Pete Hoekstra's U.S. Senate race strategy may need to take a page from the campaign Rick Snyder ran to win last year's Republican gubernatorial primary.

Snyder allowed the congressman and three other GOP rivals to split the staunch conservative vote, while he concentrated on getting more moderate Michigan voters. Now that Hoekstra's past support for bailing out failing banks and raising the federal debt ceiling are under attack by some of his fellow Senate candidates, Hoekstra also may have to turn to more moderate supporters to win.

The GOP field keeps growing, making a scenario under which Hoekstra wins with a plurality of votes more likely. The race includes Clark Durant, a charter schools executive from Grosse Pointe; Gary Glenn of Midland, president of the American Family Association of Michigan; former Kent County Judge Randy Hekman; Roscommon businessman Peter Konetchy; former Libertarian Scotty Boman of Detroit; Brighton businessman Chuck Marino; and Rick Wilson of Grand Blanc, a former manager at an auto supplier.

Republican officials are giving each of the candidates a few minutes to address party activists at different times during the three-day Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference. But there was no organized event where all the candidates could be seen together, avoiding what could have been a bruising confrontation between Hoekstra and others eager to take him on.