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SSP Quiz: Lethal Primaries

by: DavidNYC

Wed Feb 21, 2007 at 10:57 PM EST


Poor Atrios must be beating his head against the wall dealing with a mental midget like Joe Klein. To recap: Klein is one of those beltway asshats who thinks that primary challenges to incumbents are (to use his reference) something to delight the likes of Robespierre. In other words, anyone who supported Ned Lamont is a  bloodthirsty tyrant and, presumably, deserves to be guillotined. Just call me St. Just.

Anyhow, the immediate context for this non-debate is the possibility of a primary challenge to Rep. Ellen Tauscher (CA-10), who sits in a district that went for Kerry 59-40. Suffice it to say, I'm not worried that, even if Tauscher were to lose a primary, a Republican would win the general. I say that in no small part because the bluest seat currently held by a Republican is DE-AL, which went 53-46 Kerry - and as many of you know, there are only eight GOP-held Kerry districts overall. In short, the GOP no longer plays very well in districts where voters like to pull the Dem lever at the top of the ticket.

But that's not to say that "lethal" primaries never happen (as in, lethal to the party in which the primary upset took place). Indeed, they occasionally do. One relatively recent example: Party-switcher Michael Forbes (R to D) narrowly lost his primary in 2000, and the woman who beat him, Regina Seltzer, went on to lose to Republican Felix Grucci that fall.

So, going back to, say, 1980 (just to pick an arbitrary limit), what other lethal primaries for Senate and House seats are you aware of? And, so that we have a basis of comparison, how many incumbents lost primaries overall?
DavidNYC :: SSP Quiz: Lethal Primaries
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SSP Quiz: Lethal Primaries | 25 comments
I can think of a couple in 1980 alone
NY-SEN:  Conservative Republican Al D'Amato beats liberal Republican Jacob Javitz in Republican primary.  The liberal Javitz would have easily held the seat for Republicans in the general, but the Conservative D'Amato barely managed to defeat Democratic Congresswoman Liz Holtman in November by a 44.5-44.2 margin.  Javitz took 11% as the liberal party candidate.

AL-06:  Pro-civil rights incumbent Republican John Buchanan is defeated by very Conservative Republican Albert L. Smith in the primary in what was then a district that included all of Birmingham.  Despite the pro-Republican tilt of the 1980 election cycle, Smith barely squeeked by the Democratic challenger in November.  In 1982, Smith was defeated for reelection by moderate Democrat Benjamin Erdriech by a 53-46 margin. 

also in 1980
Democratic Senators Stone (FL) and Stewart (AL) lost primary races, and then Republicans picked up those seats in November - but I'm not sure if they would have been stronger candidates than the Democrats who defeated them (Jim Folsom Jr in Alabama, and ... I forget the name of the guy in Florida).
[ Parent ]
ALSO in 1980
Mike Gravel lost to Clint Gruening (the son of Ernest Gruening, who Gravel had successfully primaried himself in 1968).

Clint went on to lose in the Reagan avalanche to Frank Murkowski.

Virgil Cooper beat Mike Synar in 1994 and lost narrowly in the general to Tom Coburn. I know there are others.

[ Parent ]
My bad
That was CLARK Gruening, and he was the grandson of Ernest, not his son.
[ Parent ]
The Mike Synar situation
Was pretty messed up. Cooper was a nobody who got tons of financial backing from the GOP.
[ Parent ]
Technically speaking
NY-Sen wasn't a "lethal" primary because the seat stayed in GOP hands. Of course, by that point, Javits was far closer to the Dems than he was to the GOP - and if he hadn't run that fall, Holtzman would have won.

Also, it sounds like AL-06 took an extra cycle to become lethal. I'm especially curious to know about situations where the lethality was immediate.

[ Parent ]
Lethal primaries
In 1982, Rep. Thomas Railsback (R) was successfully challenged in the primary in his west-central Illinois district.  Right-wing conservatives had not forgiven him for his committee vote to impeach Nixon all the way back in 1974!  The general election was won by Lane Evans (D), who was originally considered a longshot as a young attorney having no elected office experience and running for a seat held by longterm incumbent Railsback.  The primary results and the severe recession changed his odds dramatically.

As I recall, Sen. Charles Percy (R) was also challenged in his 1984 primary because he was being punished by conservatives for opposing a Reagan administration nominee in the Foreign Affairs Committee (which I think he chaired?).  He went on to lose the general to popular Rep. (and former Lt. Gov.) Paul Simon who came out of a tight four-way primary for the Democratic nomination.

Percy
Percy also riled the Jewish community by advocating including the PLO in the political dialogue.  He paid the price in the following election with his Senate seat.  There have been few politicians since willing to  risk expressing anything other than complete opposition to the PLO ever since.

"My name's Dr. Multimillionaire and I kicked your ass." -- Rep. Steve Kagen D-WI to Karl Rove
[ Parent ]
Percy
I think you might be remembering another Republican Representative Paul Findlay, not Percy.  Findlay was beaten in the '82 general election by Democrat Dick Durbin, who went on to later replace Sen. Paul Simon.  Findlay actually met with the PLO at a time when no one else in the US political establishment would even consider it and publicly advocated for the PLO.  His rural constituents loved him for his work on agriculture and didn't understand or care about the issue.  But the Jewish community in Illinois did care and strongly supported Durbin.  But the same backlash against the early Reagan administration and the deep recession in downstate Illinois that elected Lane Evans ultimately got Durbin elected.  Republican House Minority Leader Bob Michel in a district neighboring the other two districts narrowly won re-election by a margin of about one or two votes per precinct and had to tell Reagan in person that he would have to vote against some of Reagan's policies in order to survive re-election.  Those were the days when at least sane Republicans were more scared of their constituents than they were of the White House and the far right.
[ Parent ]
Primaries
More than a half-century ago, in his definitive study of Southern politics, V. O. Key wrote that there could still be accountability in one-party states because the primary could substitute for the general election.  Today, this is particularly true of districts represented by minorities.  Just off the top of my head since 1980,

Harold Washington defeated Bennett Stewart (Chicago) 1980
Mel Reynolds defeated Gus Savage (Chicago) 1992
Chaka Fattah defeated Lucien Blackwell (Philadelphia) 1994
Shiela Jackson Lee defeated Craig Washington (Houston) 1994
Carolyn Kilpatrick defeated Barbara-Rose Collins (Detroit) 1996
Hilda Solis defeated Matthew Martinez (East LA) 2000
Artur Davis defeated Earl Hilliard (Black Belt Alabama) 2002
Henry Cuellar defeated Ciro Rodriguez (San Antonio & popints south) 2004
Denise Majette defeated Cynthia McKinney (DeKalb County GA) 2002
Hank Johnson defeated Cynthia McKinney (DeKalb County GA) 2006

In all of the cases listed, the winner of the Demcoratic primary was successful in the general election.

One example of an incumbent losing a primary and then the primary winner losing the general election occurred in OK2 in 1994.  Mike Synar lost to Virgil Cooper who lost to Tom Coburn.  Given the fact that Cooper only spent $20,000, Synar probably would have lost to Coburn also. What is interesting is that Synar entered Congress in 1978 by defeating an incumbent in the primary (Ted Risenhoover).

Don't forget Bobby Rush!
In 1992, Bobby Rush defeated Charlie Hayes on the South Side of Chicago. Hayes had the highest number of bounced checks of any Congressman in the "check-bouncing" scandal.

Also in 1992, two Congressional Democrats from Chicago (Bill Lipinski and Mark Russo) ended up running against each other because they got re-districted.  Lipinski won that, and ended up winning the general. 

[ Parent ]
KY-06
OK, I'm going back to before 1980 -- to 1978.  Progressive democrats were able to beat incumbent democratic Congressman John Breckenridge in the primary.  The progressive was Tom Easley.  The R's had granted Breckenridge a pass and had nominated a nominal candidate, so we all celebrated what seemed a progressive win for Congress. 

But the R's were smart -- their candidate dropped out and the party nominated Larry Hopkins, a local stock broker, as a replacement.  Hopkins went on to take the seat and hold it for the R's until he retired years later. 

The Schwarz-Walberg primary
is going to be lethal in one more cycle!

The Graf-Kolbe struggle took place across a couple of cycles, but did prove lethal to that seat.

Lincoln Chafee, Arlen Specter, and Joe Lieberman are the only Senators to be challenged seriously in primaries in the last 15 years, right?  Democratic State Senator Virgil Goode challenged Chuck Robb in 94, but I don't know if that was serious or not.

28, gay guy, Democrat, CA-08

I think
That Carol Moseley-Braun won a primary.
[ Parent ]
1992 Senate race in IL
Actually, this was a three-way race between incumbent Alan Dixon, Carol Moseley-Braun and a millionaire named Al Hofeld.  Hofeld and Dixon bludgeoned each other with attack ads and Moseley-Braun was the last person standing.
[ Parent ]
The Dems are lucky
that they had a good year in the Senate in 1992 because I think they could have easily lost the Illinois seat with Carol Moseley-Brown in another year.
[ Parent ]
Dixon & Moseley Braun
As someone already pointed out, that primary was a three-way race.  But Carol Mosely Braun rode her way to victory for two reasons.  First, as already mentioned, it was a three-way race with the third candidate drawing significant support.  But second and more importantly, there was a great deal of anger over Dixon voting to approve the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas to the US Supreme Court.  She rode a wave of blacks, liberals, and women.  Too bad Lieberman didn't take a lesson from Dixon, who gave one of the most eloquent and graceful concessions speeches ever given and wowed everybody including those who opposed him.
[ Parent ]
1992 Wisconsin Senate Democratic Primary
this lethal primary ended one Congressional career and launched another.

In 1992 the Democrats had a contested primary for the right to challenge Republican incumbent Senator Robert "Landslide Bob" Kasten.

The two leading Democratic contenders were Milwaukee Congressman Jim Moody and Millionaire Milwaukee businessman Joe Checota.  Also running was a little known State Senator from Middleton, Russ Feingold.

Jim Moody and Joe Checota proceeded to run the biggest mud slinging campaign the past 30 years at least.  Moody was accused of ties to the backers of Milosevic in Serbia and Checota's business practices were repeatedly questioned by Moody. They set spending records blasting each other and ignoring Russ Feingold. Meanwhile Feingold was running TV ads with Elvis impersonators in it that sought to amuse viewers, not attack the opposition.

At the start of the campaign Feingold was a distant third in the upper single digits in the polls, after the mud cleared Feingold took home a whopping 70& of the primary vote.

Moody and Checote blew each other away and have not been heard of since in Wisconsin politics.  Feingold meanwhile remains a US Senator (hopefully for a long time to come).

"My name's Dr. Multimillionaire and I kicked your ass." -- Rep. Steve Kagen D-WI to Karl Rove

his running a positive campaign
helped shield him from negative attacks from Bob Kasten, just like mike rounds did in 2002. Of course, his huge primary landsldie helped give him the momentum to win the race.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Also from 1992
Wingnut Roscoe Bartlett, R-MD, owes his seat to a lethal primary.  Conservative Dem Beverly Byron held that seat for seven terms (I think) before losing the 1992 primary to, well, a real Democrat.  I can't recall the primary winner's name, but he ran on a pro-health care reform platform and ended up with a respectable 46% of the vote.  Not bad for a pretty Republican district, but I think it was the last time Bartlett had a tough race.  (He had run against Byron once before, back in the '80s, and was crushed.)
Hard to believe
That a Democrat ever held MD-06.
[ Parent ]
The Byrons of Western Maryland (MD6)
Beverly Byron, a Blue Dog, was defeated in the 1992 primary by a liberal named Thomas Hattery who then lost the election to Roscoe Bartlett.  There is a lot of talk today about political dynasties, e. g. David Geffin's recent comments about the Bush and Clinton dynasties.  If you want to know what a real dynasty looks like, take a look at the Byrons.  Beverly was elected in a special election to replace her deceased husband Goodloe Byron.  A generation earlier, both his father and then his mother were both elected to represent this district.
[ Parent ]
Of course it wasn't always so Republican,
the Docratic egislature gerrymandered it to become overwhelmingly Democratic to fit their own goals, and pack all the Republican areas of the state into two congressional districts.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
[ Parent ]
Yeah it was
The legislature did very little to MD-01 and MD-06.  The increase in Democratic votes in MD-08 came from the already overwhelmingly Democratic MD-04, and the increase in Democratic votes came in MD-02 came from a combination of MD-03 and MD-07. 

MD-06 was always very Republican on the Presidential level even though it still has a Democratic registration advantage.  For example in 1988, Bush 41 beat Dukakis by 65-34 and in 1984, Reagan beat Mondale by 67-33 there.

[ Parent ]
I'd say the primary that Walter Jones Jr.
a congressman from North Carolina went though, was pretty deadly. He lost to Eva Clayton for his own father's seat, and the experience is one of the things that embittered, and the main facotr he switched parties and knocked off a Democratic incumbent in the adjacent district in 1994. We might still have a Democratic Walter Jones if he hadn't been denied the right to represent his father's seat.

Call no man happy until he is dead-Aeschylus
SSP Quiz: Lethal Primaries | 25 comments

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