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The Water Cooler Title: Rep. Pete Hoekstra joins Michele Bachmann in House Tea Party Caucus Rep. Pete Hoekstra is joining Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann as a founding member of the House Tea Party Caucus in a move he hopes will help him win Michigan's GOP governor's race. Most of Michigan's Republican gubernatorial candidates have been scrambling to get into the good graces of tea partiers, who could play a role in deciding who wins the Aug. 3 GOP primary election. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard recently participated in a Clarkston event with The Independent Tea Party Patriots, and Hoekstra, Attorney General Mike Cox and state Sen. Tom George have courted tea partiers. Only moderate businessman Rick Snyder has not tried for their support. With Hoekstra and Cox locked in a fierce fight for first place, attracting more tea party votes by hooking up with Bachmann could make the difference. Bachmann, a frequent Fox News guest, has been a vocal critic of Democratic President Barack Obama and ardent spokeswoman for the tea party movement. The new caucus plans to hold its first meeting Wednesday. "A lot of the people in the conservative movement have a great deal of respect for Michele Bachmann. She's a friend of Pete's and they've worked together on a lot of issues," Hoekstra campaign spokesman John Truscott said Tuesday. "It's more validation of why Mike Cox's attacks are just not accurate." Cox campaign spokesman Nick DeLeeuw said Hoekstra's move to join the caucus won't sway those backing Cox because the attorney general has better tea party credentials. Cox was the only gubernatorial candidate invited to appear at the Tea Party Express' Michigan stops this spring to talk about his part in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal health care overhaul, which many tea partiers oppose. He also has spoken to other tea party rallies. "Mike Cox has been traveling with the tea party and attending tea party events from the very beginning," DeLeeuw said. "Mike Cox has been leading that fight, while Pete Hoekstra has been voting against the tea party interests." In a recent interview with The Associated Press, however, Hoekstra noted he has been promoting a small-government, fiscally responsible message since he upset Republican Rep. Guy VanderJagt in 1992. "I was the tea party movement before the tea party," Hoekstra said. Both candidates have used Arizona's tough new immigration law as another way to score points with party conservatives. Cox last week filed a legal brief on behalf of nine states supporting the law, and Hoekstra on Tuesday filed a brief backing Arizona's right to pass such a law. The congressman began running a new round of TV ads Tuesday aimed at the one area he feels is Cox's Achilles' heel: integrity. Hoekstra doesn't mention Cox by name, but he says to the camera, "The only way you lead is if you have integrity. If you don't have integrity and trust, nothing else matters." Polls show Cox has the highest unfavorable rating of any of the candidates running for governor. He announced in 2005 that he'd had an extramarital affair several years earlier and has been targeted this year by an outside group running ads raising questions about his 2003 investigation into a rumored-but-never-proven party at the Manoogian Mansion in Detroit when then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick lived there. Cox, who has already run ads in which two former Detroit police officers defend his investigation, began running a new ad Monday critical of Hoekstra's vote supporting the federal bailout of the financial industry and the votes he has missed this year in Congress. Hoekstra's campaign complained Tuesday that Americans for Job Security, a Virginia-based free-market group, was coordinating efforts with the Cox campaign to run anti-Hoekstra ads. "Attorney General Mike Cox is unable to run on his own record or offer the people of Michigan real solutions for the economy. Instead, he and his special interest groups have made a calculated decision that the only way they can win this race is by false claims and trickery," Truscott said. DeLeeuw has denied there's any connection between Cox and Americans for Job Security.
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