RESULTS IN the most important primary elections so far this year were yesterday interpreted as proof that anti-incumbent feeling threatens establishment candidates in November’s mid-term elections.
Outsiders who challenged their parties’ anointed candidates in Tuesday’s polls won Senate primaries in Kentucky and Pennsylvania.
In Arkansas, the prominent “blue dog” conservative Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln is fighting for her political life in a June 6th run-off against a more liberal Democrat who is supported by labour unions.
The victory of Rand Paul (47), an eye surgeon and hero of the Tea Party movement, in the Kentucky Republican primary marked the fourth time this year that the grass-roots conservative movement has played a determinant role in elections.
It established Mr Paul as a principal leader of the movement, along with the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. And it foreshadowed further divisions between conservative and moderate Republicans.
“I have a message, a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words,” Mr Paul told supporters after he defeated Trey Grayson, a Kentucky state official, by 24 percentage points. “We’ve come to take our government back.”
Mr Grayson was hand-picked by the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican on Capitol Hill, to fill the seat of a retiring Republican Senator. Mr Paul’s campaign portrayed Mr Grayson as a country club Republican, hammering home his name – Charles Merwin Grayson III – in press releases.
In his campaign, Mr Grayson courted judges, hospital directors and bank managers, while Mr Paul focused on the little people. In speeches in the parking lots of fast food restaurants, Mr Paul condemned runaway budget deficits and big government, and demanded a 12-year ceiling on senatorial mandates.
In explaining why he thought his son won, Rand Paul’s father, the Texas Congressman Ron Paul, conveyed the resentment of elites that is prevalent among Tea Partiers: “When Rand talks about the Tea Party movement, it’s the same as saying talking to the grass-roots people. And get rid of the power people, the people who run the show, the people who think they’re above everybody else. That’s what the people are sick and tired of, that’s the message.”
The Tea Party helped elect Republican Scott Brown to Teddy Kennedy’s former Senate seat in January. On May 8th, Tea Party activists ousted the Utah senator Robert Bennett at a Republican convention because he did not meet their ideological criteria. In Florida, Marco Rubio, an insurgent conservative, has forced the Republican governor Charlie Crist to declare himself an Independent to stay in the senatorial race.
The Pennsylvania primary ended the career of Arlen Specter, a five-term Senator who had the support of President Barack Obama, Vice-President Joe Biden and his state’s Democratic governor. Snarlin’ Arlen (80) had survived two bouts with cancer and was something of a monument in the US Senate. But he lost the Democratic nomination to a retired US Navy admiral, Joe Sestak (58), who managed to portray himself as an outsider, though he has been a Congressman since 2006.
Mr Specter’s defeat fits the narrative of established politicians being thrown out by upstarts. But he was also punished for, as he put it, “crossing the aisle once too often”. Mr Specter entered politics as a Democrat, switched to the Republicans in the mid-1960s so he could become district attorney, then returned to the Democrats last year. The Sestak campaign broadcast a devastating television advertisement that is widely credited with the final score of 54 per cent for Sestak to Specter’s 46 per cent. Archive footage showed Mr Specter with Sarah Palin and George W Bush, followed by Mr Specter saying: “My change in party will enable me to be re-elected.” The voice-over on the commercial says Mr Specter changed parties “to save one job – his, not yours”.
“This is what democracy looks like,” Mr Sestak said on Tuesday night. “A win for the people over the establishment, over the status quo, even over Washington DC.”
A Democrat won the only election that pitted a Democrat again a Republican on Tuesday, a byelection for the seat of the late Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania. Republicans had hoped to win Mr Murtha’s seat to boost their ambition of re-taking Congress in November. But Mark Critz, a former staff member to Mr Murtha, won with 53 per cent of the vote. Mr Critz stood as a conservative Democrat who opposes the new healthcare Bill.