Joe Carr, left, and Lamar AlexanderNASHVILLE - U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., faces renewed criticism from his vanquished GOP primary rival, tea party conservative Joe Carr, who so far has refused to endorse him.
Carr says he doesn't plan to do so unless the two-term senator reverses what Carr calls Alexander's support of "amnesty" for illegal immigrants and controversial Common Core education standards.
Carr said last week that after the Aug. 7 primary, he met with Alexander in a Murfreesboro-area 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,'" Carr said of Alexander's response. Alexander then told Carr to speak with David Cleary, Alexander's Senate chief of staff.
Carr said he did that and thought "we were making progress."
"But I haven't heard anything back since, and they haven't pursued it," Carr said.
Despite being heavily outspent, Carr won 40.6 percent of the GOP primary vote to Alexander's 49.6 percent in a multicandidate field.
Alexander faces Democrat Gordon Ball in the Nov. 4 election.
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 that as a result, conservative and tea party Republicans "are unenthusiastic about November."
The Alexander campaign has announced that 11 state senators and representatives who backed Carr in the primary now support Alexander. Twenty endorsed Carr. Three of nine holdouts lost their own re-election bids in primaries.
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 he said the bill would have required them to pay a penalty and would have also strengthened the U.S. border.
Alexander has said he has 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.
Contact staff writer Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550.