David Cleary, Alexander's Senate chief of staff.
Carr said he later did just that and thought "we were making progress. But I haven't heard anything back since, and they haven't pursued it."
Despite being heavily outspent by the senator, Carr won 40.6 percent of the GOP primary vote to Alexander's 49.6 percent in a multicandidate field.
Carr said that after Alexander's victory, the senator said "he was not going to move right or make any appeals to the tea party in Tennessee. He believes as a liberal or moderate that he's right."
It underscores what Carr called a "growing split and divide in the Republican Party, and it really concerns me." He cited the defeat of several tea party Republican incumbents in state legislative primaries.
As a result, conservative and tea party Republicans "are unethusiastic about November," Carr added.
Earlier in the day, the Alexander campaign announced that 11 state senators and representatives who backed Carr in the primary are now supporting Alexander. Twenty endorsed Carr. Three of nine holdouts lost their own reelection bids in primaries races.
Asked about Carr's remarks, Alexander spokesman Brian Reisinger said the senator "asked for the meeting with Rep. Carr, and drove down to the Cracker Barrel in Smyrna, where they had coffee and good conversation for an hour."
He said the senator "complimented Rep. Carr on his campaign, and the two discussed issues important to both of them."
During the campaign, Alexander argued he had not supported "amnesty" when voting for a Senate bill overhauling the nation's immigration laws. He said with 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., there was already "de facto amnesty" and noted the bill would have required them to pay a penalty and it also strengthened the U.S. border.
Alexander has said he's filed a bill aimed at blocking the Obama administration from pressuring states to go along with Common Core. But he hasn't taken a position on the standards themselves, saying that's up to the governor and state lawmakers.
Ball, meanwhile, has his own headaches.
"Tennessee Democratic Senate Nominee Plagiarized Almost Everything Written On His Website," shouted a Buzzfeed headline.
The story said Ball "appears to have plagiarized nearly every word on his issues pages from a vast array of politicians including West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren."
All four are Democrats.
The story says Ball "has likewise used much of the plagiarized text in an interview" earlier this year with the blog KnoxViews.
Ball told BuzzFeed News he agreed "with these views and approved the content."
But he added, "I had no idea that this material was cut and pasted on my website from other sources."
Devaney, the state GOP chairman, called Ball a "fraud" and accused him of claiming he is conservative while taking his cues from some of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate.
Charging his candidacy has been "dishonest" from the start, Devaney sought to link Ball to U.S. Sen. John Walsh, D-Montana.
Walsh dropped his election effort after The New York Times reported he plagiarized "large sections of the final paper he completed to earn his master's degree at the prestigious Army War College" in Carlisle, Pa.
"Gordon Ball, with nearly everything on his website plagiarized, should do the same and halt his fraudulent campaign today," Devaney said.
Said Ball spokesman Trace Sharp: "Gordon Ball is not dropping out."
In a statement, a delighted Alexander said of Ball's problems "this is proof-positive that as a U.S. senator, my opponent would be nothing more than a cut-and-paste version of the Obama agenda."