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LeMieux gets Barbour endorsement

Posted Aug 8, 2011 by William March

Updated Aug 8, 2011 at 11:48 AM

George LeMieux has announced what he called a “major endorsement” from Mississippi governor and former RNC chairman Haley Barbour in the Florida Republican Senate primary.

Since state Senate President Mike Haridopolos dropped out of the primary last month, Hasner has racked up endorsements from conservative groups including FreedomWorks. The Barbour endorsement is LeMieux’s first major response.

In a news release from the LeMieux campaign, Barbour called LeMieux “a solid conservative who served the people of Florida well in the U.S. Senate.”

Barbour, who briefly considered running for president in the 2012 election, has a significant political following in Florida, and like many veteran party activists, he tends to emphasize party unity over ideology.

During Florida’s 2010 governor’s race, while Rick Scott was battling Bill McCollum in the GOP primary, Barbour publicly rebuked Scott for running an ad that linked McCollum to the state Republican Party fundraising scandal, reportedly leading to hostility between Scott and Barbour after Scott won. At a religious conservative gathering in June, Barbour joined with current RNC Chairman Reince Priebus to warn party activists that unity is more important than ideological “purity.”

More recently, Barbour admonished the tea party wing of the GOP for not backing House Speaker John Boehner’s debt ceiling deal, which Hasner opposed.