- The most closely watched Senate primary is in Pennsylvania, where Sen. Arlen Specter (above) and Rep. Joe Sestak are slugging it out in unusually personal terms. Photo: AP
Republicans aren’t the only ones staring at the unnerving prospect of a 2010 primary season filled with smash-mouth intraparty contests that threaten to distract the party and leave Senate nominees bloodied and cash-depleted.
In a handful of next year’s most competitive Senate races — and for a few of the Democratic Party’s most precariously perched incumbents — discordant Democratic primaries are already taking shape, complicating a midterm election landscape in which the party will be playing defense for the first time in four years.
In some cases, the Democrat-on-Democrat fights are simply about ambition. In others, ideology is at the heart of the conflict. The common denominator is that the intraparty battles stand to divert critical resources and divide the party at an especially inopportune time.
“There are a couple of big [states] that should concern them,” said Jennifer Duffy, a senior editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “It may not tear the national party apart, but does it tear the party apart in some states?”
The most closely watched Senate primary is in Pennsylvania, where Sen. Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak are slugging it out in unusually personal terms.
Specter has cast Sestak as ineffective and opportunistic, attacking him for his failure to register to vote in Pennsylvania until shortly before launching his 2006 congressional campaign and labeling the two-term congressman as “No Show Joe” — a reference to the House votes Sestak has missed while pursuing the Senate nomination.
Not to be outdone, Sestak has assailed the party-switching incumbent’s character, referring to Specter as a “flight risk” for Democrats and reminding the party rank and file of Specter’s decades-long career as a Republican. Last month, Sestak launched a website dedicated to “The Real Arlen Specter,” featuring quotes Specter would rather forget and past tributes to the five-term incumbent from a cast of GOP heavies including President George W. Bush, Sen. Rick Santorum, Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush adviser Karl Rove.
While Democrats are buoyed by polling that suggests either candidate would run competitively against presumptive Republican nominee Pat Toomey, Republicans are nevertheless enjoying the show, applauding Sestak’s attacks on Specter’s left flank in the hopes that both will be drawn further leftward in the battle to win over the Democratic base of activists.
“It’s going to be beyond ugly,” said Terry Madonna, director of the Franklin and Marshall College poll, speaking to the tone of the May primary. “I think it’s going to be at a level that’s virtually unprecedented.”
In that sense, Pennsylvania’s vitriolic Democratic contest resembles the one in Kentucky, where Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo and state Attorney General Jack Conway have been at each other’s throats for months.
In just the past week alone, Mongiardo accused Conway of selling out coal-dependent Kentucky by investing millions of dollars in a Texas energy company “that favors natural gas over developing Kentucky coal” and for failing to disclose his purchases of stock in the firm.
Conway has called the charges “flat-out false” and responded by accusing Mongiardo of having his own natural gas investments. Last week, Conway put out a news release asking, “If Steve Beshear Can’t Trust Dan Mongiardo, Why Should Kentucky Voters?” — a riff on Mongiardo’s well-known tension with the state’s Democratic governor.
Conway has also questioned the lieutenant governor’s ethics, tagging his foe “Double-Dip Dan.”
“Is Dr. Dan hiding his income, cheating on his taxes, overbilling the Kentucky Medicaid Program, lying on his federal and state disclosures or all of the above?” reads another press release, referring to Mongiardo’s medical practice.
“The fight’s gotten pretty nasty,” said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. “They’re getting pretty nasty pretty early.”
While contested primaries can sometimes prove beneficial, enabling candidates to hone their message and retail politicking skills, the risk in both Pennsylvania and Kentucky is obvious: The eventual nominees might be too damaged to overcome the expected stiff GOP opposition, and the candidates themselves might find their cash reserves drained and in urgent need of replenishment.
And there is another potential drawback, as well: The primaries could generate plenty of fodder for the other side to use in the fall.
“At this rate,” Cross said of the Kentucky Democratic Senate contest, “they’re going to be building up an ammunition magazine for the Republicans.”
The Democratic Senate primary in Illinois — largely quiet until recently — might be the next flash point, another example of Democrats field-testing attacks on each other that will most likely prove useful for the GOP.
There, the campaign of former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman charges that state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’s baggage from his career as a banker makes him unelectable, an argument that is likely to be revisited in some form by the GOP if Giannoulias, currently the front-runner in the polls, ends up as the nominee.
In a memo leaked to news organizations this week, a Hoffman pollster called Giannoulias’s perceived vulnerabilities “damning” and argued that Giannoulias “would put Barack Obama’s former Senate seat in extreme jeopardy for the Democrats.”
In Illinois, the Senate primary will take place in February, leaving plenty of time for the party and the eventual nominee to regain their balance. But in a place like Colorado, where a Senate primary between appointed Sen. Michael Bennet and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is only beginning to heat up, a bruising contest carries far more risk — not only are voters unfamiliar with Bennet but the August primary leaves little time for the party to unite before Election Day.
The late primary is “always an extra challenge for anyone who comes out of these things,” noted Floyd Ciruli, an independent Denver-based pollster.
While acknowledging that a handful of Senate primaries have been or are shaping up to be costly and contentious, Democrats argue that there are far less tough primaries on their side than on the Republican side. Equally important, they note, the Democratic contests generally aren’t rooted in ideological disputes.
“They are political contests for people who want jobs and are less ideological sessions,” noted Saul Shorr, a veteran Democratic pollster. “Clearly, in the Republican Party, there is an argument about what they are.”
“We have a few primaries, but they pale in comparison to their 12 bloodletting, ideological, anti-establishment battles that are not only indicative of profound party schisms but could also dramatically impact their party’s ability to win these seats in November,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Asked if the DSCC would spend money for its preferred primary contenders this cycle, Schultz responded: “We absolutely have [invested in primaries] in the past and may this cycle, as well.”
Some in the party privately worry that it might come to that in several states, including one that isn’t even on the radar at the moment. In what was widely perceived as a warning shot to Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat facing a difficult 2010 reelection, the progressive group MoveOn.org announced earlier this month that it has raised $3.5 million to fund a primary to any Senate Democrat who votes against the health care bill.
There happens to be a possible candidate who might find the offer tempting in the event Lincoln casts a “no” vote: Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is thought by some to be mulling over a primary challenge to Lincoln and who is currently positioning himself as a champion of health care reform. On Wednesday evening, Halter appeared on MSNBC’s “Countdown” to promote a free medical clinic being held in Little Rock this weekend.
“One question is whether she will get primaried if she votes against this,” said one senior Democratic strategist. “Will MoveOn find $6 million to get the lieutenant governor of Arkansas to run?”
Asked if MoveOn’s threat was a problem for the party, the strategist responded: “[Expletive] yes.”
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The Democratic Senate primary in Illinois — largely quiet until recently — might be the next flash point, another example of Democrats field-testing attacks on each other that will most likely prove useful for the GOP.
There, the campaign of former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman charges that state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias’s baggage from his career as a banker makes him unelectable, an argument that is likely to be revisited in some form by the GOP if Giannoulias, currently the front-runner in the polls, ends up as the nominee.
In a memo leaked to news organizations this week, a Hoffman pollster called Giannoulias’s perceived vulnerabilities “damning” and argued that Giannoulias “would put Barack Obama’s former Senate seat in extreme jeopardy for the Democrats.”
In Illinois, the Senate primary will take place in February, leaving plenty of time for the party and the eventual nominee to regain their balance. But in a place like Colorado, where a Senate primary between appointed Sen. Michael Bennet and former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff is only beginning to heat up, a bruising contest carries far more risk — not only are voters unfamiliar with Bennet but the August primary leaves little time for the party to unite before Election Day.
The late primary is “always an extra challenge for anyone who comes out of these things,” noted Floyd Ciruli, an independent Denver-based pollster.
While acknowledging that a handful of Senate primaries have been or are shaping up to be costly and contentious, Democrats argue that there are far less tough primaries on their side than on the Republican side. Equally important, they note, the Democratic contests generally aren’t rooted in ideological disputes.
“They are political contests for people who want jobs and are less ideological sessions,” noted Saul Shorr, a veteran Democratic pollster. “Clearly, in the Republican Party, there is an argument about what they are.”
“We have a few primaries, but they pale in comparison to their 12 bloodletting, ideological, anti-establishment battles that are not only indicative of profound party schisms but could also dramatically impact their party’s ability to win these seats in November,” said Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Asked if the DSCC would spend money for its preferred primary contenders this cycle, Schultz responded: “We absolutely have [invested in primaries] in the past and may this cycle, as well.”
Some in the party privately worry that it might come to that in several states, including one that isn’t even on the radar at the moment. In what was widely perceived as a warning shot to Sen. Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat facing a difficult 2010 reelection, the progressive group MoveOn.org announced earlier this month that it has raised $3.5 million to fund a primary to any Senate Democrat who votes against the health care bill.
There happens to be a possible candidate who might find the offer tempting in the event Lincoln casts a “no” vote: Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who is thought by some to be mulling over a primary challenge to Lincoln and who is currently positioning himself as a champion of health care reform. On Wednesday evening, Halter appeared on MSNBC’s “Countdown” to promote a free medical clinic being held in Little Rock this weekend.
“One question is whether she will get primaried if she votes against this,” said one senior Democratic strategist. “Will MoveOn find $6 million to get the lieutenant governor of Arkansas to run?”
Asked if MoveOn’s threat was a problem for the party, the strategist responded: “[Expletive] yes.”
Be a part of the daily political debate with PROJECT POLITICO powered by YouTube. Click here to submit your video now and be featured on POLITICO.com.
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