The three Republican politicians heaped praise on Hoekstra.

“Pete Hoekstra and I stood side by side as we reformed welfare, fought government spending, balanced the budget, and implemented pro-growth tax policies,” said Kasich. “I am proud to support him and know that he will make an excellent United States Senator.”

And from Toomey:

“Pete Hoekstra and I served together in Congress and he was one of my best pro-growth allies,” said Toomey. “We need him in the United States Senate so that we can fight together to cut government spending and reduce the debt.”

Hoekstra is drawing a lot of endorsements from Michigan’s GOP mainstream, but Clark Durant has also drawn large endorsements, including former Sen. Spencer Abraham, as well as former Michigan GOP chairs Betsy DeVos and Saul Anuzis. Former Governor John Engler has encouraged Durant to drop out of the race to make way for Hoekstra, who had originally declined to run.

At this point in the 2010 election cycle, longtime Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold (D) seemed like a lock for re-election, but today a Republican political novice holds his seat. In neighboring Michigan, Republicans are hoping for a similar victory over two-term Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) in 2012…

Bill Ballenger, editor of the nonpartisan newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, said Feingold’s fate should be a warning to Stabenow.

“If Russ Feingold proved to be vulnerable in Wisconsin” and ultimately lost when nobody would have thought such a thing were possible, “certainly Stabenow fits the same profile,” he said Tuesday.

The potential challengers are lining up, including former Rep. Pete Hoekstra, former Sec. of State Terri Lynn Land, former Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis and two businessmen, Tim Leuliette and Al Pease. Rep. Candice Miller is also a possibility.

The site has no author, and it isn’t immediately clear who created it; however, a domain name lookup shows that the domain was registered Friday. The opposition research site — run-of-the-mill for general elections but somewhat odd for a closed election for party chairman — claims that Anuzis managed the ’06 and ’08 elections badly, is liberal on social issues and immigration, among other attacks.

Anuzis won the endorsement of Redstate blogger Erick Erickson, who — contrary to the claims of the site — praised his work “when the odds were against him” in Michigan. Yet Anuzis has his critics: Ben Smith of Politico reported on a letter that Debbie Joslin, an RNC member from Alaska, sent out to the other RNC members over Anuzis’ alleged support of a “National Popular Vote” system.

Though Wisconsin GOP Chairman Reince Priebus is considered the frontrunner, the opacity of the race and multiple rounds of voting make it effectively wide open. The 168 members of the RNC will vote Friday.

Instead, the debate hosted by Tucker Carlson and Grover Norquist at the National Press Club in Washington resembled a job interview. Candidates listed what “skills” they have for the position, how their past experiences would help them lead the RNC and how they would do the job (all interspersed with the occasional awkward joke). Their interlocutors repeatedly asked them to answer questions “specifically,” which they generally did not.

Though Norquist reminded the audience that there was “no job description,” being a party chair is really about one thing — raising money. The candidates all said how they could raise money to defeat President Obama in 2012. Priebus said he would spend “five or six” hours on the phone everyday with major donors, saying that the RNC needed to raise $400 million to defeat the president. “It’s all about fundraising,” said Anuzis in his opening.

“We don’t do policy, we do politics,” said Chairman Steele. “You don’t get to dictate the terms of policy to the (House) speaker, or the minority leader. If you get it wrong, You’ll be reminded, ‘you don’t do policy,’” he ended, drawing the loudest applause from the crowd for the chairman,

Steele, the center of debate, knows whereof he speaks. Soon after he was elected as RNC chairman, he said — in comments that were anathema to most Republicans — that abortion was an “individual choice” to be decided by the states in a May 2009 interview with GQ. In the debate, Steele — who is often animated on cable news shows — appeared subdued. According to a Politico report this morning, Steele does not have the votes from the 168-member RNC to stay on for a second term.

In the one exception to the lack of debate in the debate, Steele defended his record as RNC chairman when Wagner attacked his lack of funding for GOTV operations along the lines of a memo by former Steele aide — and former RNC candidate himself before dropping out — Gentry Collins. “We didn’t have 72-hour program — we had a 12-month program. We won 64 house seats, 21 state legislatures flipped.” He maintained that the program was done differently. “We won in all fifty states this year. And that’s the goal, winning. Find me a state that didn’t have a winning election.”

Despite the Republicans’ success in the midterm elections, the RNC is $15 million in debt; reports indicate that it has already spent lavishly for its 2012 convention in Tampa; and it has had to delay payment to convention vendors. Steele meekly suggested at the outset that the debt might be “refinanced” and the party would have to “hunker down, get the money right, get the dollars right.”

The race for RNC chair is of course, not an open election — 168 members choose the chairman in a race that often has multiple ballots — but Priebus appears to be the front-runner, according to vote counts. He also acted like it. He repeatedly spoke of the need to work with the conservative movement and the tea party. He also talked like a tea partier, sounding the alarm of American decline. “We are about to fall off a fiscal cliff,” he said in his opening. “We need to save our country, and in turn to save our party, and take back the White House,” he said, often repeating the need to “save our country” more than any other candidate.

Priebus also had huge success in normally-blue Wisconsin in 2010. Plastics magnate Ron Johnson won his first election, defeating Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold by painting him as a Washington insider. Longtime House Appropriations Chair David Obey (D-Wisc.) retired and his seat was taken by Republican Sean Duffy, who was previously a cast member on MTV’s “The Real World.” Wisconsin’s Republicans took over the governorship, both legislatures and picked up an additional U.S. House seat.

Ultimately, the RNC chairmanship race is shaping up a lot like the Republican narrative of the 2010 elections — Priebus, talking the language of the tea party, looks poised to defeat the fiscally-irresponsible incumbent Michael Steele on January 14.

Gentry Collins, one of the first candidates to publicly challenge current chairman Michael Steele, has ended his campaign to claim his former boss’ position. Collins — a former Iowa GOP operative — made a splash with his entrance in the race, as he had served the RNC as political director during Steele’s term leading the party. Before he declared himself a candidate, Collins resigned from his RNC position with a scathing letter attacking Steele’s tenure leading the GOP. But since entering the field, Collins has struggled to gain support from RNC delegates, with only three members having publicly pledged their support to him before he ended his bid.

Though Steele now has one fewer opponent, his path to reelection appears to have closed. Politico approached the RNC delegates and found that over half intend to oppose Steele when the GOP votes on Jan. 14.

A weeklong canvass of the party’s governing board by POLITICO revealed 88 members who have decided not to vote for Steele, either opting to support one of his opponents or simply ruling out Steele as a choice in the race.

With 165 voting members, a candidate needs to claim support from at least 85 delegates to claim the RNC chair position, a number that now appears completely out of Steele’s grasp. Only 15 RNC members have said that they intend to vote for the current chairman.

So if not Steele, who is likely to claim the chairmanship? Former Wisconsin Republican Chairman Reince Priebus is the apparent leader in the race for the moment, with 30 delegates already publicly pledging their support. But since the RNC chairman is chosen through multiple rounds of balloting until one candidate secures half the votes, the battle to win the election may hinge more on which candidate positions him or herself as the second choice of the most delegates. However, the other candidates do have a significant amount of ground to make up if they are to equal Priebus’ level of support. Former RNC Co-Chair Ann Wagner currently sits as the second-place challenger to the incumbent, with 12 public supporters, followed by former Michigan GOP Chair Saul Anuzis with 10 backers and Maria Cino with only six supporters.

The candidates will meet in Washington, D.C., Monday in a debate moderated by Grover Norquist and Tucker Carlson.

As of Monday, Priebus was publicly supported by 22 voting RNC delegates, compared to only 12 behind Steele. Former Michigan Republican chair Saul Anuzis is breathing right down Steele’s neck with 11 pledges delegates, and former RNC co-chair Ann Wagner is in the mix with 10 supporters.

With the Jan. 14 vote for the next chairman fast approaching, over one-third of the RNC delegates have publicly stated their voting intentions. As I noted two weeks ago, Steele’s deficit in supporters is likely closer to the sum of all the challengers’ delegates rather than just Priebus’ alone, as those RNC members have already decided to back someone besides the incumbent Steele and will be likely to switch their allegiance to one of the other challengers once their initial favorite drops from the ballot.

The Hotline also reported that Priebus has managed to pull away a key Steele ally for his corner:

On Sunday, California national committee member Shawn Steel made public his decision to back Wisconsin Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus. The Californian had been a key member of Steele’s kitchen cabinet and one of the incumbent chairman’s top defenders.

The defection, rumored for a week, is seen as a major blow to Steele’s dwindling re-election hopes.

CNN reports:

Ann Wagner, one of six candidates seeking the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, is promising not to support Chairman Michael Steele under any circumstance if she happens to come up short in her bid to lead the organization.

The former Missouri GOP Chairwoman and onetime Ambassador to Luxembourg told CNN Monday that she will “absolutely not” endorse Steele or tell her supporters to do so if she fails to make it to the final round of what is likely to be a multi-ballot election come January.

[...]

“I would ask any of the candidates out there to not to move any of their support to Michael Steele, regardless of the outcome of any one individual,” she said.

While affirming that she is “in the race to win it,” Wagner said numerous committee members have, in the course of their conversations, asked her not to back Steele if she fails to advance to the late stages of the election.

“I have made that commitment to many of the men and women who have asked me that,” Wagner said. “They want a new direction, a new leadership. That’s my commitment.”

Wagner’s opposition could be a sign of things to come among the other candidates challenging Steele’s position atop the party. As TAI detailed last week, the other candidates have largely entered the field to pick up the anti-Steele voice of the party.

According to an updated whip count of RNC voting members from the Hotline on Monday, Reince Priebus has opened an even wider lead on Steele. The Wisconsin GOPer has 16 RNC delegates who have publicly pledged their support, compared to only 12 for Steele. Wagner is then tied with former Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis with 10 delegates each.

[h/t The Corner]

According to a whip count from The Hotline, 13 RNC delegates have publicly declared their support for Priebus, whereas Steele has 12 official backers. That one vote separation may be an essential tie, but it bodes poorly for Steele’s reelection hopes. Eighteen delegates have committed to supporting another candidate: nine have said they will vote for former Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis, seven for former RNC co-chair Ann Wagner, and two for former RNC political director Gentry Collins.

The party chairman is not chosen in a first-past-the-post vote, the way general U.S. elections operate. Instead, RNC members take a series of votes, eliminating candidates in each round until one person receives a majority of the votes. With 185 members, that means a candidate must secure 85 supporters to win the post.

The challenge for Steele is that many of those backing the other candidates such as Collins or Wagner have already decided to buck the current party chairman, so they will be more likely to support another candidate if their first choice is knocked out of the running.

There is already an “anybody but Steele” sentiment circulating in certain circles of the Republican Party. Major Republican donors threatened to abandon fundraising for the party, according to Politico. In a separate article, Politico reported that Mike Duncan, Steele’s predecessor at the helm of the RNC, has reached out to candidates to suggest that the challengers form “a united front” to oppose Steele’s reelection.

Priebus’s list of public supporters indicates that he will be the most likely candidate to end up on the final ballot alongside Steele. He has wrapped up support from the Wisconsin RNC delegation, and has received backing from across the country. Most importantly, Henry Barbour has publicly stated he intends to vote for Priebus. Henry is the nephew of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former RNC chairman whose voice continues to carry significant weight among the party’s elite, especially in fundraising matters, which at the end of the day is the primary function of a party chair.

The speculation over Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele’s future with the group will come to an end tonight. At 7:30 p.m. EST, he is scheduled to speak with members of the RNC during a conference call. Fox News’ sources indicate that Steele will announce that he will not seek a second term during the call, but the chairman has remained coy about his decision. The next RNC chair will be selected when the organization’s members meet in the middle of January.

Steele’s two years as chairman of the party been filled with both positives and negatives for his image. In terms of results, Steele has overseen two of the most successful years for the GOP; when he took the helm in early 2009 the party was in a state of crisis after Barack Obama swept Democrats to wide majorities in both chambers of Congress, but the GOP regrouped in 2010 and won historic margins in Congress for the midterm elections.

At the same time, Steele himself has been plagued by a continual series of gaffes that distracted from his other work, and the party closes 2010 with its future weighed by over $15 million in debt. Though the RNC chairman is not selected by any form of popular vote, rank and file Republicans have turned against Steele. Almost half of Republican voters would oppose Steele if he ran for the chairmanship again according to a recent poll.

A host of other candidates are already in the race no matter what Steele announces Monday night. Wisconsin Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus is projected as an early front runner. He has already wrapped up the support of Wisconsin’s GOP and is backed by influential Mississippi Gov. and former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour. Also among those running: former Michigan Republican chairman Saul Anuzis, Gentry Collins who was the RNC’s political director until he resigned last month with a scathing letter against Steele, and former RNC co-chair Ann Wagner.

Those currently running have fairly low public profiles, much like Steele before he won the chairmanship in 2009. That could come back to haunt the party, though, as these individuals’ past ties will be subjected to greater public inspection if they win the chairmanship. Anuzis, for example, has defended Young Americans for Freedom, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center termed a hate group over its white nationalist statements.

If suspicions that Steele will not run again are confirmed, other possible candidates may be willing to enter the race. Former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman has been speculated about as a possible candidate earlier this year. He recently stated that he would not oppose Steele but did not deny his interest in running if the current chairman steps aside. Coleman — who helped found the conservative nonprofit American Action Network after he lost his Senate election in 2008 — would likely have the highest name recognition of any candidate if he chooses to run.

Mike Duncan, Steele’s predecessor as RNC Chair and current chairman of American Crossroads, is weighing whether to run for his old position. American Crossroads was the biggest outside player in the 2010 midterm elections, becoming a symbol for undisclosed spending after Citizens United. Duncan would be a major player if he puts his hat into the ring. The RNC chair is primarily responsible for party fundraising, so Duncan’s success leading American Crossroads would augur well for his ability to lead the RNC out of its debt problem as they seek to reclaim the White House in 2012.

But before Anuzis is anointed as the tea party candidate of choice — Phillips has minimal influence in tea party circles. A Washington Post survey of 647 tea party groups showed only nine with connections to his organization. By contrast, 208 groups said they worked mainly with the Tea Party Patriots. The for-profit Tea Party Nation did hold a January 2010 convention — the first of its kind — in Nashville featuring Sarah Palin, but her $100,000 speaking fee and the ticket price of $550 were criticized by other tea party groups. An August convention in Las Vegas was called off. David Weigel called up several tea party leaders yesterday and they agreed that Phillips wasn’t a big player anymore in the movement.

Another reason to discount this endorsement as influential: Look at who hosted last week’s RNC debate — it was not Tea Party Nation but FreedomWorks. Though all of the RNC candidates at the debate were varyingly deferential to the tea party, and tea party questioners want ownership of the RNC, there just isn’t a candidate that the tea party has coalesced around. But that’s almost beside the point, as 168 members of the RNC decide the chairman, not activists in primaries.