Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off: ' SC-Sen-B: In a major shocker, the Wall Street Journal broke the news on Thursday morning that South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint will resign in January to become head of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative DC think-tank. While DeMint had previously said he had no plans to seek a third term in 2016, he was only re-elected two years ago, so this news comes as a serious surprise, particularly since there had been no prior hints that he might bail.
DeMint had long fancied himself a conservative kingmaker, meddling in many Republican primaries by means of his outside activist organization, the Senate Conservatives Fund. That had often set him at odds with GOP leadership, who viewed the SCF in the same way they might view the Club for Growth: a group devoted to making it harder for more electable Republicans to win their party's nomination.
But the fact that DeMint was himself Senator rankled his fellow members of Congress even more, to the point that he had to promise he would stop trying to unseat incumbents'a promise he apparently broke earlier this year when SCF transferred $500,000 to the Club at the precise moment they were (successfully) trying to nuke Dick Lugar in Indiana.
Now DeMint will have a much freer hand to interfere in GOP internal politics as it suits him, though Heritage is surely not immune to political pressure either. Still, it's easy to imagine how this kind of free agency would appeal to DeMint. And the job may appeal to his pocketbook as well: The outgoing chief of the Heritage Foundation earns a cool $1 million a year. That's quite the upgrade for DeMint, whose $40,000 net worth made him one of the least-wealthy members of Congress.
So what happens next? Continue reading below the fold.
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