Key States, High Stakes: Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the 2010 Elections

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K EY STAT ES , H IG H S TA KE S

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KEY STATES, HIGH STAKES Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the 2010 Elections

Edited by Charles S. Bullock, III

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

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Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.rowmanlittlefield.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright 2012 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Key states, high stakes : Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and the 2010 elections / edited by Charles S. Bullock, III. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4422-1095-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-1096-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4422-1097-4 (ebk.) 1. United States. Congress—Elections, 2010. 2. Palin, Sarah, 1964–—Political activity. 3. Palin, Sarah, 1964–—Influence. 4. Tea Party movement. 5. United States—Politics and government—2009– I. Bullock, Charles S., 1942– JK19682010 .K49 2011 327.973⬘0932—dc22 2011016607

⬁ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

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To the great teachers who shape the future through inspiration and by example, with thanks to four of my favorites:

Will Adams Martha Conlee Mary Ann Hagewood John Sprague

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Contents

1 The 2010 Elections Charles S. Bullock, III

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Part One: Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies 2 Mama Grizzly Nearly Trapped: New Hampshire’s Republican Senate Primary Dante J. Scala

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3 Sacrificing Electoral Viability for Ideological Purity: Christine O’Donnell and the Delaware Senate Race Daniel C. Reed

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4 Nevada: The Tea Party Takes On Harry Reid but from the Wrong Angle Ted G. Jelen

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5 ‘‘A Deep Blue Hole’’? California, the Tea Party, and the 2010 Midterm Elections Amy Widestrom and Christopher Dennis

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Part Two: Tea Party Favorites 6 Florida: A Plummeting Economy, Tea Parties, and Palin Give GOP a Clean Sweep Susan A. MacManus with the assistance of David J. Bonanza and Mary L. Moss 7 Randslide: Tea Party Success in the Establishment’s Backyard Joel Turner and Scott Lasley

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Contents

8 Ron Johnson: The Accidental Tea Partier Geoffrey Peterson

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9 The Pennsylvania Senate Race: Toomey’s Time Stanley P. Berard

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10 Colorado: The Centennial State Bucks the National Trend M. Jean Kingston

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11 The 2010 West Virginia Senate Race Robert Rupp

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12 The Empire Strikes Back: The 2010 Elections in New York Costas Panagopoulos

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Part Three: States Not in the Tea Party Playbook 13 Arkansas: The Kettle That Didn’t Whistle Andrew Dowdle and Joseph D. Giammo

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14 Coats vs. Ellsworth: The 2010 Indiana Senate Race Michael A. Maggiotto and Raymond H. Scheele

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15 The Blue and the Red in the Land of Obama: The 2010 Midterms in Illinois Janna L. Deitz

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16 The 2010 Washington U.S. Senate Race: Two Familiar Faces and Two Potential Wild Cards Edward Anegon and David Nice

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17 Connecticut: Too Liberal to Be Palin’s Cup of Tea Diana Evans

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18 Conclusion: Evaluating Palin, the Tea Party, and DeMint Influences Charles S. Bullock, III

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Notes

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Index

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About the Contributors

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1 The 2010 Elections Charles S. Bullock, III

ased on historic patterns, one could anticipate that Barack Obama’s victory would set Democrats up to lose congressional seats in 2010. While some enthusiastic Obama supporters hoped that his election signaled a political realignment that would allow Democrats to continue building on their 2006 and 2008 successes, history weighed against such expectations. Only three times in the previous century did the president’s party gain seats at midterm. In 1934, with the New Deal realignment underway, Democrats increased their margins in both chambers. More recently, in 1998, Republican efforts to impeach Bill Clinton backfired as voters rallied around the president and Democrats picked up four House seats. Then in 2002, with President George W. Bush still basking in post-9/11 popularity, Republicans added eight House and two Senate seats. Even discounting the historic pattern of the president’s party losing seats at midterm, conditions in 2010 favored Republicans. President Obama’s popularity had declined, and by the time of the election, more Americans viewed him unfavorably than favorably. Skepticism about the president’s most significant policy changes contributed to his falling evaluations. The president spent fourteen months goading Congress to expand healthcare coverage, a goal achieved despite unified GOP opposition and public indifference. While opposition to the healthcare reforms had decreased by election time and the public favored some of the changes, most Americans still opposed the package. Early on, President Obama convinced Congress, voting along party lines, to adopt a stimulus package to stave off a depression. While many economists concur that the stimulus package kept conditions from getting even

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Charles S. Bullock, III

worse, Republicans pointed to the unemployment rate stuck above 9 percent. They argued that since Obama promised the stimulus would keep unemployment below 8 percent, the program had failed. Moreover, the $787 billion price tag contributed to the growing national debt. The Obama stimulus package and the Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP), passed in the closing days of the Bush administration, along with healthcare reforms, extended the reach of the federal government. The government owned portions of two American automobile producers, a number of large banks, and AIG. With the federal government becoming a partial owner of what had been many private enterprises, some conservatives warned that the Obama administration had a plan to turn the United States into a socialist economy. The administration tried to pave the way toward the midterms by characterizing the summer of 2010 as ‘‘Recovery Summer.’’ But the economy did not cooperate. Unemployment stayed stubbornly high, and many who had jobs feared losing their positions or losing income due to less overtime or unpaid furloughs. New housing starts remained anemic, as did consumer expenditures. Foreclosures and bankruptcies ripped families from the middle class. Optimists wishing to spend on consumer goods, to expand small businesses, or to purchase new homes had difficulty borrowing money. Banks, having had to absorb massive losses, made borrowing much more difficult. After unrealistic housing loans triggered the economic collapse, banks now required borrowers have higher credit scores. Tough economic times, concern about the national debt, continued casualties from Afghanistan, and objections to government’s expanded role resulted in most Americans thinking their country was on the wrong track. These perspectives, not surprisingly, resulted in Americans having little confidence in the ability of the Democratic Party to produce improvements. Democrats pleaded with voters for more time and warned that a Republican takeover of Congress would restore the Bush-era policies that had produced the economic crisis. The Democratic warnings met with some success as voters had even less faith in the Republicans than in the Democrats. With both parties viewed negatively and less than 20 percent of the public approving of the job done by Congress, some analysts predicted that anti-incumbent fervor might endanger members of both parties. While voters did retire numerous incumbents, the casualties included few Republicans. Of twenty-five senators running for reelection, three lost renomination bids, although Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) retained her seat, becoming only the second senator ever elected by a write-in vote. In the general election, Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) fell by the

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wayside. Twenty-one of twenty-five senators who sought renomination serve in the 112th Congress, which is in line with senators’ success rates over the last generation. Republican hopes of replicating their 1994 success, when they captured majorities in both chambers, came up four votes short in the Senate, although they did take six seats from Democrats. With nineteen of the thirty-seven Senate seats on the 2010 ballot held by Democrats, Republicans had little margin for error if they were to gain the ten seats needed to become a majority in the upper chamber. Despite press commentaries stressing the level of antipathy toward incumbents, only four House members lost renomination bids. However, of the 394 incumbents on general-election ballots, the electorate rejected 54 (all but two of whom were Democrats) for an 86 percent success rate, the lowest since the late 1940s. Although most incumbents survived, dramatic partisan shifts occurred. Republicans enjoyed the largest gains of either party since 1948 as they took a net total of sixty-three seats from Democrats as reported in table 1.1.1 All but nineteen states saw at least one Republican claim a Democratic seat, with the biggest swings coming in the heart of the Rust Belt as six seats switched in New York, five switched in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and four switched in Illinois. Several states thought to be shifting from red to purple saw a crimson resurgence as Democrats lost four seats in Florida, three in Virginia, and two each in Arizona and Colorado. Unlike 1994, when Republicans suffered no losses in the House, in 2010, Democrats claimed three seats from the GOP. The two freshmen Republicans

TABLE 1.1 Results of the 2010 Elections Before Election

After Election

Losses

Incumbent Defeats

Governors* Democrats Republicans

26 24

20 29

11 6

2 0

Senate Democrats** Republicans

57 41

51 47

6 0

2 0

256 179

193 242

66 3

54 2

U.S. House Democrats Republican

*An Independent won the governorship of Rhode Island. **Two Senate Independents generally vote with Democrats.

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who came up short in reelection bids represented heavily Democratic districts they initially won under atypical circumstances—one eked out a plurality victory while the other defeated an incumbent who was on his way to federal prison. The only other Democratic gain came in Delaware when longtime incumbent Mike Castle vacated his House seat for an unsuccessful Senate bid. Republicans also defeated two sitting Democratic governors and won another nine governorships vacated by Democrats. Democrats claimed five governorships from which Republicans retired, while in Rhode Island an Independent succeeded the Republican governor. Because this wave election swept away Democrats leaving Republican incumbents largely untouched, the analysis that follows focuses on three forces active in promoting GOP candidacies—the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and, working to elect conservative Republican senators, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

Strategies The three conservative players had different strategies. DeMint wants a Senate dominated by individuals who will place ideological purity above pragmatism when the two conflict. He supported conservatives whom he believed would withstand the temptation to compromise or to listen to the siren song of earmarks. He disparaged his colleagues, announcing, ‘‘I’ve said very publicly I don’t want to be here six more years with the same people I’m here with now’’ (‘‘DeMint Ruffles GOP Feathers’’ 2010). When criticized for helping nominate Christine O’Donnell, who went on to lose in Delaware, DeMint responded: ‘‘I’ve been in the majority with Republicans who didn’t have principles, and we embarrassed ourselves and lost credibility in front of the country. Frankly, I’m at a point where I’d rather lose fighting for the right cause than win fighting for the wrong cause’’ (Bellantoni 2010). He limited his attention almost exclusively to Senate contests, where he concentrated on open seats and Democratic seats thought vulnerable, often opposing the preferences of the Republican establishment. Sarah Palin’s ambitions may extend beyond the Senate. Should she run for president in 2012 she would benefit from having officeholders across the country who owe her a debt of gratitude, so she endorsed candidates for governor and the House as well as for the Senate. Officeholders are better positioned to bring volunteers, fund-raising, and prestige to a campaign than are losers, which may explain why many Palin endorsements came after the GOP primary, as she waited until just weeks or even days before the general elec-

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tion to indicate her choices and why she frequently backed the preferences of the GOP establishment. Even if she passes up the 2012 presidential campaign and opts to wield influence from the sidelines, her strength will vary with perceptions of whether her endorsements determine elections—and the best evidence will come from the 2010 results. The Tea Party Movement consists of numerous groups operating without a central hierarchy (Courser 2010). As articulated by former House majority leader Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe (2010), leaders of FreedomWorks, one of the movement’s constituent groups, Tea Party activists want to reinvent the GOP by purifying it of its moderate elements. Like DeMint, the Tea Party seemed, at times, more interested in the ideological purity of candidates than in their electoral prospects. Often the Tea Party bucked the choice of the GOP establishment if the primary field included a more conservative alternative. Occasionally, the Tea Party backed challengers to sitting Republicans, as when it favored J. D. Hayworth over John McCain. Perhaps because of its grassroots nature and the involvement of many who had little previous political experience (Zernike 2010; Armey and Kibbe 2010: Rasmussen and Schoen 2010), the Tea Party endorsed candidates who opposed incumbents in solidly Democratic districts and had virtually no chance of success. Unlike Palin, the Tea Party had fewer concerns about loss of influence should their favorites lose.

Tea Party Activity The Tea Party Movement traces its roots to a February 19, 2009, on-air rant by Rick Santelli that led to protests around the country on April 15, tax day. In November, Tea Party activists worked on behalf of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman in the special election in New York’s Twenty-third District. As Hoffman surged, GOP nominee Donna Scozzafava’s support collapsed, leading her to withdraw from the contest. The Tea Party had a Pyrrhic victory, defeating the moderate GOP nominee but seeing the seat won by a Democrat for the first time in 150 years. Less than three months later, Tea Party activists notched their first unalloyed success in 2010’s greatest surprise when Scott Brown (MA) won the Kennedy Senate seat. This upset whetted Tea Partiers’ appetites, and they threw themselves into contests across the country. By election day, 41 percent of exit-poll respondents expressed support for the Tea Party compared with 32 percent who opposed. However, only 22 percent said that they wanted to send Congress a pro–Tea Party message, while 17 percent hoped their vote sent an anti–Tea Party message. The Tea Party Movement prides itself on being a grassroots movement

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with numerous units and no central structure. The movement has at least half-a-dozen major components, such as former House majority leader Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, and Tea Party Express. One group, the Tea Party Patriots, had almost three thousand ‘‘chapters’’ by the fall of 2010 (Rauch 2010). Without a strong central hierarchy, the movement would have had less success in attracting public attention but for the favorable coverage it received from conservative media stars like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity, and Fox News more generally. The Tea Party provided a venue for those upset with the direction of the nation to become politically involved and drew on the energy of many who had no previous record of campaign activities. Retirees who had time on their hands and were concerned that their grandchildren would not have as good a life or as many opportunities as themselves played important roles (Armey and Kibbe 2010). While Tea Party identifiers were predominantly Republicans, the movement attracted a sizable number of Independents (Zernike 2010). The movement’s lack of centralization causes difficulties in identifying candidates supported by the movement, but I have found 175—11 gubernatorial aspirants, 19 Senate candidates, and 145 House hopefuls—endorsed by the Tea Party. Most Tea Party endorsements went to challengers of Democratic incumbents (121 House, 5 Senate, and 2 gubernatorial endorsements). Only 37 endorsees ran for open seats: 16 House, 13 Senate, and 8 governorships. Almost half (17) of the open-seat endorsements involved contests to succeed a retiring Republican. Ten sitting Republicans, eight of whom served in the House, got Tea Party backing. The Tea Party Movement did more than endorse candidates. Its message of smaller government, reduced deficits, and lower taxes inspired conservatives who had become disillusioned with the unchecked spending of the Bush administration. The excitement generated by the Tea Party prompted political involvement (Armey and Kibbe 2010).

Sarah Palin Alaska’s former governor has become a controversial media personality whose endorsements can mobilize activity on both ends of the political spectrum. Palin displayed more selectivity in backing candidates than did Tea Party groups, throwing her support behind eleven gubernatorial, thirteen Senate, and sixty-two House candidates. While Palin made headlines with her switch in metaphors from the ‘‘hockey mom’’ of 2008 to the ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’ of 2010, she endorsed more than twice as many men as women.

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Acting more strategically than the Tea Party, Palin usually withheld endorsements until after the primary had winnowed the field. However, among her thirty-four primary endorsements, she separated herself from DeMint and the Tea Party in being the only one to back senatorial nominees Kelly Ayotte (NH), John Boozman (AR), Carly Fiorina (CA), and future governors in Iowa, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Palin and the Tea Party united behind seventeen primary candidates including four Senate and ten House hopefuls. She and the Tea Party backed opposing gubernatorial candidates in Oklahoma; opposing senatorial candidates in Arizona, California, and New Hampshire; and opposing candidates in Idaho’s First Congressional District. Palin’s preferences won the nominations in all but the Idaho district.2 While Palin frequently criticized the GOP establishment, she proved much less of a rebel than the Tea Party, as she backed twenty-one establishment candidates including John McCain, four other Senate candidates, and six gubernatorial aspirants.3

Jim DeMint DeMint usually favored challengers to the GOP establishment. Of fifteen primary candidates he supported, all but four advanced to the general election including Senate hopefuls in Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, and Utah. DeMint’s failures occurred with candidates for the Senate in California, Indiana, and New Hampshire, and the Texas governorship. In Senate contests, DeMint broke with the Tea Party to support establishment candidates in Kansas and Washington. He and Palin disagreed in these two states and in California.

Focus of the Book This volume focuses on states holding Senate elections that determined partisan control of the Senate. We examine states having open seats thought to be in play and seats held by Democrats considered vulnerable.4 States in which Republicans won Senate seats that were never considered competitive receive little attention. Three factors prompted the decision to study the 2010 elections through competitive Senate seats. First, these have higher national profiles than do House or gubernatorial contests. Second, long after all but the most loyal Democrats had conceded the House to Republicans, uncertainty surrounded the outcome of the Senate. Staunch Republicans like Dick Morris asserted that the GOP would win the Senate with seats to spare by taking

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West Virginia and Washington along with states in which the viability of Tea Party favorites seemed questionable. Third, only Senate contests attracted involvement of DeMint along with the Tea Party and Palin. Some states in play when the idea for this volume germinated ultimately proved not to be especially competitive. Kristin Gillibrand’s seat was not in doubt by election day, but earlier in the fall, it seemed it could be. Several polls around Labor Day showed Carly Fiorina leading California’s Barbara Boxer. The Delaware seat was projected to be a ‘‘sure’’ GOP pickup until Republican primary voters tapped Christine O’Donnell rather than Mike Castle. O’Donnell sought to reassure voters by announcing in a television ad, ‘‘I am not a witch.’’ It quickly became apparent that only magic might have bewitched enough voters for her to win. The states are grouped in the following fashion. Part I includes states that nominated Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies: Delaware, New Hampshire, California, and Nevada. Part II has Republican candidates with ties to the Tea Party: Colorado, Kentucky, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Wisconsin. Part III has five states less closely associated with the Tea Party or Palin: Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, and Washington. In Washington, DeMint’s candidate defeated the preferred candidate of Palin and the Tea Party. In Illinois and Indiana, only one of the three entities became involved during the primary, and the endorsed candidate failed to secure the nomination. John Boozman, whom Palin endorsed just before the general election, handily defeated Arkansas’ Democratic incumbent. In the chapters of this volume, the authors explain the reasons behind the outcomes of the Senate elections and, in so doing, discuss the role or noninvolvement of the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Jim DeMint in each of these elections. In some states, the activities of one or more of these entities had a positive impact in the Republican primary. In a smaller number of states, the same entities may have helped the Republican win the general election. In Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada, had the Republican establishment candidate won the primary, the GOP’s prospects in November would have improved. While the primary concern is the Senate contests, in most states, this was not the only significant decision made in November. In twelve of the sixteen states analyzed in this volume, Republicans took a House seat away from the Democrats. These dozen states account for twenty-nine of the seats gained by the GOP. Eleven states elected governors, and the Tea Party and/or Palin supported candidates in three of these. In each chapter, attention is paid to gubernatorial contests and to switches in the control of House seats, as appropriate.

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References Armey, Dick, and Matt Kibbe. 2010. Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto. New York: HarperCollins. Bellantoni, Christina. 2010. ‘‘Jim DeMint: Picking Horses is about More Than Primaries.’’ (September 17) http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmeetmo.com/2010/09/jim -demint-picking-horses-is-about-more-than-primaries.php. Courser, Zachary. 2010. ‘‘The Tea Party at the Election.’’ The Forum 8, no. 4. ‘‘DeMint Ruffles GOP Feathers.’’ 2010. Columbia Daily Tribune (October 20): A9. Rasmussen, Scott, and Douglas Schoen. 2010. Mad as Hell. New York: HarperCollins. Rauch, Jonathan. 2010. ‘‘Group Think.’’ National Journal 42 (September 11): 12–17. Zernike, Kate. 2010. Boiling Mad. New York: Times Books.

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Part I Sarah Palin’s Mama Grizzlies

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2 Mama Grizzly Nearly Trapped New Hampshire’s Republican Senate Primary Dante J. Scala

hen Sarah Palin endorsed former attorney general Kelly Ayotte for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire’s Republican primary, observers assessed the move as an alliance of convenience for both parties. For Ayotte, the chosen candidate of the state and national party establishments, Palin’s embrace was thought to provide protection from attacks on her conservative credentials. And if Ayotte succeeded in her campaign, the former Alaska governor might have a strong ally in the first-in-the-nation primary state, if she pursued presidential ambitions in 2012. On paper, Ayotte’s victory in the primary and general is recorded as a ‘‘win’’ for Palin. The ultimate effects of Palin’s endorsement, however, are difficult to determine, and the event falls far short of a turning point in a tightly contested primary battle. Palin’s endorsement may have aided Ayotte in solidifying her reputation among some New Hampshire conservatives. It did not, however, prevent conservative insurgent Ovide Lamontagne from coming within two thousand votes of upsetting Ayotte. The New Hampshire primary also displayed the limits of the Tea Party’s power and boldness in taking on the Republican establishment. While Lamontagne attracted local Tea Party activists with his unrelentingly conservative message, he never gained material support from the national organization, even when his fortunes dramatically improved late in the race.

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New Face of the Old Establishment: Kelly Ayotte In July 2009, Kelly Ayotte’s entrance into the race to replace retiring senator Judd Gregg was one of the first signs of a change in fortune for the battered state Republican Party. In 2006, Republicans had suffered historic losses at all levels of government; in 2008, freshman Senator John Sununu lost his rematch with former governor Jeanne Shaheen, and Barack Obama easily carried the state’s four electoral votes. Obama’s victory marked the fourth time in the last five presidential elections that the Democrats had carried historically Republican New Hampshire; no Republican presidential candidate had won 50 percent of the vote in the Granite State since George H. W. Bush in 1988. After the 2008 elections, Democrats controlled three of the state’s four seats in Congress; and without Gregg, a popular three-term incumbent, on the ticket, they appeared in danger of losing their last seat. At the time of Ayotte’s announcement, President Obama stood at 61 percent approval in New Hampshire (University of New Hampshire Survey Center 2009), but Republicans at the state and national levels nevertheless considered Ayotte a candidate who could hold the seat in a difficult political environment, according to Brooks Kochvar (2011), her campaign manager. As the state’s attorney general, Ayotte had become well-known without ever appearing on the ballot. She held that office for five years, serving under both Republican governor Craig Benson and his successor, Democratic governor John Lynch. She successfully prosecuted a death-penalty charge against the murderer of a police officer in Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city. While crime concerns never seemed to be high on voters’ priority list in 2010, Ayotte’s reputation as a tough prosecutor with the public backing of law enforcement appealed to conservative voters, according to Drew Cline (2011), editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper and a famously conservative voice in state politics. All in all, Ayotte’s high public profile provided her a ‘‘unique brand identification,’’ Kochvar said, without the benefit of a single television advertisement. She also had an appealing biography, with her middle-class background and her marriage to an Iraq war veteran turned small businessman. In the summer of 2009, more than 50 percent of New Hampshire voters already knew enough about Ayotte to offer an opinion, and her net favorables were high, according to a poll taken by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center (2009). Ayotte’s experience as prosecutor, however, offered little indication of her own political views.1 No Republican woman had ever been elected to statewide office in New Hampshire, and contemporary examples from other New England states were likely less than appealing to many New Hampshire

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New Hampshire’s Republican Senate Primary

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Republican activists. When one national reporter asked Ayotte whether she was a Susan Collins Republican, referring to one of Maine’s moderate Republican senators, she declined to answer (Ambinder 2009). When the candidate described where she stood on issues of concern to Republican voters, her positions tended to be reassuringly conservative. Unlike her Republican counterparts in Maine, Ayotte declared her opposition to abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother. In addition, she opposed allowing gays to marry; the New Hampshire state legislature had approved a law legalizing gay marriage in 2009. Mostly, however, Ayotte concentrated her fire on fiscal issues and the size of government, criticizing the 2009 federal stimulus package and healthcare reform legislation of 2010. ‘‘She was very clearly playing to that activist GOP base, yet she didn’t go too far out of her way,’’ said Cline, noting that Ayotte had also declared that she would have voted in favor of Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court. Furthermore, given the lack of a prior record, it was unclear how many of Ayotte’s positions could be ascribed to personal beliefs and how many could be ascribed to a political strategy designed to attract New Hampshire’s Republican primary electorate (Cline 2011). What was clear, however, was that the state and national GOP establishments were fast closing ranks behind Ayotte. With the aid of Republican fund-raising networks, Ayotte raised $4.4 million. (Open Secrets 2011)

A Retro Fit for the Tea Party: Ovide Lamontagne Compared to Ayotte, Ovide Lamontagne was familiar only to a few when he entered the race for the Republican nomination in November 2009. His last run for office had taken place more than a decade earlier, when he sought his party’s gubernatorial nomination as a social conservative. Lamontagne pulled off an upset in the primary against a sitting congressman, only to lose decisively to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen in her first run for statewide office. Since then, Lamontagne had participated in internal party activities, chaired the state’s board of education, and taken the lead in a number of community and charitable works, including the Boy Scouts and Easter Seals. Nevertheless, when he reentered electoral politics, he was recognized by just one-quarter of voters, according to public polling (University of New Hampshire Survey Center 2009). Lamontagne’s very first house party, which drew about forty people, was held in December 2009 at the home of another social conservative, former state legislator Maureen Mooney of Merrimack, one of the collar towns surrounding Manchester. The core of Lamontagne’s support, according to Moo-

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ney, was fellow social conservatives such as Mooney herself—a significant force in New Hampshire Republican politics, if not as dominant as in other states. In addition, Mooney (2011) recalled meeting veterans of Lamontagne’s 1996 campaign, who had been waiting for him to run again; for them, there could be no other candidate. Lamontagne still lived in the Manchester house in which he grew up and over the years had cultivated an extensive ‘‘loyalty base,’’ according to Mooney, including his extended family, his neighborhood, fellow members of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, and his clientele whom he had served as a lawyer. Those who knew Lamontagne, according to campaign manager Jim Merrill (2011), knew him not just as a bona fide conservative, but as a ‘‘good and decent man.’’ The question was whether Lamontagne could translate his personal capital into political capital over the next nine months. Compounding his early difficulties was an increasingly crowded field of candidates. Not one but two wealthy businessmen entered the race, promising to spend some of their own fortune to fund their campaign: Bill Binnie, a wealthy businessman from the seacoast, who eventually spent a total of $8 million; and Jim Bender, who spent $1.3 million (Open Secrets 2011). Unlike Ayotte and Lamontagne, both Binnie and Bender were moderates on abortion; both focused their campaigns on fiscal issues and the economy, stressing their experience in job creation. Neither candidate had widespread name recognition. Binnie aimed to resolve that problem early, running television ads in January 2010, eight months before the September primary. Media attention turned toward the newcomer, and Lamontagne was left in the shadows. Without the personal fortune of Binnie or Ayotte’s access to national GOP fund-raising networks, he was able to raise only some $680,000 (Open Secrets 2011). What he could do was travel the state, get in front of as many voters as possible, and rely on what Merrill (2011) called a ‘‘kindling strategy’’: ‘‘lay kindling and look for those spark moments to spark it and begin to build a fire.’’ In particular, Lamontagne hoped to find fuel for his candidacy among the disparate elements of New Hampshire’s Tea Party Movement. Merrill was struck by the new faces that had appeared among the GOP activist base, even since 2008, when he was New Hampshire state coordinator for Mitt Romney’s presidential primary campaign. And some of those new faces were signing up with his candidate.

New Hampshire’s Tea Party Even longtime observers of New Hampshire politics struggle to define the status of the Tea Party in New Hampshire, much less its future. One journal-

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ist, James Pindell (2011) of WMUR-TV (the only station that broadcasts statewide in New Hampshire), listed the Tea Party as one of his ‘‘10 Things in 2010 that weren’t such a big deal in the end.’’ He commented: For all of the Tea Party passion playing out in primaries around the country, the Tea Party locally was more hype from a few people than really a broad movement. Things were better in 2009 when they held huge rallies in the state. But organizers even acknowledged the edge had worn off, especially after the health care law was signed.

Pindell also cited the Tea Party’s lack of electoral success as further proof that the movement had been overrated. In addition to the U.S. Senate primary, Republicans held three other competitive primaries, one for the gubernatorial nomination and one for each of New Hampshire’s two House seats. In none of the four cases did a self-avowed Tea Party candidate triumph. Indeed, in New Hampshire’s Second Congressional District, a former sixterm incumbent and ‘‘Main Street’’ moderate, Charlie Bass, defeated two conservative candidates for his party’s nomination. In the First District, the success of the winner, former Manchester mayor Frank Guinta, was ascribed in part to the inroads he made among Tea Party groups, but Guinta did not describe himself as a candidate of the Tea Party. Jack Kimball, who ran for the gubernatorial nomination and claimed close ties to the local Tea Party Movement, managed less than 30 percent of the vote against the candidate supported by the party establishment. Just four months later, however, Kimball won a contested election for chair of the state GOP. The New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition lists approximately forty groups on its website (2011), ranging from nationally organized groups such as Americans for Prosperity, prominent local groups of social conservatives such as Cornerstone Action and New Hampshire Right to Life, various ‘‘912 projects,’’ and assorted antitax and Second Amendment advocacy groups. Drew Cline, the editorial page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader, agreed with Pindell that there was no strong evidence that the Tea Party Movement in New Hampshire was organized to an effective degree. Nevertheless, Cline (2011) rated the Tea Party Movement as more important to conservative politics in New Hampshire than a previously much-hyped movement. In 2003, a libertarian group calling itself the ‘‘Free Staters’’ announced that thousands of its members would migrate to New Hampshire and exert influence over the Granite State’s politics. Though the movement’s leaders were quite vocal, the group accomplished little politically. In contrast, though it is too early to tell if the Tea Party will have long-lasting effects in New Hampshire, the movement seems to have affected the state’s political culture in a way the Free Staters never did. For most of the past decade, New

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Hampshire Republicans appeared to be in steep decline as a political force; after the 2006 elections, Democrats had triumphantly renamed the state ‘‘Blue Hampshire.’’ In the wake of the 2008 elections (and especially after the stunning election of Republican Scott Brown to replace Ted Kennedy in neighboring Massachusetts), the Tea Party Movement pointed toward a revival of fortunes for the state’s conservatives. Cline (2011) described the movement not so much materially, as spiritually—a ‘‘reawakening’’ of traditional New Hampshire conservatism: In New Hampshire that typically is people who feel very strongly about limited government. They’re more or less libertarian in their leanings. And they came out in strong numbers. But they were joined, in also very strong numbers, by social conservatives. And I think those two combined had a really big impact in 2010, at all levels. . . . What [the Tea Party] successfully did in New Hampshire was generate a great deal of optimism and a sense of camaraderie, that I’m not alone as a discontented conservative . . . that I actually have a lot of comrades here, and it was sort of an awakening, of looking around and going, ‘‘wow, there are a lot more of us than I thought, and we can actually do something.’’ And that created a level of energy that hadn’t been seen in Republicans in many years.

One of those activists who participated at the grassroots of the Tea Party Movement was Andrew Hemingway, chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire, a state chapter of the national organization. In its own words, the caucus ‘‘works to advance the principles of limited government, individual liberty and free markets within the Republican Party and throughout America.’’ The caucus focuses on a broad range of issues, including ‘‘education, taxation, property rights, gun rights, free speech, federalism and the proper role of government’’ (Republican Liberty Caucus 2011). Hemingway (2011) described his group as ‘‘libertarian-minded,’’ though recognizing that government certainly had a role to play in American society. While New Hampshire’s Tea Party Movement failed to generate any primary victories for federal office, the Liberty Caucus, which focused its efforts on the state legislature, could claim some electoral success. New Hampshire’s state legislature is a nonprofessional legislature that numbers 424 members; its members are paid a nominal sum of $100 per year. ‘‘Before the primary, the Republican Liberty Caucus endorsed 153 candidates, including one executive councillor candidate, 10 state senator candidates and 142 state representative candidates,’’ the organization announced. During election season, the caucus offered campaign services, including mailings on behalf of the candidate, phone banking, and the creation of campaign web pages. Of those 153 candidates, 134 of them survived the primary, and 107 were elected to

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office in the general election.2 The caucus also endorsed eventual state house speaker Bill O’Brien. Hemingway (2011) agreed with Cline and Pindell that the Tea Party lacked the infrastructure of a party organization. ‘‘Infrastructure? There isn’t any,’’ he said. The New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition is best understood as an umbrella for numerous conservative groups, and the coalition itself has refrained from endorsing candidates and getting involved in elections and thus, from building the organization needed to be effective. Participants in the coalition primarily communicate via e-mail lists to encourage turnout at events and to identify volunteers. ‘‘To understand the New Hampshire Tea Party, you have to understand the number of spin-off groups that have been created,’’ Hemingway said. ‘‘When you see ‘New Hampshire Tea Party’ . . . as a whole, it really breaks down very quickly into their different groups,’’ such as his Liberty Caucus, Cornerstone Action, and various 912 groups scattered around the state. ‘‘And it’s when these groups are aligned, that there’s some semblance of power.’’ Up to this point, however, no one has been effective in creating such an alliance. While New Hampshire’s Tea Party Coalition lacked the organizational capacity to be a kingmaker within the state Republican Party, several of its member groups did display the grassroots energy that made them significant actors in the Republican Senate primary. The debates that animated them were consonant with the arguments that the candidates were making on the stump. Hemingway (2011) described what he saw at stake in the 2010 elections: It was a culmination of things. It started out with the bailouts. I think, ultimately, it’s not necessarily the bailouts, it’s the philosophy. It’s a massive power grab by the federal government. I think that is what underlies everything. I think that’s what underlies your angst against the health care bill. I think that’s what underlies your angst against the bailouts, against TARP. The one common thread through all of that is a massive power grab by the federal government.

Kelly Ayotte, among other candidates, expressed similar sentiments in an ad she ran in June 2010: New Hampshire has a clear message for Washington politicians like Paul Hodes: Stop. Stop the bailouts. Stop the trillion-dollar takeover of health care. Stop the out-of-control spending that gave us a $13 trillion debt. . . . I’m Kelly Ayotte. I’m a fiscal conservative who will cut spending—and I approved this message because Washington must stop. (National Journal 2010)

In addition, Tea Party groups, particularly the 912 organizations, provided a number of forums at which Senate candidates appeared before groups of

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activists. The Senate candidates showed up, according to Hemingway, because that is where politically active conservatives are showing up on a monthly basis—from forty to fifty people a month in Manchester and Concord, to a couple hundred in the city of Rochester, seen as the epicenter of the 912 movement in New Hampshire. The 912 groups, like the Tea Party Coalition member groups in general, are autonomous from each other. Combined, however, they provided a number of sites where campaigns could meet large numbers of motivated citizens. While the Tea Partiers had a clear ideological inclination, said the Union Leader’s Drew Cline (2011), they were much more likely to be discontented Independents than adherents to a political party. The organizer of Rochester’s 912 Project, Jerry DeLemus, put it this way on his group’s web page: ‘‘I have been a voice in the wilderness for 30 years and finally it has become apparent to many others that neither party is serving America’s best interests. . . . Join us we don’t care what party you were in we just want Americans that support the Constitution’’ (Rochester 912 Project 2011). In front of these conservative, antiestablishment activists, Ovide Lamontagne made the case, over and over again, that he could be their man.

Endgame: Palin and Tea Party Shape the Race In early summer 2010, Lamontagne’s ‘‘kindling’’ strategy had not yet caught fire, though there were a few signs of smoke. The candidate had some success in a series of straw polls, including one held after a debate hosted by the Rochester 912 group (Ovide Lamontagne for U.S. Senate 2010). He issued a fifteen-point statement, titled ‘‘Ovide’s Oath,’’ in which he pledged to repeal ‘‘Obamacare,’’ to refuse earmarks, to repeal the 2009 stimulus, and to ‘‘look first to the Constitution for guidance on whether any proposed federal legislation is constitutionally permissible’’ (Ovide Lamontagne for U.S. Senate 2010). Lamontagne was connecting with conservative voters (Hemingway 2011), but his viability for the nomination remained in question. The race for the Republicans’ U.S. Senate nomination had divided into two tiers. Kelly Ayotte and Bill Binnie sat comfortably in the top row, with Lamontagne and Jim Bender struggling to climb into the race. Lamontagne hoped a spark might come from Sarah Palin, who weighed in with endorsements in numerous primary campaigns all year long. According to Merrill, Lamontagne wrote an introductory letter to Palin expressing their common values and his hope that they might meet, perhaps in New Hampshire.3 Lamontagne never heard back. Ayotte had met Palin at a breakfast in May hosted by the Susan B. Anthony List, a PAC that supported pro-life

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women in congressional campaigns. Ayotte also wrote a letter to Palin asking for her support, and her staff continued to stay in touch during the campaign, according to Kochvar. Word of Palin’s endorsement arrived from her staff shortly before she posted it on Facebook, according to Kochvar. The endorsement, posted to Palin’s Facebook page, praised Ayotte as another ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’: It’s my honor to endorse a Granite State ‘‘mama grizzly’’ who has broken barriers, fought off and locked up criminals, and battled all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect the rights of New Hampshire parents—and won! New Hampshire is lucky to have Kelly Ayotte as a candidate for the U.S. Senate this year. Kelly is a daughter of the Granite State, a product of its public schools, and its first female Attorney General. In her impressive five years in the AG’s office, Kelly earned a reputation for being tough on crime, supportive of law enforcement, and tireless in the defense of the rights of the people of New Hampshire. When Planned Parenthood challenged New Hampshire’s parental notification law, Kelly fought them all the way to the Supreme Court and won.4

Palin then proceeded to attack not only Ayotte’s Democratic opponent, Congressman Paul Hodes, but also her primary rival Binnie: She’s the proud mother of two and the wife of a combat veteran who flew missions over Iraq and currently serves in the Air National Guard. Kelly and her husband started a small landscaping/snow removal business; so, she understands first hand the crushing burden Washington imposes on our small businesses. This pro-life, pro-family, anti-tax constitutional commonsense conservative is the Democrats’ biggest fear in November. They’re already running false ads against her weeks before even the primary election. And on top of that Kelly is facing attacks from a self-funded millionaire running with an R next to his name who likes Obamacare and cap-and-tax. Kelly is the strongest commonsense conservative who can win in the fall. I knew I liked her when I met her earlier this year, and I know this Granite Grizzly will represent New Hampshire with distinction in Washington. (Palin 2010)

Palin’s endorsement of Ayotte was not a game changer, participants agreed and polling confirmed. It didn’t propel Ayotte out of reach of her competition, nor did it repel moderate Republicans and Independents, despite the hopes of Democrats. Rather, the Palin endorsement solidified the existing story line on the race for the next month, a narrative that largely ignored Lamontagne. The battle for the nomination had apparently come down to Binnie, a moderate newcomer to Republican politics; and Ayotte, an establishment candidate who held mainstream conservative views. Palin’s public support did enhance Ayotte’s credibility as a conservative, according to Kochvar, who had prepared Internet advertisements for the Drudge Report

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and conservative websites in advance, in case of an endorsement. Kochvar noted, however, that at that point, the Palin endorsement only buttressed a conservative message that Ayotte had delivered herself, again and again, first to establishment and Tea Party activists, and now to the broader primary electorate through television ads. Conservative activists such as Maureen Mooney and Andrew Hemingway echoed Kochvar’s point: while Ayotte may not have been their first choice, they said, she was a satisfactory nominee. Bill Binnie, however, was another story. Faced with an apparent choice between Ayotte and a pro-choice newcomer ‘‘with an R next to his name,’’ both establishment and Tea Party forces weighed in against the latter. Most prominent among New Hampshire’s Tea Party Coalition was Cornerstone Action, a group ‘‘dedicated to preserving New Hampshire’s traditional values, limited government, and free markets’’ (Cornerstone Action 2011). Just days prior to the Palin announcement, Cornerstone Action entered the fray with a radio ad denouncing Binnie as ‘‘shockingly liberal.’’ Binnie responded by charging that the Ayotte campaign had illegally colluded with Cornerstone. Weeks later, Binnie took out a full-page ad criticizing the Union Leader for a news article that stated that a company Binnie owned had outsourced jobs to Mexico. In the midst of all this, the Binnie and Ayotte campaigns engaged in a weeks-long barrage of negative ads. Ayotte weathered the storm well. Her polling numbers remained consistent, as they had throughout her campaign. Binnie’s campaign, however, began to take on water and sink quickly in the polls. Meanwhile, Lamontagne had found a spark for his kindling. While the two front-runners had engaged in negative politics, Lamontagne had remained a positive conservative, cultivating a reputation for principled authenticity among grassroots conservatives, according to Merrill (2011). And now, with Binnie collapsing, Lamontagne had an opportunity to present himself to voters as the ‘‘change agent,’’ he said. Two weeks before the primary, the conservative Union Leader gave him its stamp of approval: He is not the flashiest candidate. He certainly is not the richest. He isn’t the favorite of the bigtime professional pols or the Washington crowd. Ovide is just a smart-as-a-whip, honest, hard-working son of New Hampshire who says what he believes. . . . We have been impressed by the number of grassroots conservatives backing Ovide. They are not the best-known, prominent Republicans (those have tended to line up with one or another of the presumed ‘‘favorites’’). The people backing Ovide Lamontagne have been in the trenches for conservative causes and principles. They know their man and consider him, by far, the most capable person to make the tough choices needed at a crucial time for our country. They also know he can win in November. (New Hampshire Union Leader 2010)

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As Lamontagne climbed rapidly in the polls, he gained some late free media from conservative voices, such as talk radio host Laura Ingraham and the National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. The Judicial Crisis Network spent approximately $50,000 on a radio ad highlighting Ayotte’s support for Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court (Lopez 2010; Sunlight Foundation 2010). No material help, however, came from the national Tea Party Movement for a candidate so cash-poor that he did not send out a single mail piece and ran just one television ad for three weeks (Merrill 2011). While South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint endorsed Lamontagne on the Friday prior to the primary, the Tea Party Express refrained from making any independent expenditures in the race. In contrast, a Palin robocall on Ayotte’s behalf was sent to New Hampshire households the weekend before the primary, and the Susan B. Anthony List spent significant amounts of money in the final days of the campaign. Ayotte won the primary by fewer than seventeen hundred votes and proceeded to crush her Democratic opponent in the general election two months later. Conclusion Sarah Palin and local Tea Party forces clearly played a part in New Hampshire’s Republican Senate primary, though not the role of kingmaker. In this case, the establishment front-runner, Kelly Ayotte, worked diligently to establish her conservative credentials, with much success. While she was not always the first choice of conservative activists, she was regarded as an acceptable outcome, especially compared to Democratic Representative Paul Hodes or to pro-choice Republican Bill Binnie. Locally, Tea Party activists were attracted to Ovide Lamontagne’s conservatism and worked on his campaign. Nationally, however, he failed to gain favor with the Tea Party Express, perhaps partly because he gained traction too late and perhaps in part because Ayotte was at least regarded as a reliably conservative vote in the U.S. Senate. Palin, confronted with a choice between a conservative Republican woman with party establishment support and an ‘‘authentic’’ conservative lagging far behind in the polls, elected to play the ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’ card. References Ambinder, Marc. 2009. ‘‘Setting the Stage for an Intense GOP Primary in New Hampshire.’’ The Atlantic, November 18, 2009. Accessed January 14, 2011. http:// www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/11/setting-the-stage-for-an-intense -gop-primary-in-new-hampshire/30417/.

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Cline, Drew. 2011. Interviewed by the author, January 6. Cornerstone Action. 2011. Accessed January 13, 2011. http://www.nhcornerstone .org/about/mission/. Draper, Robert. 2011. ‘‘The Palin Network.’’ The New York Times, November 17, 2010. Accessed March 9, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/magazine/ 21palin-t.html?_r1&refmagazine&pagewantedall. Hemingway, Andrew. 2011. Interviewed by the author, January 5. Kochvar, Brooks. 2011. Interviewed by the author, January 11. Landrigan, Kevin. 2010. ‘‘In ’09, Ayotte OK’d Settling Abortion Case.’’ Nashua Telegraph, September 3, 2010. Accessed January 15, 2011. http://www.nashuatele graph.com/news/842363-196/in-09-ayotte-okd-settling-abortion-case.html. Lopez, Kathryn Jean. 2010. ‘‘How Ovide Got His Momentum.’’ National Review Online, September 15, 2010. Accessed January 13, 2011. http://www.nationalreview .com/corner/246604/how-ovide-got-his-momentum-kathryn-jean-lopez. Merrill, Jim. 2011. Interviewed by the author, January 6. Mooney, Maureen. 2011. Interviewed by the author, January 6. New Hampshire Tea Party Coalition. 2011. Accessed March 9, 2011. http://www .nhteapartycoalition.org/tea/about-join/member-groups/. New Hampshire Union Leader. 2010. ‘‘Lamontagne for U.S. Senate,’’ August 29, 2010. Accessed January 13, 2011. http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline JosephW.McQuaid:LamontagneforU.S.Senate&articleId51033d 42-09d2-4854-b963-645b99d1f8be. Open Secrets. 2011. ‘‘New Hampshire Congressional Races in 2010.’’ Accessed March 9, 2011. http://www.opensecrets.org/races/election.php?stateNH. Ovide Lamontagne for U.S. Senate. 2010. Accessed January 12, 2011. http://ovide 2010.com/?p1060. Palin, Sarah. 2010. Sarah Palin’s Facebook Page. Accessed January 13, 2011. http:// www.facebook.com/notes/sarah-palin/kelly-ayotte-for-new-hampshire/41009777 3434. Pindell, James. 2011. ‘‘Quick Click: 10 Things in 2010 That Weren’t Such a Big Deal in the End.’’ WMUR Political Scoop, December 31, 2010. Accessed January 12, 2011. http://politicalscoop.wmur.com/quick-click-10-things-in-2010-that-werent -such-a-big-deal-in-the-end. Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. 2011. Accessed January 12, 2011. http://rlcnh.org/. Rochester 912 Project. 2011. Meetup Page. Accessed January 12, 2011. http://www .meetup.com/rochester-912-project/members/9270878/. Sunlight Foundation. 2010. Accessed January 13, 2011. http://reporting.sunlight foundation.com/independent-expenditures/race/NH-Senate?page4. University of New Hampshire Survey Center. 2009. ‘‘Granite State Poll.’’ Accessed January 11–15, 2011. http://www.unh.edu/survey-center/news/granite-state-poll .html.

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3 Sacrificing Electoral Viability for Ideological Purity Christine O’Donnell and the Delaware Senate Race Daniel C. Reed

lthough Tea Party groups contributed to the election of enough Tea Party–backed candidates for Republicans to retake the House in 2010, Republicans failed to take the Senate. Many attribute the Republicans’ shortcoming to the Tea Party’s tendency to back ideologically divisive and electorally nonviable candidates unable to mount successful challenges to their Democratic counterparts. One such Senate race was in Delaware, where Democratic New Castle County Executive Chris Coons faced Christine O’Donnell, a political outsider with Tea Party backing who defeated veteran Congressman Mike Castle in the Republican Party primary. After a series of media blunders as well as revelations about her personal finances and some highly controversial past statements involving witchcraft, adultery, and ‘‘mice with human brains,’’ it soon became clear that groups such as the Tea Party Express had traded electoral viability for ideological purity when they backed O’Donnell for the Republican nomination. By helping to defeat Castle in the primary, Tea Party groups cost Republicans a Senate seat that had been considered a shoo-in for the GOP.

A

Background to the Delaware Senate Race In the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama defeated John McCain in a historic victory, to become the first African American elected to the nation’s — 25 —

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highest office. As his running mate, Obama had chosen six-term incumbent Delaware Senator Joe Biden. When Biden resigned to become vice president, a special election was scheduled for November 2010. This left Republicans with an opportunity to mount a serious challenge for a Senate seat that had been in Democratic hands since 1973. The presumptive Republican nominee was U.S. Representative Mike Castle, a nine-term incumbent. When Castle formally announced his candidacy in October of 2009, it was assumed that he would face little serious challenge from within his own party. Castle was a popular veteran politician who had served as lieutenant governor and governor before being elected to Congress in 1992. Castle, a moderate and member of the ‘‘Tuesday Group’’ of moderate House Republicans, had a bipartisan voting record viewed by many as a good match for the Democratic-leaning state. He was considered the Republicans’ best chance for picking up the seat, making the Delaware race potentially crucial in determining partisan control of the Senate. Senator John Cornyn (TX), National Republican Senatorial Committee chair, noted that Castle’s bid ‘‘instantly transform[ed] Delaware into one of the most competitive Senate races in the country in 2010’’ (Kraushaar 2009). The likely Democratic challenger was Joe Biden’s son Beau, an Iraq War veteran and Delaware’s attorney general who was seen as the Democrats’ best chance for keeping the seat in light of Castle’s challenge. But when Biden announced in January of 2010 that he would not seek the Senate seat, Democrats immediately scrambled, settling on little-known New Castle County Executive Chris Coons. Relatively unknown outside New Castle County, Coons was not expected to perform well against the popular Castle. Democratic strategist Jim Jordan likened Coons’ chances to ‘‘a suicide mission,’’ echoing the popular view that the Senate seat was all but lost for the Democrats (Bruni 2010). Congressional Quarterly rated the race in March as ‘‘likely Republican’’ (CQ 2010). By spring, it was fairly clear that Castle would win the Delaware Senate seat. When Christine O’Donnell announced her bid for the Senate seat in March 2010, her candidacy was viewed merely as a curiosity. Because she faced Mike Castle in the Republican primary, it was assumed that she would be a minor distraction for the better-known and party-backed member of Congress. A marketing consultant and frequent Fox News commentator, O’Donnell had run two unsuccessful campaigns for U.S. Senate. In 2006, she finished third in the Republican primary to challenge Senator Tom Carper. In 2008, she received the Republican nomination to face Senator Biden when the Republican front-runner dropped out of the race. As the head of the Catholic Advocacy Network and a devout Catholic, O’Donnell had promoted a program of premarital abstinence and right-to-life advocacy throughout

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the state. While Biden easily won reelection with 65 percent of the vote, O’Donnell made a name for herself as a staunch conservative who targeted and attracted the support of pro-life Catholic voters.

2010: The Tea Party Targets Mike Castle Heading into the summer of 2010, Castle was widely viewed as the de facto Republican nominee and likely winner of the general election against Chris Coons. He secured the backing of establishment Republicans, ultimately receiving 239 votes out of 340 cast by Republican delegates attending the party’s nominating convention in May. Although O’Donnell received only 97 votes at the convention, she refused to quit the race for the official nomination in the September primary (Gibson 2010a). By the end of June, the O’Donnell campaign was struggling. It reported only $69,931 in available cash, while Castle had accumulated a war chest of $2.6 million (Gibson 2010b). Facing an uphill battle, O’Donnell reached out to the growing Tea Party Movement. On July 16, the Susan B. Anthony List, a D.C.-based antiabortion group, endorsed O’Donnell. It would soon prove to be the first of a long line of endorsements from national conservative groups, eventually revitalizing her struggling campaign.1 In the endorsement statement, Susan B. Anthony List Candidate Fund President Marjorie Dannenfelser was harshly critical of Castle’s congressional voting record on social issues (Pecquet 2010). That sentiment was echoed several weeks later when Concerned Women for America (CWA) PAC spokesman Mike Mears stated, ‘‘We endorsed Christine O’Donnell primarily because Mike Castle is so bad on our issues.’’ When the Family Research Council (FRC) endorsed O’Donnell, it also attacked Castle’s moderate record, referring to him as ‘‘the candidate who has stood against life and the family consistently in his career on Capitol Hill.’’ Tony Perkins, chairman of the FRC Action PAC, stated that ‘‘the Republican establishment might think they are backing a winner in Mike Castle, but they are only backing another Arlen Specter or Charlie Crist,’’ former moderate Republicans who left the party when faced with challenges from the right in Pennsylvania and Florida (Duffy and Miller 2010). In late July, O’Donnell received the endorsement of the Tea Party Express, a California-based group widely recognized around the nation as an early Tea Party champion. Once again, an endorsement for O’Donnell came with criticism of Castle. Tea Party Express coordinator Joe Wierzbicki stated that ‘‘we long ago announced our intention to hold Mike Castle accountable for his failed record in Congress, and now we have an excellent shot to make sure he is defeated by a solid conservative candidate’’ (Catanese 2010). The

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O’Donnell campaign welcomed the endorsement, noting that the support would lend Tea Party credibility to her struggling campaign. The group pledged to spend $250,000 in TV and radio advertising on her behalf. It soon became evident that O’Donnell’s newfound support derived largely from conservative groups’ dislike of Castle and his moderate record. Castle’s votes on economic bills during the early Obama presidency had also earned him the ire of several major fiscally conservative groups, such as the Club for Growth, which gave him the lowest rating of any congressional Republican in 2009 (Club for Growth 2009). Major Tea Party groups labeled Castle a ‘‘Republican in name only (RINO)’’ after he and several other moderate Republicans were heckled by Tea Partiers during a series of town hall meetings designed to explain the new healthcare law.2 Yet, despite being targeted by Tea Party groups, Castle remained the candidate favored by the GOP in Delaware, making him the presumptive Republican nominee as well as the general-election favorite in August. Although O’Donnell received a flurry of conservative endorsements in July, her campaign raised only $88,989 during the month, for a total of $170,000 by August. The O’Donnell campaign was plagued with financial problems, and rumors began to circulate that the candidate had used campaign funds to pay for personal expenses: rent on two separate properties including her apartment, which doubled as her campaign office, and a $545.98 ‘‘staffing expense’’ payment to a mattress store in Wilmington. The Castle campaign, backed by the party establishment, used the stories to ridicule the upstart candidate and discredit her campaign. In an August 5 poll, five hundred likely Delaware voters gave Castle a twelve-point lead over Democrat Chris Coons (49 percent to 37 percent). But when paired against O’Donnell, Coons was favored by ten points (46 percent to 36 percent) (Rasmussen 2010).

The Republican Primary: The Tea Party Express vs. The Delaware GOP Without the support of the Tea Party Express, O’Donnell’s primary chances would have ended in August. But, as she had hoped, the Tea Party Express’ endorsement proved to be a shot in the arm for her candidacy. After Tea Party Express–backed candidates defeated GOP establishment candidates in Nevada and Utah, observers began to take the O’Donnell campaign more seriously. She raised additional money with the national attention that came with a Tea Party Express endorsement. Despite the influx of individual donations to her campaign, O’Donnell still

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lagged far behind Castle’s overall fund-raising. Castle had raised $3.2 million (with $2.6 million in cash on hand), with $242,194 in individual and PAC contributions in the months of July and August (Elliott 2010). The real O’Donnell effort was conducted outside the official campaign, financed in large part by independent expenditures by the Tea Party Express. The Tea Party Express, founded by Sal Russo, a political consultant who had previously worked for establishment Republicans such as former President Ronald Reagan and Governor George Pataki of New York (Lorber and Lipton 2010; ‘‘Tea Party’s Big Money’’ 2010), quickly gained a reputation nationally as a key financier of much of the Tea Party Movement. The group spent over $200,000 on behalf of O’Donnell (much of it in the form of anti-Castle ads) through its ‘‘Our Country Deserves Better’’ PAC in the last weeks of the primary (CRP 2010; FEC 2010). The group became so heavily involved in the campaign through its TV and radio ads (portraying Castle as a traitor to conservative voters) that it appeared to many Delawareans as though the California-based group was leading the O’Donnell effort. On September 9, the Delaware Republican Party filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission about the ads, accusing O’Donnell’s campaign and the Tea Party Express of violating FEC rules restricting coordination between candidates and outside political organizations (Elliott 2010). When Tea Party Express–backed Joe Miller unseated incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the Alaska Senate Republican primary, it was apparent that the group might be a real threat to Castle. Sensing potential vulnerability, the Castle campaign went on the offensive, launching anti-O’Donnell TV ads criticizing her questionable finances, unpaid bills, and back taxes from her 2008 campaign. State GOP Chair Ross continued to question her truthfulness about her re´sume´ and downplay her viability, stating that ‘‘she could not be elected dog catcher’’ (Elliott 2010). But when both Sarah Palin and conservative Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) endorsed O’Donnell in the closing days of the primary campaign, the O’Donnell candidacy was no longer a joke. Going into the September 14 primary, O’Donnell had attracted the attention and support of national Tea Party groups, prominent conservatives, and wealthy donors. She received strong support from those who wished to rid the Republican Party of moderate incumbents and those upset with Castle’s voting record. In the closed primary, Castle could not count on the support of Democrats and Independents, who had been a significant part of his electoral coalition. In addition to the Senate nomination, the primary included a three-way race for the GOP nomination for Castle’s House seat. That race included another Tea Party–backed candidate, conservative businessman Glen Urquhart. Because the Delaware Republican Party had not held a pri-

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mary election for the House seat since 1992 (when Castle won in the general election), turnout was expected to be exceptionally high. Among the 182,796 registered Republicans, 32 percent turned out on September 14, the highest GOP primary turnout in decades (Delaware State Election Commissioner 2010). As figure 3.1 indicates, GOP turnout was highest in southernmost Sussex County, the most conservative part of the state and an O’Donnell stronghold. Although she was expected to perform best in the more conservative and rural parts of Sussex and Kent Counties, O’Donnell received strong support across Delaware. She beat Castle in nineteen of the state’s forty-one representative districts,3 performing well in all areas except in the northernmost ‘‘Twelve Mile Circle’’ region outside Wilmington (Delaware State Election Commissioner 2010). This section of New Castle County is the most urban and densely populated part of the state and had been an area of considerable support for Castle in the past. Overall, O’Donnell received 53.1 percent of the statewide vote. O’Donnell’s primary victory shocked both Delaware and the nation. Her stunning upset started a media frenzy, as her nomination sparked renewed attention on the midterm elections on the cable news networks and the Internet. The Pew Research Center reports that she was the central figure in 7 percent of all news coverage the week of September 13–19, as well as the central figure in 32 percent of all the stories covering the midterm elections (Holcomb 2010). Because of her extreme ideological issue positions and troublesome past, many nationally prominent Republicans saw O’Donnell as a liability that might jeopardize their chances of retaking the Senate. In a television interview on Fox News, Republican strategist Karl Rove stated, ‘‘We were looking at eight to nine seats in the Senate. We’re now looking at seven to eight. In my opinion, this is not a race we’re going to be able to win’’ (Zeleny 2010).

O’Donnell’s Bid for the General Election Is Derailed After considering a write-in candidacy, Mike Castle decided against it, leaving O’Donnell and Chris Coons in a two-way race. Despite the tepid support from establishment Republicans, O’Donnell now received the full support of conservatives, as well as a surge in contributions. Her campaign reported receiving $1.3 million within forty-eight hours of winning the primary (Shear 2010). Support also came from Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint, who had formally endorsed her candidacy in the previous week when it had become clear that she had a strong chance of beating Castle. Palin’s endorsement lent credibility to O’Donnell, identifying her as a ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’ with true conserva-

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FIGURE 3.1. 2010 Delaware GOP Senate Primary Results (O’Donnell Votes and Turnout by Representative District)

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tive credentials. Palin had taken O’Donnell under her wing, and she began to advise the novice candidate on the pitfalls of the national spotlight. On an episode of the O’Reilly Factor, Palin advised O’Donnell to ‘‘speak through Fox News,’’ encouraging her to give interviews on only that network (in order to ensure that she wouldn’t face hard questions by the media) (Stelter 2010). DeMint dismissed party leaders’ gloomy predictions for O’Donnell, citing their past statements regarding the former long shots Pat Toomey (PA), Marc Rubio (FL), and Rand Paul (KY), who were now surging in the polls (Herszenhorn 2010). A spokesperson for DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund indicated that because O’Donnell would not receive much financial support from the party committees, the leadership PAC would attempt to cover the difference. DeMint’s PAC planned to raise $174,000 in earmarked donations for her campaign, the maximum in party-coordinated expenditures allowed by the two committees (McCormick 2010). Although O’Donnell received considerable news coverage in September and October, most of it revolved around a series of highly controversial statements she had made in the past. While head of the Christian conservative group SALT (Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth) in the early 1990s, a young O’Donnell had been interviewed on the MTV program Sex in the 90s, where she equated masturbation to adultery in a seemingly bizarre line of reasoning. MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show aired that footage on the night of the primary. On September 17, comedian Bill Maher announced that he also had old footage of O’Donnell from twenty-two appearances on his former talk show Politically Incorrect from the 1990s (Stelter 2010). O’Donnell had regularly participated in roundtable discussions on the program, and had made outlandish statements regarding science and religion. The video footage of her past statements soon became a YouTube sensation. In weeks leading up to the election, Americans saw a young O’Donnell claiming that scientists had developed mice with human brains, proclaiming it would have been immoral to lie to Nazis in order to protect Jews during the Holocaust, and admitting that she had once dabbled in witchcraft. The last statement would later prove to be her undoing, and the damage was compounded when she ran a TV advertisement where she now famously stated, ‘‘I’m not a witch.’’ Revelations about O’Donnell’s controversial past statements ultimately destroyed any chance that she had of defeating Coons. Despite attempts to paint Coons as a socialist, a ‘‘taxman,’’ or a puppet of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the O’Donnell candidacy was dead in the water. She became the laughingstock of the 2010 midterms, a frequent object of parody on Saturday Night Live and late-night talk shows. She made serious blunders in her ads and during a series of debates with Coons, fueling even more questions about

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her qualifications. While O’Donnell ultimately raised $5 million for the general election, almost exclusively from individual contributions from outside the state, she was never able to overcome the stigma of ideological extremist and outlandish incompetent. On election day, Coons defeated O’Donnell in a landslide, garnering 57 percent of the vote to O’Donnell’s 40 percent.

Assessing the Tea Party Influence in the Delaware Senate Race Tea Party groups were very active in the Delaware Senate race. Each of the three major candidates was influenced by outside spending by the Tea Party Express, as well as Tea Party allies such as Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint. Table 3.1 reports primary and general-election fund-raising and expenditures for Castle, Coons, and O’Donnell. During the primary, Castle raised $3,468,526 (39 percent came from PAC contributions) and spent $2,478,520. Independent groups spent $12,020 on Castle’s behalf, an amount dwarfed by the $109,290 spent by the Tea Party Express attacking him (CRP 2010; FEC 2010). Not facing a primary challenge, Coons raised $3,294,824 (21 percent came from PAC contributions) and spent $2,337,312 in the general election. Independent groups spent $956,998 on his behalf ($699,613 spent opposing O’Donnell) and $138,037 spent opposing him ($79,061 of which was spent by the National Rifle Association, which endorsed O’Donnell). Coons’ largest supporter, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), reported spending $635,881 in opposition to O’Donnell. The O’Donnell campaign performed well in general-election fund-raising, raising $5,040,977 (98 percent of which came from individual contributions, as well as $42,600 from the National Republican Senatorial Committee) and spent $3,671,053, mostly on ads. Her campaign received support through $358,669 in independent expenditures from a variety of conservative groups (CRP 2010). Sarah Palin’s PAC gave the O’Donnell campaign the maximum contribution but made no independent expenditures. While it was the major supporter of O’Donnell during the primary, the Tea Party Express was noticeably inactive at the general-election stage, spending less than $5,000 (FEC 2010). DeMint was ultimately O’Donnell’s greatest single financial supporter during the general election. His PAC collected $380,566 in contributions earmarked for her campaign, contributed $5,000 directly during the general election, and reported $144,963 in independent expenditures on her behalf (CRP 2010). Overall, while Palin’s endorsement may have provided some credibility to O’Donnell’s campaign, she did little else for the Delaware conservative. Pal-

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$5,040,977

(general election only)

$3,671,053

($2,851,243)

$6,522,296

$2,337,312

$2,478,520

Total Spent by Candidate

$224,296

$130,477

$356,790

$956,998

$12,020

Outside Spending on Behalf of Candidate

$699,613

$0

$699,613

$138,037

$109,290

Outside Spending against Candidate

Senate Conservatives Fund ($144,963)

Tea Party Express ($130,477)

Senate Conservatives Fund ($144,963)

DSCC ($699,613)

Repub. State Committee of DE ($2,064)

Largest Outside Supporter (spending for candidate)

DSCC ($699,613)

(na)

DSCC ($699,613)

National Rifle Association ($79,061)

Tea Party Express ($130,477)

Largest Outside Opponent (spending against candidate)

Note: Outside spending includes party and PAC independent expenditures, electioneering communications, and party-coordinated spending reported as of December 28, 2010. These figures do not include direct contributions to the candidates’ campaigns. Data are from the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics.

$2,415,661

(primary only)

$7,456,638

$3,294,824

Coons (D) (general election only)

O’Donnell (R)

$3,468,526

Castle (R) (primary only)

Candidate

Total Raised by Candidate

TABLE 3.1 2010 Delaware Senate Race: Contributions, Campaign Spending, and Outside Spending


35

in’s restraint likely reflected her electoral pragmatism, knowing that although O’Donnell stood a good chance of beating Castle, she had very little chance of winning the general election in the blue state of Delaware. Jim DeMint provided considerable financial support to O’Donnell, but it came at a time when it could do little good for the O’Donnell campaign, which was caught up in a media hailstorm in October. Among the major conservative players of 2010, the Tea Party Express was the biggest influence in the Delaware race. By rescuing the struggling O’Donnell campaign and taking down Castle through a series of negative ads, the group was able to determine the outcome of the race. By replacing a viable-yet-moderate Republican with an ideologically compatible (yet nonviable) ally, the Tea Party Express altered the course of the Delaware Senate race. Conclusion Christine O’Donnell’s nomination in Delaware serves as an excellent example of what can happen when interest groups substitute ideology for political pragmatism. By supporting O’Donnell over veteran Mike Castle, the Tea Party ensured that a once-safely-Republican Senate seat would be retained by a Democrat. Castle’s defeat by the Tea Party Express almost certainly contributed to the Republicans’ failure to take the Senate. But Castle was not alone. This was a common pattern in 2010, as Tea Party groups blocked moderate Republicans across the country at the primary stage, only to have their conservative replacements lose in November. O’Donnell’s nomination also highlights a central theme of the 2010 midterm elections: the role of the Tea Party in ideologically purifying the Republican Party. While Sarah Palin, Senator Jim DeMint, and the Tea Party made President Obama and the Democratic Congress the object of their public disdain, it is just as likely that their ultimate target was the Republican Party itself. By ridding the GOP of moderates like Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, and Mike Castle, they might ultimately reshape the direction of the party. Yet, by backing a controversial candidate like Christine O’Donnell, they might have done more to hurt the movement and the Tea Party brand. References Bruni, F. (2010). ‘‘With O’Donnell as Foil, Democrat Plays It Safe.’’ New York Times, October 11, 2010. Catanese, D. (2010). ‘‘O’Donnell Gets Tea Party Backing.’’ Politico. Washington, D.C., July 27, 2010.

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Club for Growth. (2009). ‘‘Club for Growth: 2009 Congressional Scorecard.’’ Retrieved November 17, 2010, from http://www.clubforgrowth.org/projects/? subSec13. CQ (2010). ‘‘CQ Roll Call: Been There, Vote for Me.’’ Congressional Quarterly, March 22, 2010. Washington, D.C. CRP. (2010a). ‘‘Senate Conservatives Fund: 2010 PAC Summary Data.’’ Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved December 28, 2010, from http://www.opensecrets .org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle2010&strIDC00448696. ———. (2010b). ‘‘Total Raised and Spent: 2010 Race: Delaware Senate.’’ Center for Responsive Politics. Retrieved December 3, 2010, from http://www.opensecrets.org/ races/summary.php?cycle2010&idDE S2. Delaware Patriots. (2010). ‘‘Delaware Conservative Coalition Announces Rally: ‘Great Conservative Cookout’ to Feature National, Local Speakers on July 16th.’’ Calendar: 912 Delaware Patriots. Delaware State Election Commissioner. (2010, 09/17/10 02:31 PM). ‘‘State of Delaware Primary Election (Official Results).’’ From http://elections.delaware.gov/ archive/elect10/elect10_Primary/html/election. shtml. Duffy, J. P., and D. Miller. (2010). ‘‘FRC Action PAC Endorses Christine O’Donnell for Senate.’’ From http://www.frcaction.org/frcapacinternal/frc-action-pacendorses-christine-odonnell-for-senate. Elliott, P. (2010). ‘‘GOP Tries to Take Out Tea Party-Backed Candidate: Delaware Republicans Are Going All Out to Defeat Senate Candidate Christine O’Donnell.’’ Associated Press, September 12, 2010. FEC. (2010). ‘‘Committee: Our Country Deserves Better PAC—TeaParty Express.org.’’ Federal Election Commission. Retrieved December 3, 2010, from http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/dcdev/forms/C00454074/492962/se. Gibson, G. (2010a). ‘‘State GOP Nominates Castle for U.S. Senate.’’ News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, May 16, 2010. ———. (2010b). ‘‘Tea Party Group Backs O’Donnell.’’ News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, July 28, 2010. Herszenhorn, D. M. (2010). ‘‘DeMint: ‘We Are Going to Win in Delaware.’ ’’ The Caucus: The Politics and Government Blog of the Times, New York Times, September 15, 2010. Holcomb, J. (2010). ‘‘O’Donnell’s Delaware Stunner Drives Election Coverage.’’ Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. PEJ News Coverage Index: September 13–19, 2010. Kraushaar, J. (2009). ‘‘Mike Castle Announces Run for Joe Biden’s Seat.’’ Politico, Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009. Lorber, J., and E. Lipton. (2010). ‘‘G.O.P. Insider Fuels Tea Party and Suspicion.’’ New York Times, September 19, 2010. Malcolm, W. (2010). ‘‘Del. Tosses Civility by Wayside This Election.’’ News Journal, Wilmington, Delaware, October 31, 2010. McCormick, J. (2010). ‘‘ ‘DeMint’s PAC Looks to Raise $174K for O’Donnell ‘By Next Week.’ ’’ The Weekly Standard Blog, September 14, 2010. Pecquet, J. (2010). ‘‘Anti-abortion Group Endorses O’Donnell for Delaware Senate Seat.’’ The Hill, Washington, D.C., July 16, 2010.

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Rasmussen. (2010). ‘‘Delaware State Survey of 500 Likely Voters: August 5, 2010. Toplines—Delaware Senate.’’ R. Reports. Shear, M. D. (2010). ‘‘O’Donnell Raising More Campaign Funds.’’ The Caucus: The Politics and Government Blog of the Times, New York Times, September 17, 2010. Stelter, B. (2010a). ‘‘For O’Donnell, Rewinding to the ‘90s.’’ The Caucus: The Politics and Government Blog of the Times, New York Times, September 19, 2010. ———. (2010b). ‘‘Palin Steers O’Donnell to Fox News.’’ The Caucus: The Politics and Government Blog of the Times, New York Times, September 16, 2010. ‘‘Tea Party’s Big Money.’’ New York Times, A28, September 23, 2010. Zeleny, J. (2010). ‘‘G.O.P. Leaders Say Delaware Upset Hurts Senate Hopes.’’ New York Times, September 15, 2010.

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4 Nevada The Tea Party Takes On Harry Reid but from the Wrong Angle Ted G. Jelen

n election day, 2010, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was reelected by a margin of 50 percent to 45 percent over challenger Sharron Angle.1 This race was among the most contentious and most acrimonious in the nation, in an election cycle characterized by a high level of partisan rancor. Senator Reid was a major target of the national Republican Party and was vilified as part of a liberal troika of ‘‘Obama-Pelosi-Reid’’ by conservative commentators. Reid’s reelection to a fourth Senate term can be regarded as something of an upset, since he was widely considered quite vulnerable. The Nevada Senate race was a high priority for both parties and attracted a great deal of attention from national media and political activists. While a detailed account of all pertinent aspects of the contest is beyond the scope of this chapter, the contours of the story can be summarized rather easily. The distinctive political culture of Nevada suggests an affinity between elements of the Republican Party in the Silver State and the Tea Party Movement. The attractiveness of the Tea Party Movement to a substantial minority of Nevada Republicans enabled Sharron Angle, the choice of the Tea Party Express, to gain the Republican Senate nomination. However, Angle’s record and ideological positioning proved to be a liability in the general election. The nomination of Sharron Angle appears to have enabled Harry Reid to gain a relatively comfortable victory.

O

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The Political Culture of Nevada The political culture of Nevada can perhaps be best characterized as ‘‘libertarian.’’ State economic policies are often described as ‘‘business friendly’’ (low taxes, limited government regulation of business), and government policies on noneconomic issues are generally quite permissive. Gambling, of course, is legal throughout the state, and prostitution is legal in fourteen of the state’s seventeen counties. Laws governing marriage and divorce are among the most lenient in the nation. Indeed, a popular slogan promoting tourism in Las Vegas was ‘‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,’’ which depicts a morally permissive culture in which individual desires can easily (and legally) be satisfied. Despite the libertarian cast of Nevada’s public policies, the reality is somewhat more complex. The state has a substantial population of members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. The Mormon presence in Nevada, while not as prominent as in neighboring Utah, is politically consequential, and has occasionally been decisive on issues such as same-sex marriage (which was barred by an amendment to the state constitution in 2002). Of course, the nation was badly affected by the economic recession of 2007–2008, and Nevada was no exception. Indeed, in a state whose primary industry is tourism, the drop in discretionary income on the part of potential visitors to Las Vegas, Reno, and Lake Tahoe was particularly severe. Nevada led the nation in home foreclosures and experienced unemployment significantly higher than the national average. These economic conditions contributed to the anti-incumbent mood of the Nevada electorate in 2010. Politically, Nevada is a ‘‘purple’’ state, divided between Republicans and Democrats. Since 2006, Democrats have had a small, but consequential edge in voter registration. The state has been quite competitive in presidential elections, as Nevada was carried twice by Bill Clinton (whose Nevada victories were partly attributable to strong showings by H. Ross Perot in 1992 and 1996), twice by George W. Bush, and rather handily by Barack Obama in 2008. Given these considerations, the (unexpectedly comfortable) reelection of Senator Harry Reid could certainly be regarded as something of an upset. Reid’s electoral success in 2010 was the result of fortuitous circumstances including, most prominently, an unexpectedly weak opponent (see Mishak 2010) and a strong, well-executed campaign. The Senator Harry Reid has been a longtime fixture in Nevada politics, having served as a member of the Nevada State Assembly (the lower House of the state legisla-

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Nevada: The Tea Party Takes On Harry Reid

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ture), lieutenant governor, a member of the Nevada Gaming Commission, and the U.S. House of Representatives. He had lost an earlier bid for the U.S. Senate and had made an unsuccessful run for mayor of Las Vegas (Barone and Cohen 2009). In 2010, Reid was running for his fourth term as U.S. Senator and was widely perceived as vulnerable. Reid is no stranger to close elections, having been reelected in 1998 by a margin of fewer than five hundred votes. For most of his career in the Senate, Reid has generally been considered moderately conservative for a Democrat. Consistent with the preferences of his Nevada constituents, Reid has generally opposed gun control. He voted for a constitutional amendment that would have permitted Congress to criminalize the desecration of the American flag. A devout Mormon, Reid has not followed the pro-choice tendencies of his party on the issue of abortion and has supported restrictions on late term (so-called partial birth) abortions, and declined to support a resolution endorsing the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade. On issues of foreign policy, Reid voted to support the Gulf War in 1991, as well as the Iraq War in 2002 (Barone and Cohen 2009). Given Reid’s frequent departures from liberal orthodoxy, it is perhaps ironic that, in 2010, he was painted by Republicans and members of the Tea Party Movement as a member of the ‘‘Obama-Pelosi-Reid’’ liberal troika. Most likely, the perception of Reid’s liberalism in the 2010 election cycle resulted from the salience of economic issues during and after the recession. Moreover, Reid became Senate minority leader following the defeat of Tom Daschle in 2004, and became majority leader when the Democrats gained a Senate majority in 2006. Following the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Reid’s position as majority leader forced him to take a prominent role in promoting President Obama’s economic agenda, including healthcare reform (so-called Obamacare) as well as TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) and bailouts for Wall Street and U.S. automakers. These economic policies were unpopular among moderates and conservatives, and ran counter to the libertarian streak in Nevada politics. Entering the 2010 election cycle, Reid was a target of the Republican Party and was perceived as extremely vulnerable to electoral defeat.

The Republican Candidates The widespread perception of Senator Reid’s electoral vulnerability attracted a number of potential Republican challengers. However, absent from the list of contenders was Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV2), whom some analysts suggest

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would have been the strongest possible opponent. Heller may have been discouraged by Reid’s formidable fund-raising and may have been encouraged by scandals surrounding Nevada’s other senator, Republican John Ensign. Allegations that Ensign had had an extramarital affair with the wife of a staffer and had committed legal and ethical violations to conceal the affair may have persuaded Heller that a run for Ensign’s seat in 2012 might be more promising than a race against the majority leader (see Ralston 2010c). Out of a large field of actual GOP contenders, three proved most consequential: Entering the primary election, Sue Lowden was widely considered the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Lowden had served a term in the Nevada State Senate from 1992 through 1996, and, more recently, had chaired the Nevada Republican Party from 2007 through 2009. Danny Tarkanian’s principal claim to fame is that he is the son of legendary former UNLV basketball coach Jerry ‘‘Tark the Shark’’ Tarkanian, who had coached UNLV through a very successful period (including one NCAA championship) in the early 1990s. The younger Tarkanian managed a real estate business and created the Tarkanian Basketball Academy. Lacking governmental experience, Tarkanian emphasized his desire to leave more traditional government functions (including healthcare) to the private sector. Finally, the eventual winner of the Republican senatorial primary was former Nevada assemblywoman Sharron Angle. She had served in the lower house of the Nevada legislature (1996–2006) and managed a small business during the election cycle of 2010. While serving in Carson City, Angle was consistently among the most conservative members of the Nevada State Assembly, frequently casting ‘‘no’’ votes on measures that eventually passed with near unanimity. Entering the primary campaign, Lowden was widely considered the frontrunner, given her high levels of name recognition and ample campaign financing. Most observers considered Tarkanian to be Lowden’s principal competition, with preelection polls suggesting that both Lowden and Tarkanian enjoyed substantial leads over incumbent Harry Reid. Lowden’s path to the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate encountered two major roadblocks that ultimately caused her to lose the primary to Angle. First, Angle attacked Lowden as a RINO (Republican in name only) who had, in fact, contributed to Senator Reid in previous campaigns. Angle argued that she (Angle) was the only authentic conservative in the race. Angle’s claim to this distinction received a boost when she received the endorsement of the Tea Party Express, which attracted national publicity and a substantial increase in financial contributions. Second, Sue Lowden committed an ‘‘unforced error’’ when she made a very damaging gaffe. In attacking ‘‘Obamacare,’’ Lowden suggested that the

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private sector was adequate to cover the healthcare needs of most Americans. Elaborating on this theme, Lowden harked back to an earlier period in which she asserted that patients often bartered with physicians and that physicians might accept nonmonetary payments, including livestock such as chickens. Lowden was immediately attacked by Democrats as the ‘‘chicken lady’’ (the state Democratic Party created a website devoted to Lowden’s statement). Perhaps more damagingly, Lowden’s statement, which she defended and elaborated, attracted widespread ridicule, including a mention during Jay Leno’s monologue during the Tonight Show (Montopoli 2010). By contrast, Sharron Angle’s main distinction was her uncompromising conservatism. During her career and, likewise, during her primary campaign, Angle had taken a number of positions that Senator Reid successfully characterized as ‘‘extreme.’’ The positions included the following: 1. Angle claimed that several members of Congress were unpatriotic and did not have the best interests of the United States at heart. She mused aloud about the possibility of ‘‘Second Amendment remedies’’ (presumably, involving the use of firearms) as a solution to this problem (Sargent 2010; Damon and Schwartz 2010a). 2. Angle had recommended the privatization of Social Security and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. These positions might be considered strategically questionable in a state that is becoming something of a retirement mecca and that has a very high percentage of military veterans in its population. 3. Angle supported the decision of the second Bush administration to house a nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain (a site about one hundred miles north of Las Vegas). This facility was quite unpopular among Nevadans, and the decision of the Obama administration to kill the project was among Senator Reid’s proudest achievements. 4. Angle dodged questions about whether the civil rights measures passed in the 1960s should apply to private businesses. These positions proved unpopular to the general electorate in Nevada, but were well received in conservative circles. In a primary election characterized by relatively low turnout, Sharron Angle delivered an upset victory, winning 40 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Sue Lowden and 24 percent for Danny Tarkanian.2 Postelection analyses suggested that the endorsement of the Tea Party Express was important in providing Angle with positive publicity (in a GOP primary electorate) as well as credibility. Indeed, polls taken immediately after the endorsement suggested that Sharron’s level of support went from single digits to a virtual tie for the lead (Friess 2010; Crum 2010).

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The General-Election Campaign Sharron Angle’s nomination was widely considered to be fortunate for Harry Reid’s reelection prospects, since some analysts suggested that Angle’s conservative, and strategically questionable, positions made her easier for Reid to beat than either Lowden or Tarkanian would have been (Mishak 2010). Nevertheless, the Nevada Senate race was extremely competitive, and most observers were surprised by the size of Reid’s eventual margin of victory. Indeed, some early polls suggested that Angle had a substantial lead over Reid in the period immediately following the primaries. Angle’s campaign was, for the most part, quite conventional. Her main theme was unrelenting criticism of Reid. Her commercials emphasized Reid’s connections with President Obama and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and blamed Reid for the poor economic conditions in Nevada. Angle did not emphasize her own previous positions and, indeed, sought to ‘‘walk back’’ her earlier support for Social Security privatization. In the general-election campaign, she described her desire to ‘‘personalize’’ (as opposed to privatize) Social Security and, in her commercials and the one debate she had with Senator Reid, vowed to ‘‘keep our promise’’ to current recipients (without mentioning future recipients) of Social Security (Ralston 2010a; Damon 2010b). One rather unusual aspect of the Angle campaign was her avoidance of the ‘‘mainstream media.’’ With the exception of one televised interview with Jon Ralston (host of the television show Face to Face and columnist for the Las Vegas Sun), Angle confined her media appearances to paid advertising and to conservative talk shows, such as Alan Stock’s Las Vegas radio program. She justified the strategy by explaining that the mainstream media were biased against her and would not cover her campaign fairly (see Damon 2010a). Senator Jim DeMint endorsed Angle the day after the primary, although the endorsement was not widely noted in Nevada. By contrast, Sarah Palin endorsed Angle in September in a highly publicized event. Indeed, Palin was the featured speaker at a large rally in Senator Reid’s hometown of Searchlight. This rally received substantial media coverage but did not, in the end, appear to alter the outcome of the election. Five days before the election, Senator John McCain made a campaign appearance with Angle. Tea Party activists criticized this action, arguing that McCain’s appearance compromised Angle’s image as a strong voice for conservatism. Some analysts (Toeplitz 2010) criticized the Angle campaign for strategic and tactical incompetence. Angle’s failure to respond to Reid’s attacks on her record as an ‘‘extremist,’’ as well as the decision to eschew contact with mainstream media, were considered the most egregious errors. Angle’s cam-

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paign also resorted to such activities as sound trucks driving up and down Las Vegas Boulevard (the legendary Las Vegas ‘‘Strip’’) and skywriting, which were regarded as amateurish and certainly unconventional. Shira Toeplitz suggested that Angle relied on a very narrow circle of advisors and ran a much less sophisticated campaign than did her opponent. One moderately strange allegation perhaps illustrates both the nature of the Angle campaign in Nevada and the decentralized nature of the Tea Party Movement. Although Angle received the endorsement of the Tea Party Express in the primary election and was subsequently endorsed by DeMint and Palin, Nevada had a minor party called the Tea Party of Nevada. The TPN nominated John Ashjian as its candidate for the Senate. Fearing a close election in which the presence of another candidate affiliated with the Tea Party Movement could pull votes from the Republican candidate, Angle allegedly met with Ashjian in late September and offered him access to Senate leaders such as DeMint in exchange for an endorsement. In the same conversation, Angle is alleged to have criticized the Republican Party. This story appears to have slowed Angle’s momentum and damaged her image by depicting her as a politician willing to make ‘‘backroom deals,’’ a charge that Angle had leveled against Senator Reid (Damon and Schwartz 2010b). While it seems unlikely that this story changed many votes, it is possible that the nature of the allegation may have discouraged some Angle supporters from voting.3 Senator Reid’s general-election strategy was multifaceted (and, of course, ultimately successful). His ‘‘air war’’ had three major components. First, and most importantly, Reid attacked Angle’s issue positions as ‘‘too extreme.’’ Apparently acting on the belief that voters would not believe assertions about some of Angle’s issue positions, many Reid television commercials featured recordings of Angle’s statements in her own voice. In his attempts to paint Angle as ‘‘too extreme for Nevada,’’ Reid benefited from the endorsements of prominent Republicans Bill Raggio (minority leader of the Nevada Senate who had fought off a primary challenge from Angle in 2008) and Reno Mayor Bill Cashell. Indeed, on election night, Angle’s unexpectedly poor showing in Washoe County (which contains Reno) contributed heavily to Reid’s relatively comfortable victory. Second, some of Reid’s commercials emphasized his ‘‘clout,’’ or his ability to bring tangible benefits to Nevada. Reid’s positive commercials pointed to particular projects (often involving public investment in ‘‘green energy’’) that drew attention to his support for the environment, as well as the claim that his actions had brought jobs to Nevada. In an anti-incumbent campaign season, Reid made the claim that his leadership position in the Senate was too important to Nevada to be abandoned in favor of a newcomer.

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Third, Reid worked hard to mobilize the Hispanic vote. Mexican Americans constitute a large but traditionally under-mobilized voting bloc in Nevada. Reid advertised heavily in Spanish-language media and emphasized his support for the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, which would have granted citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants who attend college or serve in the U.S. military. This could be regarded as a high-risk strategy, given the popularity of a controversial measure in neighboring Arizona that would increase state support for enforcement of immigration laws. Nevertheless, Reid saw clearly the importance of the Hispanic vote and made a clear, unambiguous appeal for the support of Mexican Americans. Angle helped Reid’s effort to mobilize a large Latino vote when caught on camera telling a group of Hispanic students, ‘‘Some of you look a little more Asian to me.’’ All of this, of course, paled in comparison to the importance of Reid’s ‘‘ground game.’’ Since 2006, the Democratic Party has had a registration advantage in Nevada and has had an organizational advantage as well. Senator Reid supplemented the efforts of the culinary workers’ union with his own impressive GOTV (get out the vote) efforts and successfully mobilized his supporters. Thus, Senator Reid’s victorious reelection campaign had three essential components. First, Reid was successful in exploiting the weaknesses of his opponent. Reid was perhaps fortunate to have drawn a relatively weak opponent, but, during the general-election campaign, a Reid victory was by no means a foregone conclusion. Second, Reid boldly embraced two campaign themes that could be regarded as countercyclical: the importance of experienced leadership in bringing benefits to Nevada (denounced by Angle and others as ‘‘pork-barrel’’ spending), and a clear effort to attract and mobilize the votes of Mexican Americans (despite the strong possibility of countermobilization among Anglos). Finally, Reid gained reelection in the ‘‘old-fashioned way,’’ by identifying his supporters and encouraging them to vote. In terms of campaign expenditures, both campaigns raised and spent about the same amount of money (Myers 2010b). The Nevada Senate race was a high priority for both parties, and the contest attracted a good deal of money from the national parties, as well as substantial expenditures by independent organizations. Given the relatively low cost of television advertising in Nevada, the airwaves were virtually saturated by advertisements for Reid and Angle, and it seems very unlikely that money was a decisive consideration in the outcome. Following the election, Angle announced the formation of a new Tea Party organization, called the ‘‘Patriot Caucus,’’ which is intended to help elect

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conservative candidates and to defeat President Obama in 2012 (Ralston 2010b; Myers 2010a).

Other Races The importance of the Tea Party Movement in Nevada seems largely confined to the race for the U.S. Senate. In other races, the efforts of the Tea Party Express, or prominent figures associated with the Tea Party Movement (such as DeMint and Palin), were either inconsequential or nonexistent. In the Third U.S. House District, former Republican state senator Joe Heck defeated one-term Democratic incumbent Dina Titus.4 Titus had supported many aspects of President Obama’s agenda (including the final version of the healthcare package) and was targeted for defeat by the Tea Party Express. Heck did speak at one Tea Party Express rally and received the TPE endorsement, but did not receive endorsements from Palin or DeMint. In an election as close as the race for Nevada U.S. House District Three (settled by about twelve hundred votes), it is difficult to eliminate any possible factor in explaining the outcome. However, the verbal support Heck received from the Tea Party Express was not a prominent feature of the campaign for the House seat, and there is no evidence that the endorsement had any effect on the outcome. In the gubernatorial race, incumbent Governor Jim Gibbons was defeated in the Republican primary by Federal Judge Brian Sandoval, who went on to defeat Democratic Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid, who is the son of Senator Harry Reid. Sandoval is widely considered more moderate than Gibbons and did not receive support from Tea Party organizations or activists in either the primary or general elections. One of the more intriguing features of the 2010 elections in Nevada was the nearly complete lack of public association between the Reid campaigns. While I (of course) have no access to any private communications between father and son, the family connection between the senatorial and gubernatorial races was not the subject of commentary by either of the Democratic candidates, nor was the relationship a subject of Republican campaign communications (see Schoenmann 2010). The question of whether voters made the connection and whether the connection affected the outcome of either race must await more systematic inquiry and is well beyond the scope of this chapter. Nevertheless, the fact that Harry Reid won his Senate race and Rory Reid experienced a decisive defeat in his race for governor suggests that Nevada voters approached the two contests independently.

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Ted G. Jelen

Conclusion In contemporary Nevada politics, it is a cliche´ that ‘‘Harry Reid is a poor campaigner, but runs a good campaign.’’ Reid’s 2010 race for reelection to the Senate proved to be no exception to this generalization. Reid’s legendary lack of charisma was a prominent feature of his campaign. Indeed, Reid rarely spoke in his own commercials, except to deliver the tagline that ‘‘I’m Harry Reid, and I approve this message.’’ Nevertheless, the Reid campaign was a strategic and tactical success. Strategically, Reid’s ability to emphasize Angle’s negatives was supplemented by bold decisions to emphasize his incumbency and leadership position in the Senate, and to make an explicit appeal for the votes of Hispanics. Both could be considered high-risk decisions, as each entailed a substantial risk of countermobilization. Tactically, Reid’s legendary ‘‘ground game’’ of identifying and mobilizing supporters may have turned a race that appeared to be very close into a comfortable Democratic victory. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the activities of the Tea Party Express may have cost the GOP a Senate seat the party could have won. Although historical counterfactuals are notoriously difficult, it is plausible to assert that Sharron Angle was a substantially weaker candidate than either Sue Lowden or Danny Tarkanian might have been. While Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint did not endorse Angle until after her nomination, the endorsement of the Tea Party Express appears to have been decisive. Given the ideological affinity between a substantial minority of Nevada Republicans and the Tea Party Express, the timely endorsement of the TPE converted the Angle campaign from a long shot to a serious contender. Once nominated, Angle’s extreme and, indeed, eccentric record made her a vulnerable target for an experienced veteran such as Senator Reid.

References Barone, Michael, with Richard E. Cohen. 2009. The Almanac of American Politics, 2010. Washington, D.C.: National Journal Group. Crum, Elizabeth 2010. ‘‘Game Changer? Tea Party Express Endorses Sharron Angle in U.S. Senate Race,’’ http://nevadanewsandviews.com/2010/04/15/4744. Accessed December 8, 2010. Damon, Anjeanette. 2010a. ‘‘The Makeover of Sharron Angle for the General Crowd,’’ http://lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/19/makeover-angle-generalcrowd/. Accessed November 19. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Sharron Angle Retreats a Bit, but Mostly Stands Ground,’’ http://

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www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/june/20/angle-retreats-bit-mostly-stands-ground/. Accessed November 19, 2010. Damon, Anjeanette, and David McGrath Schwartz. 2010a. ‘‘Armed Revolt Part of Sharron Angle’s Rhetoric,’’ http/www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jun/17/senate -race-armed-revolt-angles-rheotoric/. Accessed November 19, 2010. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Sharron Angle Offers Juice to Tea Party of Nevada Opponent.’’ Las Vegas Sun, October 5. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/oct/05/. Accessed November 19, 2010. Damore, David F., Ted G. Jelen, and Michael W. Bowers. 2007. ‘‘Sweet Land of Liberty: The Gay Marriage Amendment in Nevada,’’ in Paul A. Djupe and Laura R. Olson (editors), Religious Interests in Community Conflict: Beyond the Culture Wars, Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 51–71. Dickensheets, Scott. 2010. ‘‘Nevada News—Social-Media Style,’’ Las Vegas Sun, December 17, 1–2. Friess, Steve. 2010 ‘‘Controversial Tea Party Pick Remakes Race to Face Reid,’’ http:// www.aolnews.com/nation/article/tea-party-endorsement-remakes-race-to-face -reid. Accessed December 8, 2010. Mishak, Michael. 2010. ‘‘Sharron Angle Wins: Harry Reid Gets Race He Wanted,’’ http://www.lasvegassun.com.news/2010/june/ 09/angles-win-has-reids-touch. Accessed November 19, 2010. Montopoli, Brian. 2010. ‘‘Sue Lowden Stands by Chicken Health Care Barter Plan,’’ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20003164-503533.html. Accessed December 18, 2010. Myers, Laura. 2010a. ‘‘Angle Starts Patriot Caucus,’’ Las Vegas Review-Journal December 14, 1B. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Reports Show Reid, Angle, Spent Nearly $50 Million,’’ Las Vegas Review-Journal, December 14, 4B. Ralston, Jon. 2010a. ‘‘Sharron Angle’s Political Makeover’’ Las Vegas Sun, June 16. http://www.lasvegasssun.com/news/2010/jun/16/sharon-angles-political-make over/. Accessed November 19, 2010. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Angle Shows (Again) How Politics Can Reward Failure,’’ Las Vegas Sun, December 15: p. 5. ———. 2010c. ‘‘One Word: Preparation,’’ Las Vegas Sun, November 7. http://www .lasvegassun.com/news/2010.nov/07/one-word-preparation/. Accessed November 19, 2010. Sargent, Greg. 2010. ‘‘Angle Dodges Questions about Armed Revolution,’’ http:// www.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/06/angle_dodges_questions. Accessed December 18, 2010. Schoenmann, Joe. 2010. ‘‘Finding the Will to Make Another Name for Himself,’’ Las Vegas Sun, December 20, 1–2. Tetreault, Steve. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Express Targets Titus,’’ Las Vegas Review Journal, April 15, http://www.lvrj.com/news/tea-party-express-targets-titus-90997859.html. Accessed December 28, 2010. Toeplitz, Shira. 2010. ‘‘Angle’s Campaign Sank Candidate,’’ Politico, http://www .politico.com/news/stories/1110/45463.html. Accessed November 29, 2010. Vogel, Ed. 2010. ‘‘Gibbons Appoints Sue Lowden to State Board of Medical Examiners,’’ Las Vegas Review-Journal. December 15, 3B.

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5 ‘‘A Deep Blue Hole’’? California, the Tea Party, and the 2010 Midterm Elections Amy Widestrom and Christopher Dennis

ne of the most discussed features of the 2010 election has been the impact of the Tea Party. At a time when the current president is thought by many voters to have pursued a ‘‘big government’’ philosophy, California has one of the highest unemployment rates in a nation in the midst of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The political environment of the state should be ripe for a movement such as the Tea Party, whose concerns are deficit reduction, reduction of wasteful spending, and shrinking the size of government, as opposed to social issues (Fiorina 2010). Additionally, California has a long history of antitax sentiment (epitomized by passage of Proposition 13 in 1978) and a growing distrust of elected officials and government (Public Policy Institute of California [PPIC] 2002). Just 18 percent of Californians say they trust government to do what is right all or most of the time (PEW Center on the States/PPIC 2010). The state also faces a severe fiscal crisis, making a plurality of Californians want spending cuts and increased efficiency in government. In a poll prior to the 2010 midterm elections, 48 percent of likely voters supported lower taxes and fewer services (PPIC 2010a). While all the above factors should have made California hospitable to the Tea Party Movement, Tea Party candidates, or the Republican Party generally in the 2010 midterm elections, nothing of the kind occurred. The Tea Party was almost a nonfactor in California. The GOP lost all statewide offices (most

O

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Amy Widestrom and Christopher Dennis

by very wide margins) and gained no seats in the state legislature or the congressional delegation. This chapter seeks to explain this outcome, which was unusual in the 2010 midterm elections when compared to election outcomes in other states. Given the political predilections of most Californians, it seems possible that the Tea Party could have had an opening in California to attract voters or at least influence election outcomes, particularly among voters who decline to state a party affiliation on their registration form. This is particularly true because while registration trends among the electorate for the two major parties favor the Democrats, their numbers have declined over the last two decades while registered Independents have increased (PPIC 2010b). When asked about their ideology—liberal, middle-of-the-road, or conservative—40 percent of likely California voters in 2010 identified as conservative, 31 percent liberal, and 29 percent middle-of-the-road (PPIC 2010a). Dissecting these numbers further, more Republican likely voters consider themselves conservative now than did in 2006 (78 percent compared to 65 percent), as do more Independents (31 percent compared to 26 percent). While the plurality of Independents still call themselves moderate (40 percent), and in general lean Democratic rather than Republican (by 38–30 percent), these numbers are not overwhelming (PPIC 2010a). This seems contradictory—there are more registered Democrats but more voters who identify as conservative—but underscores James Stimson’s findings that many voters are symbolically ‘‘conservative’’ (i.e., say they are conservative) but operationally liberal (i.e., favor greater government spending on a variety of domestic programs) (2004, 87–95). Thus, voters who claim to be conservative could easily vote for Democratic candidates, which complicates the California electoral landscape. While Tea Party groups played a role in the Republican primary elections for U.S. senator and governor (Michels 2010), their role in the senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns for the general election was relatively small. Ultimately, while candidates with a message of fiscal conservatism had an opportunity to be successful, they were not, largely due to demographic changes in the state and the fact that socioeconomic factors were strong predictors of voter behavior in 2010 and socioeconomic trends in the state favor the Democratic Party.

Political and Demographic Trends in California When analyzing Democratic Party success in the 2010 California midterm elections, it is important to understand how the demographic changes over

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California, the Tea Party, and the 2010 Midterm Elections

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the last several decades coincide with the political realignment. Over the past century, the Democrat Party has championed civil rights, the working class and working poor, environmental protection, and immigrants newly incorporated into the American polity, while the Republican Party has favored limited national government, personal freedom, lower taxes, and states’ rights (Bartels 1998; Carmines and Stimson 1989; Gerring 1998; Karol 2009). As a result, those concerned about equal rights, social justice, and environmental issues, often the more highly educated, women, and nonwhite voters, tend to vote for the Democratic Party (Greenberg 2004; Hopkins et al. 2008). Demographic and political trends in California have changed substantially in the post–World War II era, reflecting a shift toward the Democratic Party. The white population was as high as 95 percent in 1950 but has plummeted to just over 40 percent in 2010. While the current African American population in the state mirrors that of the nation, approximately 12 percent, the Latino population has soared from an estimated 6 percent in 1940 to 37 percent in 2010 (see figure 5.1). California also has one of the more highly educated, wealthy, and liberal electorates in the country; almost 30 percent of the population has a bachelor’s degree or higher (compared to 27.5 percent nationally, in 2007), the median income in the state is $61,000 (compared to $52,000 nationally, in 2008), and polls show Californians are strong supporters of government protection of minority rights, abortion rights, gun control, and environmental protections. Additionally, as California has a disproportionate share of minority groups, especially Latinos, and a more highly edu-

FIGURE 5.1. Percentage White, African American, and Latino Population in California, 1900–2010

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cated electorate, it more strongly opposes anti-immigrant measures than most states with large immigrant populations. Examining voting patterns in light of this analysis reveals that voter behavior in California bears out a shift toward a more Democratic electorate. The statewide vote in presidential elections is a good summary statement of partisan orientation. In every presidential election between 1984 and 2008, the Democratic nominee received a greater percentage of the vote in California than in the nation as a whole with the difference increasing over time. Between 1984 and 1996, the Democratic presidential vote in California averaged approximately two percentage points greater than in the nation. By contrast, from 2000 to 2008, the Democratic presidential vote averaged approximately 6.4 points greater in California than it did nationwide. This increase in the Democratic percentage of the presidential vote coincided with the alignment of the Democratic Party on key issues that resonated with California voters: pro-choice on abortion, pro–gun control, and pro–environmental protection. As these positions tend to be supported by more-highly educated voters, the increased share of the Democratic presidential vote in California should come from counties with higher levels of education; and, indeed, the increase in the Democratic percentage of the twoparty vote for president from 1988 to 2008 correlates at 0.63 with the percentage of the county population twenty-five and older who have at least a bachelor’s degree. These numbers suggest that the shifting demographic and political trends in California also seem to be producing a stronger relationship between socioeconomic factors and Democratic voting. Another important feature of the political environment in Californian is the ballot initiative. These initiatives frequently deal with policies that divide Democrats and Republicans, but it is difficult to use voting results on initiatives to discern the political predilection of the populace because attitudes on initiatives are often shaped by factors other than party identification, such as religious affiliation. They are useful, however, for gaining a better understanding of the relationship between socioeconomic factors, particularly educational attainment, and voter behavior. For example, one of the most important ballot initiatives of the 1960s was Proposition 14 in 1964, which overturned an open-housing law that had been passed by the legislature. The correlation between the vote for Proposition 14 and county educational attainment was 0.20. In 1994, California voters approved Proposition 187, which denied many public services to illegal immigrants. The county vote on Proposition 187 was strongly and negatively correlated with county educational attainment at 0.80. Similarly, in 1996, passage of Proposition 209 prohibited the state from using affirmative action in the operation of public employment, education, or contracting. As

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with Proposition 187, the correlation between the vote in favor of Proposition 209 and county educational attainment was strongly and negatively correlated at 0.67. Finally, in 2008, voters approved Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage. Again, the countywide vote was strongly and negatively associated with county educational attainment, 0.85. While in each instance the more socially tolerant position lost, the association between education and ‘‘tolerant voting,’’ or voting ‘‘no’’ on these propositions, was strong and grew stronger in the 1990–2010 period. Environmental policy also has become important in California. Two unsuccessful initiatives with important environmental ramifications for the state were Proposition 128 (frequently referred to as ‘‘Big Green’’) in 1990 and Proposition 23 in 2010. Proposition 128 sought to limit greenhouse gas emissions, offshore oil drilling, and ban the sale of thirty-two pesticides linked to cancer or birth defects (Miller 1990). Proposition 23 would have suspended California’s landmark law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The countywide vote in favor of the ‘‘pro-environmental’’ position on both initiatives (yes on 128 and no on 23) correlated very strongly correlated with educational attainment: Proposition 128 at 0.85 and Proposition 23 at 0.81. Finally, tax burden and economic considerations have long been important in California politics. One of the most important ballot initiatives, Proposition 13, passed in 1978, greatly reduced property tax revenue for state and local governments, limited future property tax increases, and required that future tax increases gain two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature. Many analysts trace much of California’s current budget difficulties to Proposition 13. The county vote on Proposition 13 correlated with educational attainment at 0.23. In 2010, the correlation between the county vote on Proposition 25, which reduced the legislative vote necessary to pass a state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority, and educational attainment was 0.72. A similar relationship emerges when we examine the 2010 county vote for Proposition 26, which increased the legislative vote necessary to increase many fees from a simple majority to two-thirds, and educational attainment. These factors correlate with each other strongly, and negatively, at 0.79. All of this suggests that California has changed in important and significant ways over the last several decades, and this demographic and ideological change has occurred as the two parties have realigned and solidified around certain social groups and issues. California is now a majority-minority state, with key segments of the population supporting government protection of minority rights and immigrant-friendly immigration policies. The state is also highly educated and wealthier, with residents committed to abortion rights, gun control, and environmental regulation. These demographic and

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ideological shifts have made California ‘‘a deep blue hole’’ for the Republican Party (Decker 2010a). Importantly, however, fiscal policy remains the one policy arena in which a conservative candidate or a conservative movement could gain a foothold. Targeting the state’s fiscal crisis was a key strategy of Republicans in 2010. Yet, even in this arena, even in an election year primed for GOP victory, Republicans could not win in California. The remainder of this chapter will examine the 2010 primary and general elections to determine why Republicans were not successful and what, if any, effect the Tea Party Movement had.

The 2010 Midterm Elections Democratic primary races were largely uneventful; Senator Barbara Boxer handily won renomination for a fourth term with 81 percent of the vote, while Edmund G. ‘‘Jerry’’ Brown won the primary for governor with 84.4 percent of the vote. Meg Whitman, in her bid for the Republican nomination for governor, was not as lucky. Whitman’s main opponent was Steve Poizner, who only received 26.7 percent of the vote but pushed Whitman to take more conservative positions on several issues than she had originally intended. While Whitman’s campaign staff understood that to win the primary she needed to cater to the conservative Republican primary electorate, they also knew that winning the general election would require her to moderate on several key issues, including immigration and abortion. At the start of her campaign, Whitman, drawing on her experience as CEO of eBay, portrayed herself as a moderate, pragmatic candidate who would go to Sacramento to focus on jobs, controlling government spending, and education (Decker 2010b). ‘‘The state’s political gurus . . . held that Poizner, with his sharp move to the right on a host of issues, had little chance of winning in November. Whitman, the storyline went, could cobble together a coalition of voters: conservatives and moderates, Republicans and nonpartisans and a smattering of Democrats, more women and more Latinos than side with the typical Republican candidate’’ (Decker 2010b). Decker also notes that this same coalition propelled Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and former governor Pete Wilson to victory. Yet Poizner’s more conservative positions and his repeated attacks that Whitman was not conservative enough on key issues forced Whitman to tack right in the days leading up to the primary. She sought and secured the endorsements of former governor Pete Wilson, former vice president Dick Cheney, and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, all of whom

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appeared in television ads on Whitman’s behalf (Decker 2010b). Whitman led Poizner in the polls, but she sacrificed a lead over Brown in a hypothetical matchup for the general election. Her response to Poizner secured her nomination among the Republican Party base but ultimately undid her chances of assembling a winning coalition in the general election—Whitman simply could not ‘‘figure out a way to scramble back to the political center’’ in order to win the Independent voters or enough Democrats to put her over the top in November (Decker 2010b). Unlike GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, Whitman did not actively seek the support of the Tea Party Movement or Sarah Palin. Rather, it appears that Whitman tried to walk a line between running on solid conservative credentials and pragmatic business experience that would allow her to work across the aisle to solve California’s problems. Despite taking a liberal position on abortion (Whitman is pro-choice), she was unable to make sufficient inroads in more well-educated Democratic constituencies. County educational attainment correlated strongly with the county vote for Brown at 0.68. The Tea Party and Sarah Palin did not have a direct effect on the outcome of the GOP gubernatorial primary or general election, but did play a significant role in the Senate race. Carly Fiorina, widely seen as the favorite among GOP leaders, faced a tougher-than-expected primary challenge from Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore. To win the primary, Fiorina would need to prove her conservative bona fides. Unlike Whitman, Fiorina never attempted to stake out moderate positions on hot-button issues. Her campaign strategy was to establish herself as a solid conservative and use that to distinguish herself from Boxer. Therefore, rather than trying to build a coalition of voters that could defeat Boxer, Fiorina sought to tap and energize those who identified as conservatives. Given that more California voters identify as conservative (40 percent) and middle-of-the-road (31 percent), her strategy seemed reasonable. Fiorina actively campaigned at Tea Party events (Reston and Mehta 2010) and sought Palin’s endorsement to help boost her reputation among initially skeptical conservatives. Palin’s support offset the endorsements that the Tea Party and Jim DeMint gave DeVore. In her endorsement of Fiorina one month before the primaries, Palin said that Fiorina was a ‘‘common sense conservative’’ who is ‘‘pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-military and pro-strict border security’’ (Mehta and Reston 2010). Palin’s endorsement is widely regarded as having helped secure the nomination for Fiorina, and following the endorsement, Fiorina’s campaign sent mailers highlighting Palin’s support (Mehta and Reston 2010). However, the campaign seems to have underestimated the effect of Palin’s unfavorable ratings among Californians on Fiorina’s general-election viability.

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In a Field poll conducted September 14–21, 2010, 53 percent of all voters in California viewed Palin unfavorably, with 79 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of Independents viewing her unfavorably. However, 74 percent of Republicans regarded Palin favorably. Moreover, pluralities of Republican supporters for GOP candidates said that a Palin endorsement would affect them positively, compared to supporters of Brown and Boxer, who said a Palin endorsement would have a strongly negative effect (Field Research Corporation 2010). Boxer capitalized on this by running television ads labeling Fiorina as ‘‘too extreme’’ for California (Mehta and Reston 2010). Several key issues shaped California’s Senate race. Environmental concerns about offshore drilling rose in the wake of the BP oil spill that occurred in April 2010. Fiorina did not change her position on extending drilling for oil off California’s coast, even though other Republicans, including Whitman, changed their stands (Reston and Mehta 2010). Fiorina also took a hardline position in favor of Proposition 23, which would have suspended state greenhouse gas emission laws until unemployment in California dropped below 5.5 percent. In comparison, Whitman took a more moderate position on Proposition 23, saying that the emission reduction requirements should be suspended for one year, rather than pegging suspension to the state’s unemployment rate. Given the importance of environmental issues to California voters, in particular those with higher levels of education, and their general willingness to regulate industry in this policy arena, Fiorina’s positions on these two issues were far more conservative than were those of the general electorate. She also adopted more conservative positions on abortion and immigration than the general electorate and her Republican counterpart in the gubernatorial race. Fiorina supported overturning Roe v. Wade, despite seven in ten Californians supporting abortion rights, and Fiorina supported Arizona’s controversial immigration law (Reston and Mehta 2010). These positions contributed to her general-election loss. Finally, the Senate election provides a good example of how socioeconomic factors shape electoral outcomes. As with the presidential vote in 2008 and the gubernatorial vote in 2010, county educational attainment correlated strongly with the percentage of the general-election vote for Boxer, the Democratic candidate, at 0.72. A similar pattern emerged in the Republican primary for the Senate. Tom Campbell was pro-choice on abortion and was more accommodationist toward illegal immigrants than was Fiorina. The countywide vote for Campbell correlated with countywide educational attainment at 0.62. We can better appreciate the relationship between socioeconomic factors and the Democratic victories in the California midterm elections by examining the relationship between key socioeconomic variables and the percentage

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of the vote the Democratic candidates received in each county. Table 5.1 shows three models assessing the relationship between socioeconomic variables known to shape voter behavior and the vote percentage received in each county by Boxer and Brown (the dependent variables). The independent variables are the percentage of county population twenty-five years and older who held a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2000; median income in the county in 2005; the percentage of the county population that was white in 2005; the percentage of the county population that was sixty-five and older in 2005; and, to control for the effect of the state of the economy, the unemployment rate in 2009. To assess how the magnitude of each effect might have changed over time, the third model estimates the effects of these independent variables on Boxer’s vote percentage in 2004 (the dependent variable). In this last TABLE 5.1 Model of County Vote Percentage for Boxer and Brown in the California Midterm Elections, November 2, 2010, and Boxer, 2004 Variable

Boxer, 2010

% 25 w/Bachelor Degree or Higher, 2000

ß S.E.ß P⬎兩t兩

Brown, 2010

.956*** .237 .000

Boxer, 2004

.937*** .214 .000

.740*** .200 .000

County Media Income (000s), 2005 dollars

.245 .157 .124

.327 .142 .057

.062 .156 .687

% County Population That is White, 2005

.254** .145 .012

.310** .131 .004

.286** .131 .007

% County Population That is 65, 2005

.164 .406 .081

.166 .367 .098

.130 .379 .195

.186 .455 .097

.175 .411 .142

.141 .653 .252

County Unemployment Rate, 2009

Constant

58.4** 18.2 .002

Adjusted R-Squared N

71.1*** 16.5 .000

.65 58

65.8*** 15.5 .000

.60 58

.61 58

* p ⬍ .05, ** p ⬍ .01, *** p ⬍ .001 (two-tailed test)

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model, all independent variables remain the same except the unemployment rate, which captures the county unemployment rate in 2006, the closest date to the election for which we have county-level unemployment data. As table 5.1 shows, the only significant factors affecting the 2010 vote for both Boxer and Brown are educational attainment (the more-highly educated a county’s population, the higher the vote percentage for the Democratic candidates) and the percentage of the white population in the county (the higher the percentage of white residents, the lower the vote percentage for the Democratic candidates). These findings support the claims made throughout this chapter that as California has become more diverse, more educated, and more liberal on social issues, voters have become more Democratic. It is also interesting to compare the findings from the model examining Boxer’s vote percentage in 2010 to the third model examining her vote percentage in 2004. This third model provides further evidence that the magnitude of the effect of educational attainment on the Democratic vote percentage has grown over time; in 2004 a 1-point increase in the population holding a bachelor’s degree or higher produced a 0.74-point increase in the percentage of the vote received by Boxer. In 2010, a 1-point increase produced a 0.96 point increase in Boxer’s percentage of the vote. This provides further evidence of increasing strength over time of the relationship between educational attainment and Democratic vote percentage and liberal positions on voter initiatives presented earlier in the chapter. Ultimately, then, the 2010 midterm elections in California were shaped by the candidates’ electoral strategies, key social issues, and socioeconomic factors. Moreover, while it is important to note the effect that the Tea Party had on the GOP Senate primary, a more important factor to consider is California’s changing demographic and ideological characteristics and how these attributes map onto broader changes in the two major political parties

Conclusion These results from partisan voting and ballot initiatives show that broad political trends in the United States and California have aligned to create Democratic Party dominance in the state with an increasing relationship between socioeconomic factors, specifically education, and political behavior in California elections. This raises important issues for the Democratic Party. First, the Democratic Party has greatly improved its position because of the strong support it receives from minority groups, especially Latinos and African Americans, and its greater success with the more-highly educated. The only apparent threat to the dominance of this coalition would be if Latinos

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and African Americans, who tend to be less tolerant of divergent lifestyles (e.g., gay rights and abortion), started to vote Republican in significant numbers. Though, to speculate, the combination of lower-than-average income, which increases the dependence on governmental programs, and the Republican’s anti-immigrant stance, is likely to keep minority groups (especially Latinos) voting Democratic. The Democratic Party’s recent success with more well-educated and upper-income voters, while helpful electorally, may reduce the redistributive power of the Democratic Party. As income and wealth inequality have grown over the last several decades, the wealthy are more likely to provide a greater percentage of the campaign dollars (Bartels 2008; Verba et al. 1995). To the extent that the donor base of the Democratic Party of California becomes wealthier, the Democratic Party may be unable to raise the necessary taxes from these high-income voters in order to have both a progressive state revenue system and pay for programs traditionally identified with the Democratic Party (e.g., education and social welfare). These are important questions and issues facing the Democratic Party, and ones that it will have to address if it hopes to maintain and expand its electoral power in the state. However, California seems reliably Democratic for the near future, and the potential exists—because of demographic, ideological, and socioeconomic trends—for Democrats to maintain a strong hold on the state for years to come.

References Bartels, Larry M. 1998. ‘‘Electoral Continuity and Change, 1868–1996.’’ Electoral Studies 17, no. 3: 301–326. ———. 2008. Unequal Democracy: the Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. California Secretary of State. 2000. ‘‘Report of Registration: Historical Registration Statistics for 60-Day Close,’’ released September 8, accessed at http://www.sos.ca .gov/elections/ror/ror-pages/60day-gen-06/hist-reg-stats.pdf on December 9, 2010. ———. 2010. ‘‘60-Day Report of Registration,’’ released September 3, accessed at http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ror/ror-pages/60day-gen-10/hist-reg-stats.pdf on December 9, 2010. Carmines, Edward G., and James A. Stimson. 1989. Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Decker, Cathleen. 2010a. ‘‘For the GOP, California Is a Deep Blue Hole,’’ Los Angeles Times, November 19, accessed at http://articles.latimes.com/2010/nov/19/local/ la-me-poll-20101119 on November 23, 2010. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Whitman Scoots Right on a Double-Edged Sword,’’ Los Angeles

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Times, May 30, accessed at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-theweek -20100530,0,4210214.story on November 26, 2010. Field Research Corporation. 2010. ‘‘The Field Poll, Release 2361,’’ released on October 6, accessed at http://www.field.com/fieldpollonline/subscribers/Rls2361 .pdf on December 9, 2010. Fiorina, Morris. 2010. ‘‘Analyzing the Tea Party.’’ The Aspen Ideas Institute 2010. Minnesota Public Radio, July 14, accessed at http://minnesota.publicradio.org/ display/web/2010/07/14/midday2/ on December 9, 2010. Gerring, John. 1998. Party Ideologies in America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Greenberg, Stanley B. 2004. The Two Americas. New York: Thomas Dunne Books. Hopkins, David, Aaron Wildavsky, and Nelson Polsby. 2008. Presidential Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. Karol, David. 2009. Party Position Change in American Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Metha, Seema, and Maeve Reston. 2010. ‘‘Sara Palin Speaks to an O.C. Audience Far from California’s Top GOP Candidates,’’ Los Angeles Times, October 17, accessed at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-campaign-20101017,0,5382988.story on November 26, 2010. Michels, Spencer. 2010. ‘‘California Governor’s Race: A Hot Campaign Sans Obama, Tea Party.’’ The Rundown. NPR Newshour. October 8, accessed at http://www.pbs .org/newshour/rundown/2010/10/california-governors-race-a-hot-campaign-sans -obama-tea-party.html on December 9, 2010. Miller, Joanna. 1990. ‘‘Countywide Big Green Initiatives Are Filed,’’ Los Angeles Times, April 27, accessed at http://articles.latimes.com/1990-04-27/local/me -49_1_big-green-initiative on November 26, 2010. Pew Center on the States and Public Policy Institute of California. 2010. ‘‘Facing Facts: Public Attitudes and Fiscal Realties in Five Stressed States,’’ released in October, accessed at http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/ PCS_PPIC.pdf on December 9, 2010. Public Policy Institute of California. 2002. ‘‘Casting a Long Shadow: Californians’ Distrust of Government,’’ released in September, accessed at http://www.ppic.org/ content/pubs/rb/RB_902MBRB.pdf on December 9, 2010. ———. 2010a. ‘‘Just the Facts: California Voter and Party Profiles,’’ released in September, accessed at http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_LikelyVotersJTF.pdf on December 9, 2010. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Just the Facts: California’s Likely Voters,’’ released in September, accessed at http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/jtf/JTF_LikelyVotersJTF.pdf on December 9, 2010. Reston, Maeve, and Seema Mehta. 2010. ‘‘Tactics Split State’s Top Two GOP Contenders,’’ Los Angeles Times, October 11, accessed at http://www.latimes.com/ news/local/la-me-two-paths-20101011,0,5030043.story on November 26, 2010. Stimson, James A. 2004. Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

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Part II Tea Party Favorites

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6 Florida A Plummeting Economy, Tea Parties, and Palin Give GOP a Clean Sweep Susan A. MacManus with the assistance of David J. Bonanza and Mary L. Moss

n November 3, 2010, Floridians woke up to the news that Republicans had won both the U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races, along with all three statewide cabinet posts and four congressional seats held by Democratic incumbents. The GOP also picked up two state senate seats and five state house seats. Democrats came up empty-handed, unable to distance themselves from a worsening economy, an increasingly unpopular president, and a Democratically controlled Congress perceived as unable and/or unwilling to reverse the economic downturn, which was particularly severe in Florida. Bad economic times make voters more critical of government in general, more resentful of elected officials with their better-than-average pensions, pay, and healthcare plans, and more frustrated with the seeming snail’s pace of economic recovery. The blame game starts and ends with elected officials. The desire to put ‘‘new faces in high places’’ intensifies. Naturally, the drumbeat for change is louder and more intense among those who feel ignored and neglected. They became a majority of the voters in 2010. By election day, the Sunshine State had the nation’s fourth-highest unemployment rate (11.9 percent) and its home foreclosure rate ranked second. The state’s declining economy made it easy to mobilize infuriated citizens. Bound together by a strong antiestablishment sentiment, they gleefully waved

O

— 65 —

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Susan A. MacManus with David J. Bonanza and Mary L. Moss

‘‘Don’t Tread on Me’’ flags and pointed accusatory fingers at an out-of-touch governmental aristocracy they saw bordering on tyranny. The clean sweep by Florida Republicans was driven in part by the tea party movement, energized by the frequent, well-publicized appearances of, and candidate endorsements by the ‘‘Mama Grizzly,’’ Sarah Palin. Tea party– supportive voters, driven by both anger (at Washington and establishment politicians at all levels) and fear (of losing one’s job and/or home), turned out at higher rates than voters supportive of the political status quo. As reported in table 6.1, exit polls revealed that 39 percent of Floridians supported the tea party movement.1 Of those, 86 percent supported Marco Rubio for Senate and 83 percent favored Rick Scott for governor. The GOP’s path to victory was not always clear-cut. In the year before the election, Florida politics took a record number of unexpected twists and turns. The excitement generated by the volatility and unpredictability of the election cycle led the website politico.com to place Florida’s Senate and gubernatorial elections on its national ‘‘top 10 campaigns of 2010’’ list—the Senate campaign ranked first; the gubernatorial campaign fifth (Catanese 2010). Both winning candidates were supported by tea party groups and endorsed by Palin. So, too, were several successful congressional and cabinet candidates including retired Army Lt. Col. Allen West, who became Florida’s first Republican African American congressman since Reconstruction, and Republican Pam Bondi, Florida’s first female attorney general. For the activists, the successes underscored the legitimacy of their movement and priorities. Each of these winning candidates ran as an ‘‘outsider’’ on an antiWashington, get-spending-under-control message. Any lingering doubts about the extent of the influence of tea party activists on Republican successes after the election were quickly dispelled. On November 19, when Florida’s legislature held its organizational session, a delegation of tea party organizers from across the state congregated in the senate committee room. Their purpose was ‘‘to allow legislators to meet the organizers of these groups so they will understand that the Florida Tea Party Network is here for the duration, engaged, watching, and [will] be back in Tallahassee OFTEN’’ (Tea Party Network Press Release, November 16, 2010). Top legislative and party leaders, including the president of the senate and the chair of the Republican Party of Florida, came calling. Each gave a major salute and ‘‘tip-of-the-hat’’ to the conservative activists who helped increase the Republican majority. The new senate president promised not to let this new political capital (a veto-proof legislature) go to waste: ‘‘This is our time. We are going to make the most of it. It begins today.’’ Further verification of the movement’s clout came on December 17, 2010, when CNN announced it would cohost a Republican presidential primary

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Support (39%) Neutral (25%) Oppose (32%)

4 21 41

%

Meek (D)

Source: National exit poll conducted by Edison Research.

Opinion of Tea Party Movement

(% of All Voters)

Views About Government/Politicians

86 43 6

%

Rubio (R)

9 32 52

%

Crist (NPA)

U.S. Senate

1 4 1

%

Other/No Answer

14 48 90

%

Sink(D)

83 47 8

%

Scott (R)

3 5 2

%

Other/No Answer

Governor

TABLE 6.1 Tea Party Supporters Heavily Favored Tea Party/Palin-Endorsed Candidates Marco Rubio and Rick Scott

68


debate in Tampa with the Tea Party Express during Labor Day week 2011. In making the announcement, CNN’s political director described the tea party movement as ‘‘a fascinating, diverse, grassroots force that already has drastically changed the country’s political landscape’’ (March 2010). It was an about-face from the national media’s early characterization of tea party activists and candidates as a bunch of ‘‘right-wing crazies with little political clout.’’

Florida’s Tea Parties: One Official Political Party, Many Grassroots Groups The tea party movement never was a ‘‘singular affair’’ in Florida. The Florida Tea Party, an official political party, was founded in August 2009,2 the first such party in the nation. But at least 245 other active groups across the state were labeled ‘‘tea party’’ organizations. These were quite disparate in name, origin, size, organizational structure, candidate preferences (particularly in congressional races), and top concerns. There was always some controversy about who founded the official Florida Tea Party and for what purposes, although most agree its formation tracked with the national tea party movement’s focus on taxation. The party’s constitution makes it clear that the primary purpose was tax-load reduction: ‘‘The Party is organized to implement and give voice to the principle that the American public has been taxed enough already. . . . [The Party will move] public policy in the direction of reducing the tax load on the American public. To do that, the party will [nominate] candidates for President and VicePresident of the United States, and [support] Party and affiliate party candidates for political office.’’ The Tea Party’s first chair, Orlando lawyer Frederic O’Neal, drew parallels between Florida’s newest party and the Conservative Party in New York’s Twenty-third Congressional District (Condon 2009).3 (In a special election, described in the New York chapter, the Conservative Party’s candidate forged so far ahead in the polls that the more moderate, establishment-supported Republican candidate withdrew from the race.) In announcing the new party, O’Neal railed against ‘‘the current system [that] has become mired in the sludge of special interest money that seeks to control the leadership of both parties’’ (Smith 2009). Both major parties were skeptical of the motivations for this new party. Republicans claimed liberals created it to split the Republican vote (conservatives and moderates) and help elect Democrats.4 Conversely, Democrats saw it as a Republican tool to increase conservative turnout in a midterm election.

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Florida: A GOP Clean Sweep

69

In races where a Tea Party candidate ran against both Republican and Democratic candidates, each major party ran ads designed to ‘‘use’’ tea party voters to their advantage. A prime example of how the major parties employed this strategy was evident in the race for Congressional District Twelve, an open seat vacated by Republican Adam Putnam, who ran for state agriculture commissioner. Tea Party candidate Randy Wilkinson (a former conservative Republican Polk County commissioner) ran against Democrat Lori Edwards (Polk County supervisor of elections) and Republican Dennis Ross (a former state legislator). At one point, the Florida Democratic Party sent a mailer to Republican registrants touting the conservative credentials of Wilkinson. The clear intent was to split the Republican vote, thereby aiding Edwards. The Republican Party of Florida (RPOF) countered with a mailer urging Republicans not to throw away their vote on Wilkinson, a ‘‘fake tea party’’ candidate. It read: ‘‘The truth is this party was founded by a Democrat and has no relation to the conservative Tea Party movement.’’ It wasn’t just the major parties that were skeptical of this new minor party. Longtime grassroots tea party leaders were shocked to learn of its formation, especially when those involved had little previous involvement in tea party activities. Moreover, local tea party groups had consistently stated little interest in becoming a formal political party, instead preferring to influence the policy positions of the two major parties. The chair of the South Florida Tea Party spoke for many of these groups when he said, ‘‘We believe the identity of the Florida Tea Party has been hijacked by cynical foes’’ (Richardson 2010). Demonstrative of the divergence among local tea party–type organizations, the leader from south Florida attributed the founding of the official Tea Party to a group of Republican campaign consultants: ‘‘I think they’re going to try to use this third party for endorsement purposes or they’re going to extort conservative politicians—‘If you don’t buy our consulting services, we’ll run a Tea Party candidate against you.’ ’’ This view got less attention than the one linking the founding to Democrats, although the GOP intimidation theory was embraced by the Tea Party chair (O’Neal), who saw ‘‘Republican front organizations’’ as wanting ‘‘to corral the Tea Party movement’’ (Richardson 2010). Contradictions about the motives and political leanings of the Tea Party founders aside, many local tea party groups, like the Florida Tea Party Patriots, made it clear that they were a genuine tea party group, not one connected with the ‘‘fake tea party.’’ Tea party activists constantly chastised the press for not drawing a better distinction between the political party and the grassroots-led movement: ‘‘I wish the media would quit calling the folks that

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started the political party ‘tea party organizers.’ They have never planned a Tea Party, they just tried to use our movement’s name. Thankfully nobody is falling for it’’ (Republican Party of Florida 2010).5 The RPOF successfully contrasted the Florida Tea Party with the broader tea party movement fueled by local grassroots groups in opposing Tea Party candidates in congressional and state legislative races. One postelection analysis (November 2010) detailed the effectiveness of the tactic: The tea party, the movement, had a great week. The Tea Party, the party, not as much. Members of the loosely organized and hard-to-define tea party movement were generally jubilant with Tuesday’s election with conservatives backed by the anti-spending, small government crowd having success around the country [and in Florida with wins by Marco Rubio and Rick Scott]. But for the Florida Tea Party, an official political party that tried to capitalize on the national tea party tide, Tuesday was rough—none of its candidates in the state were elected. (Peltier 2010)

The official Tea Party had three candidates running for Congress, fifteen state legislative candidates, and a candidate for commissioner of agriculture. In summary, there were some commonalities among the grassroots groups, most notably concerns about the direction of the country, the expansion of government, out-of-control spending, and a rising national debt. However, among Floridians at large, far less consensus existed about specific priorities of the tea party movement than about an ineffective, unresponsive, overly partisan Congress that could not stay focused on addressing the pressing issues of unemployment and home foreclosures. The ‘‘revolution’’ against Washington was bigger than the tea party movement alone, even though one of the most effective revolutionary leaders, Sarah Palin, strongly embraced tea party principles and was an effective voice for the movement overall.

Palin Power in Florida Over the course of the 2010 election, Sarah Palin became ‘‘a synonym for tea party power, thanks in large part to her high-profile endorsements of insurgent conservative candidates’’ (Dinan and Lengell 2010). In addition, she could generate large crowds and help with fund-raising. All were evident in Florida. By election day, Palin had endorsed tea party favorites Marco Rubio (U.S. Senate), Allen West6 (U.S. House District Twenty-two), Daniel Webster (U.S. House District Eight), Sandra ‘‘Sandy’’ Adams (U.S. House District Twenty-

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four), Steve Southerland (U.S. House District Two), Rick Scott (governor) and Pam Bondi (attorney general). All are anti-Washington Republican candidates who pulled major upsets against formidable opponents either from within the party (Rubio initially, Scott, Adams, Bondi) and/or from an independent (Crist) or a Democrat (all the others). A postelection New York Times article described Palin as ‘‘the Republican Party’s most powerful kingmaker and the voice of the newly empowered Tea Party movement’’ (Shear 2010). Palin was the headliner at the Republican Victory Rally held in Orlando on October 23. The packed event, with over two thousand attendees, featured Rubio,7 who, like Palin, whipped the tea party–dominated crowd into a frenzy with anti-Washington rhetoric. Sharing the stage were Sandy Adams (challenging Democratic incumbent Suzanne Kosmas), Dennis Ross (running for Congress, House District Twelve) and Sandy Webster, wife of Daniel Webster, who was unable to attend but was a hero among the crowd for running against Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson. Also present were Adam Putnam (GOP agriculture commissioner candidate) and Jeff Atwater (GOP candidate for chief financial officer). Although the latter two were never formally endorsed by Palin, their willingness to share a stage with her did not go unnoticed by attendees. Noticeably absent were Palin endorsees Scott and Bondi, who were in tighter races than were the others, and looking for support from moderates and Independents (Deslatte 2010). Polls showed that Palin had little sway with Independent voters.8 Independents took on added importance when Governor Charlie Crist abandoned the Republican Party to run for Senate as an Independent after it appeared he would lose the GOP primary to Rubio, the former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives from Miami.

The Rise of Marco Rubio: Florida’s Fascinating Three-Way Race for the U.S. Senate Gov. Crist’s Independent bid made the three-way race for Florida’s Senate seat one of the nation’s premier contests. The race launched tea party–backed candidate Rubio into stardom on the national stage. The race captured national and international attention, in part because of the racial/ethnic diversity of the candidates running to represent the nation’s fourth-largest state. Cuban American Rubio (R), African American Kendrick Meek (D), and the grandson of a Greek immigrant, Charlie Crist (NPA), reflected the state’s diversity. The contest also raised the question of whether a popular statewide elected

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official (Crist) could abandon a major party and win an important statewide office as an Independent. Had Crist succeeded at the same time more voters were labeling themselves Independents, it would likely have prompted Independent candidacies in other states. The major political parties were crossing their fingers that it wouldn’t happen, while Independents were hoping it would. Postelection analyses credited the tea party movement and endorsements from powerful conservatives like Sarah Palin and GOP U.S. Senator Jim DeMint9 for Rubio’s rise to power (Salant 2010; Swaine 2010). There certainly were more conservative voters in 2010 than in 2008.

Similar Vote Patterns in U.S. Senate and Gubernatorial Races Exit polls showed an older, whiter, more-conservative, and more-female electorate than in 2008—a typical pattern for a midterm election. However, falloff among younger voters was sharper than usual, resulting in nearly twothirds of the electorate being fifty or older. Boomers were angry that the declining economy would delay their retirement, while retirees worried about the impact of the national debt on the economic futures of their children and grandchildren. What is striking and quite revealing is the geographic pattern of the vote as reported in table 6.2. Support for Rubio and Scott was strongest in the rural panhandle, still reeling from the economic fallout from the BP oil spill. Residents, livid over the slow pace of promised reimbursements, laid the blame squarely in the lap of the Obama administration. So, too, did Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink and other Florida Democrats who lost, including Congressional District Two incumbent Allen Boyd, who lost his panhandle seat to Steve Southerland. Sink accused the White House of being ‘‘tone-deaf.’’ ‘‘They weren’t interested in hearing my opinion on what was happening on the ground with the oil spill,’’ she said in a postelection interview with Politico (Martin 2010). Rubio and Scott also won many of the state’s suburban counties, which have higher-than-state-average home-foreclosure rates. Crist carried four counties (Palm Beach, Broward, Leon, and Pinellas). Meek won only one— Gadsden—the state’s lone majority-black county. Crist’s better showing in south Florida’s large Democratic strongholds was evidence of the schism within the party over the Meek candidacy. Sink won all six of the state’s most populated counties (Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Orange). However, the low turnout in these urban counties

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26 21 13

Urban (26%)

Suburban (58%)

Rural (4%)

61

50

37

%

Rubio (R)


%

Type of Geography

Meek (D)

23

28

35

%

Crist (I)

U.S. Senate

3

1

2

%

Other/No Answer

35

47

58

%

Sink (D)

TABLE 6.2 Candidate Preference by Voter Geographical Location

61

50

39

%

Scott (R)

Governor

4

3

3

%

Other/No Answer

74


with larger concentrations of young and minority Democrats, who did not vote at the same rate as in 2008, was offset by the considerably higher turnout in the rural and suburban areas experiencing major fiscal stress.

The Tea Party’s Antiestablishment Message Was an Easy Sell in the Great Recession The sagging economy, TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program), the economic stimulus package, bailouts, the exploding national debt, and Obamacare made Democrats easy targets in a state experiencing unusually high levels of economic stress. The vote patterns were practically the same for statewide races at the top of the ballot all the way down to local contests, driven in large part by unemployment and foreclosure rates that continued to creep up during the election year. The voting enthusiasm gap between Florida Republicans and Democrats widened as tea party activists and sympathizers gained momentum, spurred on by the fiery and feisty Palin and other antiestablishment figures. Independents joined Republicans in condemning Washington for being out of touch with everyday citizens. With so many Floridians fearful of losing their jobs and homes, it was hardly surprising that the vote patterns for Rubio, Scott, and GOP victors in cabinet, congressional, and legislative races were quite similar, with support for Rubio being stronger than for Scott. That some voters were less than enthusiastic toward Scott but still voted for him, even with the harsh criticisms of his business practices, shows the extent to which economic anxieties made them receptive to a political novice promising to put Floridians back to work.10 Exit poll results in table 6.3 show most Floridians, whose family situation had worsened, were worried about foreclosures and economic conditions, saw the economy as the most important issue, viewed the U.S. economy as in a long-term decline, and believed that cutting taxes or reducing the federal budget deficit should be the highest priority for the new Congress, voted for both Rubio and Scott. (There were no exit polls on the other races, although it is highly likely the same patterns would be evident.)

Negative Views of Washington As shown in table 6.4, most Rubio and Scott voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. They disapprove of how President Obama is

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Yes (45%) No (54%)

Yes (86%) No (13%)

Yes (69%) No (29%)

Normal Downturn (23%) Long-Term Decline (73%)

Cut Taxes (18%) Reduce Deficit (34%) Spending to Create Jobs (42%)

Worried about Foreclosure for Self or Relative

Worried about Economic Conditions

Economy as Most Important Issue

U.S. Economy Is in . . .

Highest Priority for Next Congress

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PS

73 63 27

13 32

58

16 11

25

50 46

53 15

55 43

24 61 45

%

Rubio (R)

34

20 22

17 47

21 20

39 15 21

%

Meek (D)


Better (11%) Worse (44%) Same (44%)

(% of All Voters)

Family Financial Situation

Economic Concern

40

22

13

24

39

29 31

29 38

20 35

35 23 32

%

Crist (NPA)

U.S. Senate

1

2

3

2

2

1 1

1 N/A

4 2

2 1 2

%

Other/No Answer

68

36

24

39

73

47 49

42 83

41 55

30

62

73

58

23

51 46

55 14

55 42

27 63 45

%

70 35 53

Scott (R)

%

2

2

3

3

4

2 5

3 3

4 3

3 2 2

%

Other/No Answer

Governor Sink (D)

TABLE 6.3 Economic-Related Voting Patterns Similar for Marco Rubio and Rick Scott

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Satisfied/Enthusiastic (28%) Angry/Dissatisfied (70%)

Opinion of Federal Government

Expand It (30%) Leave it As is (19%) Repeal It (44%)

Governor

48 3 N/A

8 86 N/A

13 25 85

49

18 42 32 2

9 86

15 64

20 70

8 81

9 71

%

44 2

39 12

35 10

43 2

46 7

%

43 9 N/A

43 41 13

30

46 10

46 21

42 19

47 15

44 19

%

1 2 N/A

2 2 N/A

3

1 2

N/A 3

3 1

2 2

1 3

%

85 65 14

43

91 13

82 32

75 26

88 15

90 24

%

14 32 83

51

8 85

15 65

22 71

9 81

8 72

%

1 3 3

6

1 2

3 3

3 3

3 4

2 4

%

Meek (D) Rubio (R) Crist (NPA) Other/No Answer Sink (D) Scott (R) Other/No Answer


Want Senate Democrats (39%) Controlled by . . . Republicans (46%) No Difference (12%)

Healthcare— What Congress Should Do

Helped Economy (33%) Hurt Economy (34%) Made No Difference (30%)

Should Do More (37%) Doing Too Much (56%)

Opinion of Government

Stimulus Package Impact

Approve (45%) Disapprove (54%)

Obama Handling Job as President

Direction Country Right Direction (35%) is Headed Wrong Track (62%)

(% of All Voters)

Views about Government/Politicians

U.S. Senate

TABLE 6.4 Candidate Preference by Voter Views about Government/Politicians


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handling the economy and the government’s extensive involvement in the economy. A majority are angry or dissatisfied with the federal government. A plurality does not believe the economic stimulus package had a positive impact on the economy and wants Congress to repeal the healthcare reform legislation. These anti-Washington voters strongly wanted Florida represented in the U.S. Senate by a Republican rather than an Independent or a Democrat. Many prefer partisan gridlock over a totally Democratically controlled Congress. They also identify with the tea party movement, a key centerpiece of which was a strong anti-Washington, anti-incumbent message. Looking back, it is easy to see that the poor state of Florida’s economy was a powerful mobilizing force that made ‘‘anti’’ messages (antitax, antispending, anti–national debt, antiestablishment, anti-incumbent) an easy sell. Florida’s local tea party activists popularized and promoted the notion of ‘‘sweeping them all out.’’ Not surprisingly, where these groups were most active, turnout was highest, Rubio and Scott had their largest victory margins, and Republicans defeated incumbent Democrats holding congressional and legislative seats.

References Catanese, David. 2010. ‘‘The Top Campaigns of 2010.’’ Politico.com (November 9). Condon, Stephanie. 2009. ‘‘The ‘Tea Party’ Is Now Official in Florida.’’ CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-5591897-503544.html. Deslatte, Aaron. 2010. ‘‘Scott Sits Out Palin-Rubio Victory Rally in Orlando.’’ Orlando Sentinel (October 19). Dinan, Stephen, and Sean Lengell. 2010. ‘‘3 Primaries Post Key Test for ‘Tea Party.’ ’’ Washington Times (August 23). Hunt, Kaise. 2010. ‘‘Meet the House GOP’s Insta-Stars.’’ Politico (November 5). Leary, Alex, and Beth Reinhard. 2010., ‘‘Tea Party Favorite Marco Rubio Walks a Fine Line as Senator.’’ St. Petersburg Times (November 7). March, William. 2010. ‘‘CNN Announces GOP Presidential Debate in Tampa.’’ Tampa Tribune (December 17). Martin, Jonathan. 2010. ‘‘Centrist Dems Rip ‘Tone Deaf ’ White House,’’ Politico (November 8) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1110/44773.html, December 20. Peltier, Michael. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Party Less Successful Than Tea Party Movement.’’ News Service of Florida (November 4). Raju, Manu. 2009. ‘‘Senator Endorses Crist Opponent.’’ Politico (June 15). Republican Party of Florida. 2010. ‘‘In Case You Missed It: Political Tea Party Backed by Alan Grayson,’’ RPOF [email protected] (June 22). Richardson, Valerie. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Identity Theft?’’ Human Events. (February 25)

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http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?printyes&id35765; accessed December 18, 2010. Salant, Jonathan D. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Favorite Rubio Wins Florida Senate Seat, AP Says.’’ Bloomberg Businessweek (November 2); accessed December 22, 2010. Shear, Michael D. 2010. ‘‘Palin’s Endorsements Lay Base for a 2012 Run.’’ New York Times (November 3). Smith, Ben. 2009. ‘‘A Tea Party Registers in Florida.’’ Politico (November 9) http:// www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1109/A_Tea_Party_party_arrives…in_Florida .html, accessed December 19, 2010. Swaine, Jon. 2010. ‘‘Midterms 2010: Marco Rubio’s Victory Fuels Presidential Talk,’’ The Telegraph (November 3) available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/world news/northamerica/usf/us-politics/8 106776; accessed December 22, 2010. Ward, Kenric. 2010. ‘‘Tea vs. TEA: Parties Battle in Court,’’ Sunshine State News, http://www.sunshinestatenews.com/story/tea-vs-tea-parties-battle-court (June 24).

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7 Randslide Tea Party Success in the Establishment’s Backyard Joel Turner and Scott Lasley

entucky represents the political crossroads of America. It is a border state with split loyalties during the Civil War, and people often disagree as to whether it is a southern or midwestern state. The answer is most likely a combination of the two. The state has southern sensibilities, shares many political and demographic characteristics with its neighbors to the south and, as in many southern states, Democratic candidates dominated Kentucky electoral politics during the twentieth century. However, unlike many southern states, there were pockets of Republican strength, and Republicans such as John Sherman Cooper and Marlow Cook scored notable victories in statewide elections. However, no federal official has had more impact on the institutional development of the Republican Party of Kentucky (RPK) than current Senate leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell is the quintessential establishment Republican. He has spent four decades in federal offices, serving as a staffer to Marlow Cook and as an assistant attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 1984. In the Senate, he has been a master of Beltway politics. He has been a defender of earmarks (until recently), has an extensive track record of ‘‘bringing home the bacon’’ to his constituents, and has led Senate Republicans since 2006. Another intriguing aspect of Kentucky is that, as the intersection between midwestern and southern cultures, its politics produces significant interparty and intraparty differences. Recent discussions of expanded gaming at Kentucky’s horse tracks illustrate this. Northern Democrats and Republicans are more likely to support expanded gaming, while southern and rural Demo-

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crats and Republicans tend to oppose it. The Republican-controlled state senate has generally been the firewall against expanding gaming, while, at the same time, former Republican aides and operatives have emerged as leaders in the pro-gaming movement. These intraparty differences were evident in the emergence of Rand Paul as a Tea Party–backed, insurgent Republican candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate election. Paul, an eye surgeon from Bowling Green, was the political embodiment of the frustrated, angry voter. The son of Ron Paul, Texas congressman and 2008 presidential candidate, Rand Paul is neither a political neophyte nor a complete unknown in political circles. Paul positioned himself as a conservative citizen running for office rather than as a career politician, and campaigned vigorously against the ‘‘Washington establishment,’’ an establishment that often included Mitch McConnell. These intraparty differences make Kentucky an interesting case to study the interplay between the Tea Party and the establishment in the 2010 election. Paul had to overcome a number of obstacles on the way to the U.S. Senate. Ultimately, the chain of events that occurred set in motion a tidal wave that made a seemingly improbable victory an inescapable conclusion. The Tea Party played a key supporting role in this drama. Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint also contributed to Paul’s success. However, at the end of the day, this election had more to do with Ron Paul and Mitch McConnell than it had to do with Palin and DeMint, and as much to do with 2008 as with 2010.

Softening of Support for Mitch McConnell Statewide elections of 2003 and 2004 represented the beginning of what should have been the best of times for the RPK. In many ways, it represented a validation of McConnell’s efforts to build the RPK. In 2003, Kentuckians elected Ernie Fletcher, the first Republican governor in thirty-two years, and several promising young Republican candidates to statewide office. Most promising among these was northern Kentucky attorney Trey Grayson, elected secretary of state. With degrees from Harvard and the University of Kentucky Law School, Grayson had all the makings of a rising star in state and national politics. However, the tide started to shift. On the positive side of the ledger, President George W. Bush won a landslide victory in the state, and Geoff Davis’ victory in the Fourth District gave Republicans a four-to-two congressional delegation advantage. However, several events dampened this success. First, Fletcher’s 2003 gubernatorial opponent, Ben Chandler, succeeded him in

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Kentucky’s Sixth District. In addition, Fletcher encountered significant opposition to his budget proposals and reforms during the 2004 legislative session. These reforms met so much opposition that Fletcher’s brother, a state senate candidate, distanced himself from the governor on the proposals (Biesk 2004). Finally, U.S. Senator Jim Bunning faced a surprisingly difficult race against underfunded and little known State Senator Daniel Mongiardo. Several campaign gaffes and an overall sluggish performance forced Bunning to enlist the aid of McConnell and his considerable political resources to ensure victory. Problems for Republicans continued in 2005 when the state’s attorney general investigated whether Governor Fletcher’s hiring practices violated the state’s merit system, which resulted in grand jury indictments against Fletcher and several members of his staff. Fletcher pardoned his staff members and eventually reached a deal to end the investigation, but the scandal led many Republicans to question his ability to win reelection in 2007 (Alessi 2005; Alford 2006). Former congresswomen Anne Northup, who lost in 2006, challenged Fletcher in the Republican primary. Although he did not publicly support Northup’s primary effort, the consensus is that McConnell encouraged her candidacy (Slevin 2007). Fletcher survived the primary but ultimately lost to Democrat Steve Beshear. Despite Fletcher’s defeat, Secretary of State Grayson easily won reelection. The convincing win elevated his status in Kentucky Republican politics. Difficulties specifically emerged in 2008 for McConnell. Trying to capitalize on national anti-Republican sentiment, Democrats targeted McConnell with their ‘‘Ditch Mitch’’ campaign, spending a significant amount of time and money in the state. McConnell countered this by positioning himself as an integral part of the Washington establishment and touting his track record of delivering for the state, which proved to be a double-edged sword. Although it resonated with many Kentuckians who believed the Commonwealth benefited from his influence, it reinforced some fiscal conservatives’ misgivings. Some of these philosophical divisions within the party would reemerge in the 2010 Republican primary. These cracks were compounded by Fletcher loyalists unhappy with what they perceived as McConnell’s abandonment of Fletcher in 2007. Although McConnell ultimately won reelection, it was a much closer campaign than most observers had predicted. Statewide, McConnell ran about 4.5 percentage points behind John McCain. Ironically, the patriarch of the modern-day RPK likely emerged from the 2008 election in a stronger position nationally than statewide. His ability to shape Republican politics in the Commonwealth was weakened, which became apparent with the Senate election of 2010.

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Ron Paul, Bailouts, and TARP Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential bid provided an organizational foundation from which Rand Paul could launch his candidacy, and federal bailouts (most notably the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP]) and soaring budget deficits provided the issues for his Senate campaign. Ron Paul’s presidential run resulted in the development of the Campaign for Liberty,1 which served as the organizational foundation for his candidacy. Rand Paul played an active role in his father’s presidential campaign, and the lessons were not lost on him. Most notably, three things came out of his father’s campaign. First, Paul was able to generate significant national political coverage for his efforts. Although a party outsider, Paul enjoyed many benefits and connections of a political insider. He was a frequent guest on many national news networks and eventually launched both his exploratory and official campaigns on national television. Second, Ron Paul had a national donor base that his son tapped into. Ron Paul’s campaign had figured out how to use money bombs to raise over $1 million (Abdullah 2010). David Adams, Rand Paul’s original campaign manager, spoke often of their plan to nationalize the Kentucky Senate race. In a large part, this became a political reality because that is where Paul’s potential donors were (Van Benschoten 2010). The third benefit of his father’s failed campaign was the national network of supporters loyal to his father and willing to work for him. Ultimately, individuals who had participated in the Campaign for Liberty filled many key campaign positions. Volunteers poured into the state from around the country—most with ties to Ron Paul pre-dating the emergence of the Tea Party. In addition to taking advantage of national and new media, Rand Paul used many of the same avenues that his dad had used to reach out to supporters. An extreme example of this outreach was his presence on the controversial Alex Jones Show. During one appearance, Rand Paul noted that an earlier appearance on the show generated such a response that it overloaded the fund-raising link on his website. While his father’s failed presidential campaign provided much of the organizational foundation for Rand Paul’s Senate run, the emergence of the Tea Party Movement provided an important forum. On April 15, 2009, Rand Paul served as the keynote speaker for a Tea Party rally in his hometown and soon became a crowd favorite at Tea Party rallies across the state (Van Benschoten 2010). While Paul gave the Tea Party Movement a voice and poster boy at the national level, the rallies generated significant media coverage and allowed him to gain recognition across the Commonwealth. This contrasts with the involvement of the Tea Party in the candidacies of politi-

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cians like Sharon Angle and Christine O’Donnell, who relied heavily on the Tea Party for an organizational structure and fund-raising in addition to serving as a forum. While at these Tea Party forums, Paul spoke passionately against bailouts and TARP. Although criticized by some for having extreme views, Paul successfully characterized these policies as transferring wealth from the working poor and middle class to wealthy, irresponsible Wall Street capitalists. Paul contended that the extremists were those who opposed a balanced budget and ran up trillion-dollar deficits.2 These issues were an easy sell to voters in Kentucky, especially in areas where poverty was high and unemployment exceeded the national average. Polling data illustrated that Paul was on the right side in the minds of the voters, as it found that controlling spending by balancing the budget was the thing Kentuckians wanted Congress to do most.3 Also, the overwhelming focus on domestic and fiscal issues was a fortuitous agenda shift for Paul, as it limited debate on policy areas that would likely have proven difficult for him, such as national security.

Bunning Balks Following his narrow victory in 2004 over State Senator Daniel Mongiardo, Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning failed to exhibit any characteristics of a candidate running for reelection. Despite frequent proclamations that he would need to raise $10 million to defend his seat, he did very little fundraising (AP 2009). Although FEC reports suggested that Bunning would not seek reelection, his public comments indicated otherwise. The harder Republican leaders like McConnell and National Republican Senate Committee Chair John Cornyn (TX) tried to nudge him out of the race, the deeper Bunning seemed to dig in his heels. In an interview, Cornyn said ‘‘Sen. McConnell and I both tried to make clear that those folks who are not going to run again would do the rest of us a favor by letting us know early and letting other potential candidates who want to run—give them a chance to get prepared’’ (Kraushaar & Raju 2010). Bunning responded by repeatedly lashing out at Cornyn and McConnell, accusing them of drying up fund-raising sources. Although the rhetoric escalated, Bunning’s fund-raising remained flat. The exact source, or mix of sources, of Bunning’s reluctance to announce his retirement are open to some debate. It was at least partly driven by his anger at being ‘‘forced’’ out by McConnell and other Republican leaders. The growing unpopularity of the federal bailouts may have given Bunning some reason to pause. In 2005, he was the only senator to oppose the nomination

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of Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. When it came time for Bernanke to be confirmed the second time after his reappointment by Barack Obama, twenty-nine colleagues joined Bunning (O’Brien 2009). To some extent, the public reaction to the bailouts vindicated Bunning’s stance over the years. While he was never a particularly active legislator, financial issues were most likely to engage him, and they now dominated the legislative agenda. Ultimately, money speaks louder politically than do words, and Bunning never gained traction in his fund-raising efforts. However, his balking did add several additional dimensions to the 2010 campaign. Sensing that Bunning would not seek reelection, several politicians had their eye on his seat. The most notable candidate to express early interest was Trey Grayson, the prototypical candidate for a Senate seat. He won his second term as secretary of state in 2007 and was so well thought of among his peers that he was named president of the National Association of Secretaries of State in 2009. Grayson also had a history of having broad appeal among both Republican and Democratic voters (Van Heuvelen 2010). A prote´ge´ of Bunning and McConnell, as well as McConnell’s handpicked successor to Bunning, Grayson received Bunning’s blessing to form an exploratory committee to run for his seat in late April 2009. Paul followed with his own exploratory committee in early May. The perceived anointment of Grayson by McConnell did not sit well with other Republicans interested in the position, such as State Senate President David Williams and former ambassador Cathy Bailey. Ultimately, the primary became as much about McConnell as about the candidates who would eventually run.

Primary Election The Republican primary presented a contrast of styles between Paul and Grayson. Paul was out early and often, seeking national media attention and appearing on cable news networks, even those that on the surface appear to be unfriendly to Republicans. In fact, he announced the formation of his exploratory committee and his candidacy on the Rachel Maddow Show. The Paul campaign also took advantage of news media and kept followers abreast of almost every move he made. Campaign manager David Adams provided almost a running play-by-play of activities on Facebook. Grayson, however, followed a strategy very similar to that used by McConnell in previous races. This was not a surprise considering several of Grayson’s key advisors had close ties to McConnell. The Grayson campaign was more low-key, releasing limited information about campaign activities and primarily focusing on

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raising money with the idea of crushing the opponent. While the Paul primary campaign was pretty close to an open book, the Grayson campaign was a buttoned-up affair. Paul worked to nationalize the campaign with regard to issues and fundraising. He relied on money bombs and out-of-state donors, while Grayson relied on more traditional sources of funding, including receiving the support of incumbent Republican U.S. senators and Kentucky state legislators and judge-executives. Grayson also emphasized his status as a fifth-generation Kentuckian. The move likely backfired on Grayson as it opened the door for Paul to question Grayson’s credentials as a Republican. Paul’s retort was that ‘‘he had been in Kentucky longer than Grayson had been a Republican,’’ a reference to Grayson’s support of Bill Clinton while a student at Harvard (Arnold 2009a). The breadth of support for Paul surprised many Republicans across the state. Early conventional wisdom was that Paul would need a third candidate to enter the race to win. Few doubted that he could raise enough money to become a credible candidate, but there was a general sense that there was a ceiling for his support. Acceptance of this conventional wisdom influenced the way the campaign unfolded. Paul’s strategy was evident early. He focused almost exclusively on fiscal and economic issues, while deftly dancing around foreign-policy questions. The political environment and the campaign’s political dexterity made the strategy successful. Unlike the past three election cycles, voters showed almost no interest in noneconomic issues, which allowed Paul to concentrate on the issues he knew best and avoid those where he was vulnerable. The other strategic decision made by the Paul camp that paid major dividends was to run as much against the GOP establishment as against Grayson. The unpopularity of the votes on TARP and federal bailouts created on opening Paul exploited. He derisively referred to a fund-raiser held for Grayson by Republican U.S. senators as the ‘‘Bailout Ball’’ (Arnold 2009b). Paul was praised by Tea Party Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin,4 who enthusiastically endorsed his candidacy. Paul also received a newsworthy endorsement from Dr. James Dobson5 of Focus on the Family (Davis 2010). Meanwhile, Grayson found it impractical, if not impossible, to move from McConnell’s shadow. In a sign of some desperation, McConnell took the atypical step of publicly endorsing Grayson with two weeks left in the race. In a tit-for-tat, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint6 endorsed Paul the day after. If anything McConnell’s endorsement had a reverse impact on the race. Another blow came as Bunning, perhaps in one last attempt to stick it to McConnell, endorsed Paul (Wilson 2010). The strong start by Paul seemed to catch the Grayson camp off guard, and

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the campaign never found its stride. Paul’s early showing led Grayson to get aggressive early by portraying Paul as out of the mainstream. These efforts failed to resonate with many voters and cost Grayson a chance to introduce himself to voters, which allowed the Paul camp to define Grayson to voters. The primary resulted in an overwhelming victory by Paul, as he garnered 59 percent of the vote. Perhaps most telling was Paul’s success in Boone County, Grayson’s home county, which gave its native son only a third of the vote. The convincing nature of Paul’s primary victory is perhaps best summarized by conservative blogger Charles Hurt (2010): ‘‘What we saw Tuesday night in Kentucky was a pure, unalloyed win for the Tea Party in which the son of a quirky Congressman from Texas trounced the establishment candidate who had been groomed and supported by leaders at the highest level of the Republican Party.’’ In his victory speech, Paul’s comments were significant as he frequently mentioned the Tea Party, while almost ignoring the Republican Party. Attorney General Jack Conway emerged from the Democratic primary, narrowly defeating Lt. Governor Daniel Mongiardo. The state and national media largely overlooked the Democratic primary, which is surprising because, following the 2008 election, one would have expected the Democratic primary to be the race that generated the most interest. It had all of the bitterness of a closely contested race without much of the exposure. Despite nearly upsetting Bunning in 2004, Mongiardo could never win over Democratic leaders. With the exception of a tepid endorsement by Governor Beshear, Conway garnered most of the significant state and national endorsements. On election night, Conway won by a mere four thousand votes out of over five hundred thousand cast. With Conway’s victory, Paul’s great election night got even better. After disposing of one establishment candidate in the primary, he was going to run against a second one in the general election.

General Election The general election will primarily be remembered for two major events and two major advertisements. The first event was Paul’s postprimary interview with Rachel Maddow. The topic of the interview was what was perceived by some to be Rand’s controversial stand on the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Paul, who supports a majority of the act, balked at the part that applies to private businesses. Consistent with his general position of less government involvement being a good thing, Paul somewhat clumsily argued that government had no role in forcing private businesses to serve all customers. He was hammered for this stance by the same national media that had elevated him to

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the position of Tea Party star a short time before. This led Paul, who had deftly utilized the national media to this point, to withdraw from the national spotlight. He canceled many national appearances and became what some observers classified as ‘‘the incredible vanishing candidate.’’ Paul joined Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar bin Khaled al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia as the only guests ever to cancel a scheduled appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press (Phillips 2010). Paul’s campaign leadership team underwent wholesale changes with members of the Campaign for Liberty assuming key roles (Alford 2010). Paul’s campaign schedule became classified information, and interviews were limited. In a nutshell, the untraditional campaign started to look more like the traditional McConnell effort Kentucky voters had seen before. While part of this transformation stemmed from the Maddow interview, McConnell’s influence also played a role. The second event that set the tone for the general election was a Republican unity rally, held the Saturday after the primary at the RPK headquarters. While rallies of this variety are typically more style than substance, it symbolized what was happening and what was going to happen for the Paul campaign going forward. A master of political maneuvering, McConnell worked quickly to close ranks with Paul and his Tea Party faction, and for perhaps the first time, Paul embraced formal Republican Party organizations in Kentucky. At the national level, this was done in order for McConnell to build enough support to preempt a potential challenge by Jim DeMint for Republican leadership in the Senate (Seelye 2010). At the state level, McConnell made himself available to Paul and his advisors. McConnell, along with RPK Chair Steve Robertson, worked to marshal state party resources to Paul’s election effort. In conjunction with local party organizations, the RPK opened eight victory offices. As expected, Secretary Grayson said all the right things on election night and at the subsequent rally. With just a few minor exceptions, establishment and Tea Party forces coalesced around a common goal. The Senate race had two key advertisements, both run by the Conway campaign. The first ad focused on Medicare. When asked about fixing healthcare Paul on several occasions broached the idea of raising the Medicare deductible for seniors to $2,000. Conway seized on these statements and ran ads highlighting Paul’s statement and the detrimental effect it would have on Kentucky’s seniors (Jacobson 2010). These ads helped turn a race in which Paul had a significant lead into a virtual dead heat. However, just when the race was starting to tighten, Conway made a key mistake by airing the ‘‘Aqua Buddha’’ ad. This ad referenced reports that, while enrolled at Baylor University, Paul kidnapped a woman and forced her to worship a false idol he called ‘‘Aqua Buddha.’’ It also accused him of being

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a member of a secret society that was kicked off campus because of its derisive views on Christianity. Seen by many observers as going too far, Conway’s campaign was badly damaged from backlash over the ad (Raju 2010). Until the ad was released, Conway was making inroads with voters on Paul’s stance on Medicare, but the Aqua Buddha ad shifted the media’s focus to that controversy. Polling indicated that Conway’s negatives jumped due to the controversy, Paul’s lead increased, and the race was ultimately decided. Conclusion Greg Stumbo, Democratic speaker of the Kentucky General Assembly, stated that ‘‘in a regular election cycle Rand Paul wouldn’t get 15% of the vote’’ (Shapiro 2010). Fortunately for Paul, this was not a regular election cycle. Conditions were right for a candidate like Paul. He positioned himself as the antiestablishment candidate during an antiestablishment year and pulled an upset in the Kentucky Senate election. While Paul gave the Tea Party a visible face and one of its most significant successes, the movement itself played a smaller role in his victory than one would initially suspect. In addition to the support he received from the Tea Party, Paul took advantage of his father’s popularity and organizational backing as well as Mitch McConnell’s declining level of political capital on his way to victory. Even though the Tea Party did not play as significant a role in electing Paul as the national media would lead one to believe, Paul embraced the Tea Party and won, and by doing so, he established that the Tea Party has the potential to be a disruptive force in American politics. References Abdullah, H. (2010, November 13). Paul got 69% of individual contributions from outside Kentucky. Lexington Herald Leader. Retrieved from www.kentucky.com. Alessi, R., and J. Brammer (2005, May 17). Cabinet hirings are under investigation— attorney general looks at alleged transportation violations. Lexington HeraldLeader. Retrieved from www.kentucky.com. Alford, R. (2006, August 25). Deal struck to end case against Fletcher—Governor must now try to rebuild his reputation. Kentucky Post. ———. (2010, May 26). Rand Paul planning campaign staff shake-up. Lexington Herald Leader. Retrieved from www.kentucky.com. AP. (2009, May 6). Money may force Bunning to drop re-election bid. Washington Examiner. Retrieved from www.washingtonexaminer.com. Arnold, J. (2009a, November 5). KY GOP Senate fight highlights bigger battle within Republican Party. WHAS11 Louisville. Retrieved from www.whas11.com.

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———. (2009b, November 18). Rand Paul lays down debate gauntlet for Grayson. WHAS11 Louisville. Retrieved from www.whas11.com. Biesk, J. (2004, October 30). Fletcher name chafes brother. Cincinnati Enquirer. Retrieved from www.enquirer.com. Davis, S. (2010, May 3). Dobson retracts Grayson support, endorses Rand Paul. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from www.wsj.com. Hurt, C. (2010, May 20). Once sneering big shots must now give ‘‘Tea’’ service. New York Post. Retrieved from www.nypost.com. Jacobson, L. (2010, October 13). Politifact: Ad that says Rand Paul has suggested $2,000 Medicare deductible is mostly true. St. Petersburg Times. Retrieved from www.tampabay.com. Kraushaar, J., and M. Raju. (2009, January 22). GOP pressures Bunning to quit. Politico. Retrieved from www.politico.com. O’Brien, M. (2009, December 3). Bunning places second hold on Bernanke. The Hill.com. Retrieved from www.thehill.com. Phillips, K. (2010, May 21). Paul cancels Sunday TV appearance. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com. Raju, M. (2010, October 26). ‘‘Aqua Buddha’’ ad backfires on Jack Conway. Politico. Retrieved from www.politico.com/news. Seelye, K. (2010, October 3). For Tea Party candidate, time to temper message. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com. Shapiro, W. (2010, October 23). Rand Paul stars in the movie ‘‘The Candidate Vanishes’’ and other Kentucky tales. Politics Daily. Retrieved from www.politicsdaily .com. Slevin, P. (2007, May 22). Governor’s race splits Kentucky GOP. Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com. Van Benschoten, A. (2010, April 5). Rand Paul’s political rise surprises even those in Bowling Green. Louisville Courier-Journal. Retrieved from www.courier-journal .com. Van Heuvelen, B. (2010, May 14). How Rand Paul became the Tea Party’s Obama. Salon.com. Retrieved from www.salon.com. Wilson, Reid. (2010, April 15). Bunning snub hurts Grayson, aimed at McConnell. National Journal. Retrieved from www.nationaljournal.com.

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8 Ron Johnson The Accidental Tea Partier Geoffrey Peterson

eading into the 2010 election cycle, many people expected that incumbent Senator Russ Feingold would once again face an uphill battle for reelection. Feingold had a long history of close races in his previous runs for Senate (his largest margin of victory, 2004, was 12 percent), especially compared to his fellow Democratic senator from Wisconsin, Herb Kohl, who demolished his Republican opponent in 2006 by a margin of 67 percent to 29 percent. Feingold’s situation was made even more precarious by the overall mood of the state, perhaps most strikingly demonstrated by President Obama’s plummeting approval ratings. In just a year, Obama’s approval rating in the state had dropped from 70 to 47 percent and his negatives had climbed from 18 to 47 percent. Wisconsin was also one of the states that had yet to rebound from the recession of 2008, further complicating Senator Feingold’s reelection prospects. That said, each of Feingold’s reelection bids had been more successful than the previous one in terms of both total levels of fund-raising and overall margin of victory, and at the beginning of 2010 there was no declared Republican challenger who appeared to have a reasonable chance of winning. Many Republicans in Wisconsin pinned their hopes on a Senate run by former governor and Bush cabinet secretary Tommy Thompson. Thompson’s decision not to run in April left a large vacuum in the Republican field (Spicuzza 2010). Feingold’s chances of reelection had increased significantly. He had a significant advantage over his declared opponents, Dave Westlake and Terrence Wall, who both lacked statewide name recognition. This would all

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change in the space of a month when several new names would enter the fray and change all of the existing dynamics.

The Race Changes . . . and Then Changes Again The first major change came within two weeks of Thompson’s announcement that he would not run. Richard Leinenkugel, the former commerce secretary under Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, announced his run for the Republican nomination for Senate on April 26 (Marley 2010). Leinenkugel was potentially burdened with the liability of having been a Republican cabinet secretary serving under a Democratic governor for eighteen months. That said, Leinenkugel had the enormous advantage of statewide name recognition, primarily connected to his family’s ownership of one of the truly iconic breweries in the state, as well as an announced willingness to spend a significant part of his personal fortune to oust Feingold if it was needed. When he announced his candidacy, Leinenkugel immediately leapt toward the front of the pack in the race to the Republican nomination. Even before Leinenkugel announced his run, more conservative elements of the Republican Party began to label him as a RINO (Republican in name only) in private, and many more started raising the issue after his public announcement (Umhoefer 2010c; Umhoefer, Stein, and Marley 2010). They questioned whether he would truly follow Republican ideals, particularly those espoused by Wisconsin Tea Party leaders. The belief that Leinenkugel was a RINO was amplified by local talk-radio hosts. The entrance of Oshkosh businessman Ron Johnson on May 17 further complicated the race for the nomination. A political novice, Johnson had spoken at Tea Party rallies in the spring and said he threw his hat in the ring to bring fiscal responsibility back to Washington (Stein and Umhoefer 2010). Johnson, owner of a plastics company, also committed to spending as much as $10 million of his own money to wrest the seat away from Feingold. In the space of just one week, from May 17–23, the entire campaign would be thrown into chaos. Johnson’s entry solidified the conservative base of the Republican Party behind him, and he quietly received the endorsement of several of the larger Tea Party groups in the state. At the same time, talkradio attacks on Dick Leinenkugel intensified, pointing out his support for a variety of proposals from Governor Jim Doyle and labeling him as a RINO and/or a turncoat. By the time the Republican State Convention began, the party endorsement was very much up for grabs. While there would still be a formal primary in September, endorsement at the party convention was seen as

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tantamount to receiving the formal party nomination. Much to the shock of the general public, Dick Leinenkugel abruptly announced his withdrawal from the race and endorsement of Johnson (Umhoefer 2010b). His announcement came as such a surprise that even Ron Johnson was apparently caught off guard. During his speech, Leinenkugel said nothing about why he was leaving, but in an interview, he made it clear that he felt the unfair attacks as to his being too moderate had undermined his candidacy. He argued he was ideologically pure enough to deserve the nomination, but felt his service with a Democratic governor was being used against him when all he was trying to do was act in the best interests of the state (Umhoefer 2010c).

Enter the Tea Party? The result of Leinenkugel’s withdrawal was the near immediate party endorsement of Ron Johnson. Many in the press speculated that Johnson’s win was a result of Tea Party activists pushing his name at the convention and through the talk-radio circuit and portrayed this event as similar to the impact of the Tea Party in the Senate races in Utah and Kentucky (‘‘Purge, Wisconsin Style’’ 2010; Barbour 2010). While this may be true, there are several ways in which this analogy falls somewhat short. First, Leinenkugel never did fully explain his decision to withdraw, and some speculated he dropped out after getting a better sense of the likely intensity of a statewide campaign, while others believed he dropped out simply because he was unwilling to spend the money needed to beat Feingold. The second problem with this analogy is that the Wisconsin Tea Party groups did not openly endorse Ron Johnson. Many, in fact, seemed more sympathetic to Terrence Wall or David Westlake, both of whom had been much more active in courting Tea Party activists and were far more consistent in espousing Tea Party rhetoric. While it is certainly possible that Wisconsin Tea Party activists played a role in Leinenkugel’s withdrawing from the race, there is no way to know if he could have won the nomination without their support. It is after the chaos and excitement of the topsy-turvy Republican Convention that the role of the Tea Party activists in Wisconsin begins to become clearer. Although Johnson had won the party nomination at the convention, he was not officially the party’s candidate until the primary election in September. Since it was possible (albeit not probable) that these constituencies might not continue to support him come the primary election, Johnson found himself in the position of needing to reach out to Tea Party activists in order to garner their support for the upcoming primary race.

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After Johnson secured the endorsement of the convention, several Wisconsin Tea Party leaders publicly announced that they did not necessarily support Johnson’s candidacy, feeling they did not know enough about him to endorse him (Spicuzza and Barbour 2010). Spicuzza and Barbour note that in a statement late Wednesday, a coalition of tea partiers from across the state denied officially backing any candidates. ‘‘In fact, the coalition of Tea Party/ Patriot groups in Wisconsin has not endorsed any candidate in any race,’’ the statement read. ‘‘Nor does it align with any political party.’’ Kirsten Lombard of the Wisconsin 9/12 Project said she and other coalition members simply don’t know where Johnson stands on most issues. ‘‘None of us in the coalition have had the time to vet him,’’ she said.

Johnson’s efforts to reach out to Tea Party voters soon hit a significant snag (Umhoefer 2010d). As part of his efforts to find common ground with the Tea Party groups, he agreed to meet with several of them and discuss his positions on a variety of issues. This turned out, in retrospect, to be a significant mistake on his part. In a forty-five-minute video released on YouTube, Johnson was questioned by the Rock River Patriots about everything from global warming to tax policy, and several of his responses raised quite a stir. While he appeared to agree with the Tea Party on repealing healthcare reform and global warming, he expressed support for the PATRIOT Act and the REAL ID program, both of which many Tea Party activists in Wisconsin saw as an invasion of privacy by the federal government. In addition, Johnson also appeared unprepared for many of the questions, particularly questions regarding his interpretations of various parts of the Constitution. At one point, Johnson became quite defensive, noting it is ‘‘hard to study unless you do it in detail.’’ This response clearly did not satisfy the leader of the Rock River Patriots. According to Umhoefer (2010d), ‘‘Dan Horvatin, president of the Rock River group, said members there wanted more detail because they are ‘constitutional purists.’ ‘I’m not a constitutional scholar either, but there are some things that are relatively self-explanatory in the Constitution,’ Horvatin said.’’ Johnson’s mediocre performance led to his ‘‘postponement’’ of meetings with several other Tea Party groups in the state and raised a variety of questions for Tea Party supporters about how strongly they would support Johnson in the primary election in September (Umhoefer 2010d). In the end, Johnson received sporadic endorsements from Tea Party organizations throughout the state as well as garnering the endorsement of Tea Party mentor Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), but these endorsements were

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never the centerpiece of his campaign. Overall, although Johnson is usually identified as a Tea Party candidate, that would appear to be an overreach.

The Campaign Throughout the campaign, the publicity surrounding Johnson’s Tea Party connections was generally very limited. Feingold’s campaign rarely made an issue of it until just before election day, and Johnson downplayed it as a general rule throughout the campaign. Johnson’s campaign focused on bringing fiscal responsibility back to Washington and avoided many of the hot-button issues (immigration, gun control, abortion) that tended to define Tea Party candidates in other states. Rather than focusing on controversial topics, Johnson produced a ‘‘whiteboard’’ ad series. Johnson was featured in front of a whiteboard talking about deficits and the makeup of the Senate. In most of Johnson’s other ads, he is featured speaking directly to the camera about the issues that mattered to him, primarily regarding the deficit and the budget. Feingold, on the other hand, strayed from his traditional campaign strategy. He had a long tradition of using quirky and often comedic ads in his previous campaigns, but this election cycle, his ads were generally much more somber. While he did not resort to the attack ads and hyperbole often associated with candidates trying to catch up to an opponent, the ads seemed to lack the ‘‘fun’’ element that had often defined his campaigns (Gonzales 2010). Roll Call notes that Feingold’s longtime media consultant, Steve Eichenbaum, tried to distance himself from the entire advertising campaign for 2010: ‘‘ ‘I don’t even consider [the 2010 Feingold ads] our stuff,’ said Eichenbaum, who is disappointed and tired of answering questions about why this year’s ads were so different than in the past. ‘Had we won with this stuff, I wouldn’t have taken credit for it’ ’’ (Gonzales 2010). In addition, Johnson’s campaign made a concerted and consistent effort to ‘‘peel away’’ Feingold’s claims of fiscal responsibility and political independence. Johnson’s media consultant, Curt Anderson, noted that ‘‘we zoned in on those two things and had the ammunition from the last two years with Obama’’ (Gonzales 2010). Johnson’s media team made a very successful argument that while Feingold might have been able to claim such things in the past, Feingold’s votes in favor of the Obama administration’s stimulus package, budgets, and healthcare reform demonstrated he was little more than a typical Democratic insider (Gonzales 2010). Finally, several sources inside the Feingold campaign note that he was far more involved in managing the campaign than he had been in the past (Gonzales 2010). Feingold’s team felt that in contrast to the past races, they found

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themselves simply being told what to do rather than being allowed to provide substantive input in the major decisions (Gonzales 2010). Over the course of the summer, the race stayed quite close in the polls, but by September, when Johnson had officially clinched the Republican nomination in the primary, he surged to a twelve-point lead. Although the race would tighten up in the final days, Johnson never surrendered his front-runner status as shown in figure 8.1, and Feingold found himself playing catchup for the remainder of the campaign. By election day, Russ Feingold had spent nearly $13 million, while Ron Johnson spent nearly $15 million, including $8.7 million of his own personal fortune. An additional $3 million was spent by outside groups, almost all of which went to help Johnson (Gilbert 2010). In total, 2010 marked by far and away the most expensive Senate election in Wisconsin history, nearly doubling the previous record set in 2004 when Feingold ran against Tim Michels. Election Day On election day, Ron Johnson defeated Russ Feingold by a margin of one hundred thousand votes. Johnson received 52 percent of the vote, results that

FIGURE 8.1. Tracking Polls for Feingold-Johnson Race Source: Compiled from Rasmussen, CNN, Marist, and St. Norbert polling results.

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mirrored the opinion polls released in the days running up to the election. Overall voter turnout in the state was 0.9 percent lower in 2010 than in the previous midterm election in 2006. Across the state, incumbent Democrats were on the losing edge of a massive Republican wave that brought in a Republican governor, brought down incumbent House Democrat Steve Kagen,1 and found the Democrats losing one-quarter of all of their seats in both the state assembly and state senate. There was little question that while Russ Feingold made some errors in his campaign strategy, he was also clearly caught up in a much larger anti-Democratic incumbent sentiment that ran throughout the state. The Role of the Tea Party The true role of the Tea Party and its most ardent advocates on the national scene in the Wisconsin elections of 2010 may never really be known. While Senator DeMint endorsed Ron Johnson, Sarah Palin did not. In addition, DeMint’s support for Johnson was, at best, tepid. DeMint never visited Wisconsin on Johnson’s behalf, nor did he directly raise any large sums of money to assist Johnson. Overall turnout in the state declined slightly compared to the previous midterm election cycle, and the final vote total ended up being closer than predicted by the polls—neither of which seems to indicate a mass swelling of Tea Party activism. At the same time, it is difficult not to see threads of the Tea Party throughout the election campaign. It seems at least possible that Tea Party activists were involved in changing the entire nature of the Republican nomination process, purging the candidate list of the one real moderate, Dick Leinenkugel, in favor of a candidate who espoused much, if not all, of the Tea Party mantra, Ron Johnson. If there were any point in the election cycle in which it appears likely that the Tea Party had a significant impact, it would be in the nomination process among the Republican candidates. The evidence also shows that the Tea Party may have made a slight difference in terms of turnout levels. Of the fourteen counties that showed turnout increases compared to the 2006 midterm election cycle, eleven of those fourteen showed higher levels of voting for Republican candidates in 2010 compared to 2006. That said, overall state turnout declined slightly compared to 2006, so any impact the Tea Party may have had on turnout would appear to be only at the margins of the distribution. Conclusion While it is tempting to point to the role of the Tea Party Movement as a major player in the outcome of the Wisconsin Senate election, the evidence

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does not provide any substantial support for that conclusion. While it is certainly true that garnering the endorsements of several Tea Party groups and the Tea Party patron saint in the Senate, Jim DeMint, likely helped Johnson in his run, it is difficult to find much evidence that these were the key elements that drove Johnson to victory. There is far more compelling evidence to indicate that Feingold’s loss was about his apparent abandonment of his ‘‘independent’’ status, his inability to match spending with Johnson and the outside groups that supported Johnson, his poorly run, overly micromanaged media campaign, and an overall anti–Democratic Party/anti-incumbent sentiment. This sentiment pervaded Wisconsin elections from the U.S. Senate race all the way through to state legislative races. Add to this a wellrun campaign by an ‘‘outsider’’ who sticks to the party line on nearly all issues, and what you have is an election that seems best described as won by a traditional conservative Republican and nothing more. While a Tea Party– Palin–DeMint explanation fits the meme put forward in the national media (and, coincidentally, by both parties), if we were to label Johnson’s victory as a Tea Party victory, we may well have to label all Republican wins in 2010 ‘‘Tea Party wins.’’ References Bauer, S. 2010. ‘‘Will Tea Party in Wisconsin rally around Ron Johnson?’’ Christian Science Monitor. (September 20) Barbour, C. 2010. ‘‘Ron Johnson surprises many by winning state GOP endorsement.’’ Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI). (May 26). Feldmann, L. 2010. ‘‘Is the Senate becoming riper for a Republican takeover?’’ Christian Science Monitor. (August 10). Gilbert, C. 2010. ‘‘Spending in Wisconsin senate race sets record.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (December 3). Gonzales, N. 2010. ‘‘Feingold couldn’t re-create ’92 magic.’’ Roll Call. (December 6). Marley, P. 2010. ‘‘Leinenkugel launches campaign, downplays ties to Doyle.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (April 26). ‘‘Purge, Wisconsin Style.’’ 2010. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (May 23). Spicuzza, M. 2010. ‘‘Thompson declines Senate run at tax day protest.’’ Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI). (April 16). Spicuzza, M., and C. Barbour. 2010. ‘‘Tea party: Don’t call Ron Johnson our candidate.’’ The Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI). Stein, J., and D. Umhoefer. (2010, May 27). Ron Johnson solidified GOP base in fight for Senate seat.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (June 4). Umhoefer, D. 2010a. ‘‘Johnson formally enters Senate race.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (May 17). ———. 2010b. ‘‘Leinenkugel exits Senate race, backs Johnson.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (May 23)

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———. 2010c. ‘‘Leinenkugel says GOP must widen political base.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). (May 23). ———. 2010d. ‘‘Ron Johnson postpones Tea Party sessions.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (June 16). Umhoefer, D., J. Stein, and P. Marley. 2010. ‘‘Leinenkugel to run against Feingold, sources say.’’ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. (April 7). Vetter, C. 2010. ‘‘Leinenkugel says health care debate pushed him to run.’’ LeaderTelegram (Eau Claire, WI). (April 29).

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9 The Pennsylvania Senate Race Toomey’s Time Stanley P. Berard

n November 2, 2010, Patrick Toomey defeated Joseph Sestak by a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent to become Pennsylvania’s junior senator. In many ways, this election can be readily explained by reference to the structural factors that always shape midterm elections. As a Democrat, Sestak was the candidate of the party of a president with a low job-approval rating during a time of weak economic growth and high unemployment. Under these circumstances, the Democratic nominee was arguably destined to lose an election in which Independents would break toward the out-party Republicans and core GOP supporters would have a decidedly higher enthusiasm to turn out than would Democrats. The Republican nominee would necessarily benefit from these conditions, which would tip the scales in his favor in this notably competitive state. At the same time, this election had some remarkable characteristics. The story of the incumbent, Senator Arlen Specter, was unique. Until December 2009, Specter had served his entire twenty-nine-year career in the Senate as a Republican. Specter had defeated Pat Toomey in the 2004 Republican primary, but Toomey posed a formidable challenge to the incumbent in 2010. Deciding that his chances of defeating Toomey would be better in the general election, Specter became a Democrat. He did not count on losing to Joe Sestak in the Democratic primary. Sestak had trailed Specter by significant poll margins early in the primary campaign, but he steadily increased his support and won in the final days, a feat he nearly repeated in the general election. Toomey, though, was the Senate candidate whose time had come.

O

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Pennsylvania Politics Speaking broadly, we can characterize most of the central part of the state and the northern tier of counties as rural and small-town areas that vote reliably Republican. By far the most reliably Democratic part of the state is Philadelphia County, encompassing the city of Philadelphia. The remaining areas of the state have less consistent voting patterns. Suburban counties surrounding Philadelphia are much like the suburbs in other northeastern states— historically Republican, but increasingly receptive to Democratic candidates. Southwestern Pennsylvania, including Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) and several surrounding counties, is historically Democratic but has seen increasing Republican success. The same can be said of several counties in northeastern Pennsylvania (centering on Scranton and Wilkes-Barre). Catholic and blue-collar voters set much of the tone for politics in these areas. Traditional Democratic economic policies retain some popularity, but these are culturally conservative regions. Much the opposite is true of the Philadelphia suburbs and some of the rapidly growing areas near the New Jersey border, which tend to be receptive to Republican economic policies but unreceptive to conservative positions on cultural issues. The broad electoral trends of the last two decades have favored the Democrats in the historically Republican southeast and have favored the Republicans in the historically Democratic southwest. At the same time, the state overall has had very low population growth, but the southeastern counties have grown fairly rapidly. As a result, the net trend has been in favor of the Democrats, who have carried the state in each of the last five presidential elections. Edward G. Rendell’s gubernatorial victories in 2002 and 2006 provide further evidence of a Democratic trend, especially given the strength of his support in the southeastern region. Yet as recently as 2006, the state had two Republicans in the Senate, a twelve-to-seven advantage in the House delegation, and substantial Republican majorities in both chambers of the state legislature. The national political tide in 2006 and 2008 favored Democrats, who emerged from those two electoral cycles with a twelve-to-seven majority of their own in the congressional delegation and with a majority in the state house of representatives. The Democrats also took a U.S. Senate seat in 2006, when Robert P. Casey Jr. defeated incumbent Rick Santorum. Santorum’s aggressive social conservatism made him vulnerable in the suburbs, and Casey’s pro-life stance and liberal economic views made him popular with traditional Democrats. Casey’s win produced a revealing oddity: Pennsylvania’s Senate delegation consisted of Casey, a pro-life Democrat, and Specter, a pro-choice Republican.

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The Incumbent: Arlen Specter Arlen Specter is the last of a long line of moderate-to-liberal Republican senators from Pennsylvania.1 He was first elected to the Senate in 1980, a beneficiary of that year’s Republican tide. As an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia in the 1960s he had been a Democrat, but he was nominated and elected district attorney in 1965 as a Republican. He remained a Republican throughout his political career until 2009. In Senate elections, most of his victories were close, as he was challenged from the right in Republican primaries and from the left in general elections. Senator Specter was consistently pro-choice on the abortion issue and was seen as relatively friendly to labor unions, trial lawyers, and civil rights groups. He expressed pragmatic rather than doctrinaire positions on fiscal issues and gained a reputation for being effective in bringing federal money to Pennsylvania. He served on the Judiciary Committee for much of his career, playing prominent roles in the defeat of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and the confirmation of Justice Clarence Thomas, by turns angering both conservatives and liberals. His rise to the chairmanship of the committee in 2005 concerned pro-life conservatives, but he retained the support of committee Republicans and President Bush. In an ideologically divided Senate, Specter wielded considerable influence as a swing vote. In 2009, early in the administration of President Barack Obama, Specter was one of three Republicans to vote for the president’s $787 billion economic stimulus package. Even with a substantial Senate majority, Democrats needed those three Republican votes to reach the sixty votes necessary to break a filibuster, and this fact undoubtedly constrained the size and shape of what was ultimately enacted. For many free-market conservatives, however, Specter’s support for the measure was unconscionable.

The Challenge of Pat Toomey Pat Toomey’s rise to prominence among Pennsylvania Republicans reveals much that can put the peculiar features of the 2010 election in context. He was born in Rhode Island to working-class parents. He graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics and became a successful investment banker and international financial consultant. Moving to Allentown in 1990, he joined his brothers in establishing a successful restaurant chain. He became involved in local politics, successfully spearheading the inclusion of tax limitation provisions into the new Allentown city charter. When the local congressional incumbent, a Democrat, announced he would not seek reelec-

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tion in 1998, Toomey ran for the seat and won a six-way Republican primary. Then, in a generally disappointing year for Republican congressional candidates, he defeated a Democratic state senator by 55 percent to 45 percent. Toomey was reelected to the seat in 2000 and 2002. Toomey earned high ratings from groups associated with culturally conservative issue positions such as the Christian Coalition and National Right to Life, but his calling card was always a strongly conservative economic message, such as his support of a flat tax rate on incomes and the inclusion of individual investment accounts in Social Security. Even though Republicans retained control of the House, he often called for reductions in the spending levels approved by the Appropriations Committee. He thought that George W. Bush’s proposed tax cuts should be deeper, and he expressed grave concerns about the growing size of government in the years following the September 11 terrorist attacks. Honoring his pledge to serve only three terms in the House, Toomey challenged Arlen Specter for the Republican Senate nomination in 2004. As Toomey considered this decision, he received encouragement from a variety of national conservative groups. Most prominent among these was the Club for Growth, whose core principles revolve around minimizing government taxation, spending, and regulation. Like Toomey, these economic conservatives had become restive over the fiscal policies pursued by President Bush and the Republican Congress. Toomey was an ideal candidate and Specter an ideal target in the group’s emerging strategy of challenging moderate Republicans with more fiscally conservative candidates. Toomey and his supporters attacked Specter during the 2004 primary as a ‘‘Republican in name only’’ and not a true conservative. Specter overcame this by emphasizing his experience, by appealing for the support of moderates, and by gaining endorsements from the more conservative Senator Santorum, four of the state’s Republican House members, the Republican State Committee, and several nationally prominent Republicans. The most important endorsement came from President Bush, who followed up visits by several members of his administration with a visit of his own late in the campaign. After all of this, Specter won the primary by a narrow 51-to-49percent margin. Specter’s largest margins were in Philadelphia and its suburbs, while Toomey’s strongest showings were in his congressional district and in the southwestern part of the state, where he carried several counties by substantial margins. In November, Specter’s victory over Representative Joseph Hoeffel was by a substantial ten-point margin, even as Democrat John Kerry carried the state in the presidential race (Binning, Blumberg, and Green 2005). Toomey’s reward for this strong showing was to be named president of the

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Club for Growth in January 2005, a position he held until April 2009, just before announcing his candidacy in the 2010 Senate race. At the helm of Club for Growth, he continued his strong advocacy of free-market conservatism. He spoke against the interventionist measures taken by the Bush and Obama administrations in response to the housing and financial crises of 2008 as well as President Obama’s economic stimulus package in 2009. The Club for Growth became a persistent critic of the healthcare reform law, labeling it ‘‘Obamacare’’ and mobilizing a campaign for its repeal even before its enactment. When he announced his candidacy on April 15, 2009, Toomey emphasized Specter’s votes in favor of ‘‘the unprecedented Wall Street and auto company bailouts and the massive stimulus spending bill’’ and characterized the senator as having ‘‘consistently voted for increased government spending and a liberal agenda on social, labor, immigration and national security policies.’’ Toomey’s message would certainly resonate with the emerging Tea Party Movement and would find an even more receptive audience in Pennsylvania Republican circles than it did in 2004.

Specter’s Party Switch For weeks, there had been speculation that Toomey would run and that Specter would switch parties. Specter consistently denied any intention to switch, and through much of March, he was not responsive to entreaties from the Obama administration and other Democrats. By April 28, however, he announced his switch to the Democratic Party, stating, ‘‘I’m not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate, not prepared to have that record decided by that jury.’’ Several factors led to Specter’s decision. One change from March to April was Toomey’s decision to run for Senate, as he was apparently considering whether to run for governor instead. Toomey had proven to be a formidable challenger in the 2004 primary, and the composition of the Republican primary electorate clearly would be even more favorable to Toomey in 2010. In Pennsylvania, only registered party members can vote in party primaries, and registered Republicans were apparently becoming an increasingly conservative group. Since 2004, the Democratic edge in registration had increased from about five hundred thousand to 1.2 million. While the number of registered Republicans declined sharply in the Philadelphia area, counties in southwestern Pennsylvania, where Toomey had performed well, experienced substantial Republican gains.2

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Two opinion polls in late March showed Specter in a considerably weakened position, with 27–33 percent of registered Republicans responding they would vote for Specter against Toomey in a primary. In a head-to-head matchup with Specter, a Quinnipiac University poll gave Toomey a 41percent-to-27-percent lead. In a Franklin & Marshall poll that presented a three-way matchup with Specter and announced candidate Peg Luksik, Toomey’s share was 18 percent with ‘‘don’t know’’ garnering 42 percent and Luksik taking 2 percent. A Rasmussen poll released after Toomey’s announcement in April showed him with a 51-percent-to-30-percent lead over Specter. Perhaps the final straw was the decision by Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) to endorse Toomey. DeMint, through his Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF), had embarked on a strategy of supporting conservative candidates in Republican primaries, and Specter was his first target. With conservative Republicans arrayed against him in the primary and with promises of support from national Democrats, Specter decided to avoid a primary showdown with Toomey and hope that support from Democrats and Independents would lead to victory in the general election.

The Democratic Primary: Specter vs. Sestak National Democratic leaders welcomed Specter’s switch, as he was a pivotal player in maintaining Democratic control of legislative outcomes in the Senate. President Obama and others expressed their support for Specter, and party leaders worked behind the scenes to clear the field of primary opponents so as to keep him in a strong position for the general-election contest with Toomey. Joe Sestak, an ambitious member of Congress, who was relatively new to electoral politics, did not back off from his plans to contest the Democratic nomination. He continued to make appearances around the state to gauge support and build coalitions with local Democrats. On August 4, 2009, he formally announced his candidacy. Sestak, a native of Delaware County, is a retired three-star admiral who rose through the ranks to hold several naval commands during his thirtyone-year career. He retired from the navy in 2005, around the time that his young daughter was being treated, ultimately with success, for brain cancer. Sestak was first elected to Congress from a suburban Philadelphia district in the Democratic surge of 2006 by defeating Curt Weldon, a twenty-year incumbent Republican who was caught off guard by Sestak’s challenge and was the subject of an FBI influence-peddling investigation that became public late in the campaign. Perhaps the most important issue was Sestak’s support

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for troop withdrawal from Iraq. Sestak won that election with 56 percent of the vote and was reelected in 2008 with 60 percent. The primary campaign pitted Specter’s experience and accomplishment for Pennsylvania along with his pivotal role in getting President Obama’s legislation through the Senate against Sestak’s insistence that Specter’s party switch was a continuation of ‘‘politics as usual’’ and that Democratic primary voters should nominate a true Democrat. For months, it appeared that Specter would win the primary. In the Franklin & Marshall College poll, Specter held leads of 12-to-27 points among registered Democrats through April and had a 38-percent-to-29-percent lead among registered Democrats as late as May 3–9. The May poll was the first to show Sestak leading among the most likely voters, 38 percent to 36 percent. The Muhlenberg College tracking poll showed Sestak and Specter in a statistical tie or Sestak with a slight lead from May 9 through the end of polling on May 16, two days before the primary. Sestak’s closing the gap coincided with the initiation of his statewide television campaign. He began in April with a biographical ad to which the Specter campaign responded with a spot that cited a 2005 Navy Times article that reported he was relieved of his position as deputy chief of naval operations because of a ‘‘poor command climate.’’ The Specter ad also attacked Sestak’s relatively high number of missed House votes in 2009. Sestak’s most effective ad began airing in the first days of May. In it, Arlen Specter explained to a reporter that ‘‘my change in party will enable me to be reelected.’’ Then it showed Specter campaigning in 2004 with George W. Bush and Rick Santorum, with Bush telling the crowd, ‘‘I can count on this man. . . . He’s a firm ally.’’ The Sestak ad closed with the line, ‘‘Arlen Specter switched parties to save one job: His, not yours.’’ Specter responded with an ad featuring President Obama telling a campaign rally that Arlen Specter ‘‘cast the deciding vote in favor of a recovery act that has helped pull us back from the brink.’’ In spite of support from the president, Governor Rendell, and a host of other Democratic leaders, and in spite of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spending coordinated campaign funds in support of Specter, Sestak surged ahead and won the primary election by 54 percent to 46 percent. Many establishment Democrats had hoped to pit the moderate Specter against the more extreme conservative Toomey in the general election, but instead the Democrats ended up with a nominee possessing a uniformly liberal record across the board. The General-Election Campaign The general election campaign featured two candidates attempting to paint the other as too extreme to represent Pennsylvania in the Senate. Pat Toomey

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was clearly a favorable candidate to conservatives across the board, on all manner of economic and social issues. He did not need to spend much effort burnishing his conservative credentials. He needed to mobilize his conservative base while attracting enough swing voters to win a majority. The crucial swing area was the Philadelphia suburbs, and the principal issue was the economy. Toomey’s free-market conservatism was a clear contrast to the policies of the Obama administration and would tap Independent and swing voters’ dissatisfaction with the performance of the economy. With the campaign slogan ‘‘More jobs, less government,’’ Toomey’s advertising highlighted his opposition to the ‘‘Wall Street bailout’’ and attacked Joe Sestak’s votes for the bailout, the economic stimulus bill, healthcare legislation, and the ‘‘cap and trade’’ energy legislation. The spots declared Sestak is ‘‘too liberal with our money’’ and ‘‘in lock step with the extreme agenda of bailouts, debt, government health care, and job killing energy taxes.’’ Sestak’s campaign produced one television piece highlighting his military career, his young daughter’s bout with cancer, and his reputation as a hard worker in his two terms in Congress, but most of his advertising concentrated on portraying Toomey as too extreme and out of touch with middleand working-class concerns. One spot featured Toomey in a news program espousing a zero tax rate on corporate incomes. Another spot introduced Toomey as Pennsylvania’s ‘‘most right-wing congressman’’ and included clips of Toomey stating that his ‘‘voting record is pretty hard to distinguish from Rick Santorum’s’’ and that he favored a ban on abortions ‘‘and penalties for doctors who perform them.’’ The ad also quoted Toomey as stating that Sarah Palin is ‘‘an outstanding governor.’’ The ad closed with Toomey’s picture between those of Santorum and Palin with the closing line ‘‘Pat Toomey: He’s not on our side.’’ The campaign contrasted this portrayal of Toomey’s extremism with endorsements of Sestak by the likes of former senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a former Republican, who is now an Independent. In opinion polls, Sestak got a short-term boost just after the May 18 primary, but the race settled into a six-to-ten-point Toomey lead among likely voters around mid-July. In September, some polls showed a smaller lead for Toomey, and in late October, a couple of polls showed a narrow Sestak lead and another showed a tie. Polls taken in the last week of the campaign again showed a Toomey lead of four-to-five points.3 The general sense was that the race had tightened and that enthusiasm among Democrats was increasing. A similar tightening occurred in the governor’s contest between Tom Corbett and Democrat Dan Onorato, though Corbett remained ahead by a larger margin than Toomey and was considered to be in little danger of losing the election.

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Observers offered varying explanations for the surge toward Sestak that occurred in the October polling. One impetus was the work of union organizations publicizing their support for Sestak and mobilizing voters. Another was Sestak’s media advertising. His campaign made its initial television buys in late September and early October, which were followed by increases in Sestak’s name recognition and support levels. A third explanation proffered was the impact of Christine O’Donnell’s Delaware primary win. As detailed elsewhere in this volume, the Tea Party helped O’Donnell defeat moderate Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican primary, and many establishment Republicans viewed her candidacy with alarm. Some observers characterized it as a ‘‘wake-up call’’ to Democrats and moderate voters in southeastern Pennsylvania, where the Delaware race received extensive media coverage. For his part, Toomey avoided being linked too openly to polarizing figures. Particularly telling were two endorsements Toomey received the week of October 18, within two weeks of election day. Sarah Palin’s endorsement came via a posting on Facebook, but she did not campaign with Toomey and he made no mention of the endorsement. In debates and media interviews following the Palin endorsement, Toomey avoided questions about Palin’s qualifications to be president and about O’Donnell’s Senate candidacy, though he did praise the Tea Party Movement in a radio interview. In contrast, on October 22, Rudolph Giuliani, New York City’s former mayor, who ran for the 2008 Republican nomination as a relative moderate, announced his support for Toomey at a joint appearance in Blue Bell. The Toomey campaign touted it as a ‘‘major endorsement’’ and also publicized endorsements from former governor and Homeland Security director Tom Ridge and former Harrisburg mayor Stephen Reed, a Democrat.

Election Results The election outcome was closer than the last public polls suggested. Pat Toomey won with 2,028,945 votes to Joe Sestak’s 1,948,716—a margin of 51 percent to 49 percent. The total turnout of nearly four million was about one-third lower than the 2008 presidential election turnout. Toomey’s share of the vote was 6.7 points over John McCain’s 44.3 percent showing. The Republican share of the vote increased in every county except Philadelphia, where it stayed roughly the same (16 percent for Toomey, 16.3 percent for McCain). The larger Republican swings were mostly in the eastern half of the state. Several counties that Barack Obama carried in southeastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley shifted to Pat Toomey. Exit polling showed a clear shift toward the Republicans in all regions outside Philadelphia, where Sestak

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received about the same share as Obama. The largest gains for Toomey over McCain in exit polling came in the Philadelphia suburbs (from 41 percent to 49 percent) and northeastern Pennsylvania (from 42 percent to 53 percent).4 Along with the Republican swing in eastern Pennsylvania, differences in turnout may have accounted for over half of Toomey’s 80,000-vote margin. While the number of voters statewide declined by 33.7 percent, turnout in Philadelphia County dropped from about 719,000 to 425,000 in 2010, a decline of 40.9 percent. Had turnout in Philadelphia declined at the same rate as in the rest of the state with Sestak maintaining his 84 percent share, Toomey’s margin of victory would have been about 40,000 votes smaller. On the other hand, the decline in turnout in several suburban counties was smaller than the overall state decline by 2–3 percent. The midterm Republican surge among swing voters coupled with the different rates of mobilization between Democrats and Republicans appear to have both contributed to the outcome.

The Role of Tea Party Conservatism in Pennsylvania In many respects, the election of Pat Toomey to the U.S. Senate fits an overall narrative of the 2010 elections in which Tea Party activism empowered conservatives at the expense of moderate or establishment Republicans in the primaries and then energized a Republican electoral tide in the general election. At the same time, the outcome can be interpreted as a continuation of ongoing changes in Pennsylvania electoral politics in confluence with a national electoral tide favoring the Republicans. The Tea Party Movement is simply a highly visible manifestation of these forces. The movement arguably had less impact on the 2010 election in Pennsylvania than in other states, but Tea Party–style mobilization is more firmly rooted for the long term in Pennsylvania than in many other places. During his 2004 Senate campaign and in his leadership of the Club for Growth, Toomey established a consistent record of challenging the Republican establishment from the right. If this is what the Tea Party Movement stands for, then Pat Toomey was a Tea Partier long before the party started. When Toomey announced his 2010 candidacy, it was welcome news to conservatives already familiar with him, and he had instant credibility with many Tea Partiers who were mobilizing for their first tax-day demonstrations simultaneously with Toomey’s announcement. The Tea Party Movement got an early start in Pennsylvania, with organizations forming quickly in several counties in 2009. Many of the organizers

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were Republicans of the sort who had supported Toomey in 2004. The motto giving rise to the Tea Party name, ‘‘Taxed Enough Already,’’ indicated what was driving most of these organizers. They mobilized others who had varying concerns that could be expressed in one way or another as a desire to return the country to a more conservative path. A perusal of local Tea Party websites reveals a variety of policy goals—economic, cultural, religious—and varying degrees of sophistication in their expression. Some Tea Party activists were veterans of third-party organizations like the Constitution Party, but many were getting involved in politics for the first time. They quickly found a place in the state’s conservative movement. In April 2010, Tea Party organizations had substantial representation in the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, an annual meeting of conservative political activists modeled on the Conservative Political Action Conference (Gizzi 2010). The Tea Party Movement appeared to have minimal impact on the outcome of Republican primaries in the state. Tea Party–endorsed candidates received 31 percent of the vote in the Republican gubernatorial primary, and Tea Party challengers ranged from 17 to 30 percent of the vote against incumbent U.S. House members. Only one of the nine Tea Party candidates who challenged incumbent Republican state representatives won. The gubernatorial candidate, State Representative Sam Rohrer, did have strong showings in some counties with active Tea Party organizations, mostly in the eastern part of the state (Rossomando 2010). According to many observers, the eventual gubernatorial winner, Attorney General Tom Corbett, was influenced by the Tea Party to take more aggressive stands against tax increases and in favor of spending cuts to address the state’s budget deficit. He followed Rohrer’s lead in pledging no tax increases. He began to identify himself with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose first year in office accomplished deep budget cuts that endeared him to conservatives around the nation. Some observers concluded that the impact of the Tea Party was more apparent in the general election. Toomey was the only candidate with explicit Tea Party endorsements to win, but Tea Party organizations mobilized turnout for Republican candidates in many areas, most notably in Bucks County, where former congressman Mike Fitzpatrick defeated Democratic incumbent Patrick Murphy (Fears 2010; Boehm 2010). In recognition of their role in mobilizing support for Republicans, governor-elect Corbett named two Tea Party leaders and several sympathizers to his transition team. In the end, Republican accommodation of the movement occurred more smoothly in Pennsylvania than in many other states.

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References Barone, Michael. 2004, 2010. The Almanac of American Politics. With Richard E. Cohen and Grant Ujifusa. Washington, D.C.: National Journal. Binning, William C., Melanie J. Blumberg, and John C. Green. 2005. ‘‘Specter Withstands Challengers in Bid for Fifth Term in Pennsylvania.’’ In The Road to Congress 2004, edited by Sunil Ahuja and Robert Dewhirst. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Boehm, Eric. 2010. ‘‘Pennsylvania Tea Party Sought Influence Rather Than Revolution.’’ PA Independent. December 23. Online http://www.paindependent.com/ todays_news/detail/pennsylvania-tea-party-sought-influence-rather-than-revolu tion. Fears, Darryl. 2010. ‘‘Pa. Grass-roots Tea Party Leaders Chalk Up GOP Wins, Return to Jobs as Moms.’’ Washington Post. November 3. Online http://www.washington post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/03/AR2010110307066.html. Gizzi, John. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Movement Surging in Pennsylvania.’’ Human Events. April 16. Online http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id36570. Rossomando, John. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Candidates Falter in Pennsylvania, Analysts Say.’’ Newsmax. May 19. Online http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/teaparty-Penn sylvania-Kentucky-RandPaul/2010/05/19/id/359565.

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10 Colorado The Centennial State Bucks the National Trend M. Jean Kingston

ate into the night of November 2, 2010, while nationally the Democrats were ‘‘taking a shellacking,’’ in Colorado a Democrat won the openseat race for governor and the U.S. Senate race was too close to call. While Republicans picked up two of Colorado’s formerly Democratic congressional seats and two formerly Democratic statewide executive offices, the news from Colorado General Assembly races was mixed, with Democrats retaining their majority in the senate but with an uncertain outcome in the house because of one close race. By the next morning, the U.S. Senate race was called for Democrat Michael Bennet over Republican Ken Buck, and more than a week later, when the only undecided district reported a final count, the Republicans realized a one-seat majority in the upcoming session of the state house with a 197-vote win. Yet the net-positive result for Colorado Republicans was tarnished in comparison to how well the party had fared nationwide. Had involvement of Jim DeMint, Sarah Palin, and the Tea Party Movement played a role either in Republican successes or in mitigation of Republican gains? In 2008, Barack Obama was hugely successful in Colorado’s primary and general election. He soundly defeated Hillary Clinton in the state’s Democratic caucus process (67 percent to 32 percent), and in winning Colorado’s electoral votes, he polled higher than in the nation at large. Democrats had chosen Denver as the site for their National Convention in recognition of the rising fortunes of the party in Colorado. As a result of the 2008 elections, Colorado Democrats held five of the seven House seats and picked up a sec-

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ond U.S. Senate seat. Democrats also added to the state legislative gains made since 2004, when they had won a majority in the house and senate. Colorado’s large Democratic gains in 2008 suggested that subsequent midterm losses in the context of a poor economy and an unpopular president would be particularly significant. Without voters energized by Obama’s candidacy in 2008, Democrats were poised to lose a U.S. Senate seat, some U.S. House and state legislative seats, and possibly the governorship. Geographically, the Rocky Mountains cut a north/south swath through the eastern third of the state. Running along the east side of the mountains is Interstate 25, tracing a path between the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains known as the Front Range, along which most Coloradans live. From north to south, this region includes the cities of Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, and Pueblo. Colorado’s eastern plains and its western slope are sparsely populated. Only one town on the eastern plains, Greeley, approaches one hundred thousand residents, and on the western slope, the largest city, Grand Junction, is about half that size. The political changes in Colorado reflect its economic growth and increasing urbanization along its Front Range in the past four decades. With each economic boom, this traditionally Republican state experienced an influx of residents, mostly urbanites. As the Democratic Party grew in most major population centers along the Front Range, the GOP maintained strength in rural areas and built an urban base in Colorado Springs. For Republicans to succeed statewide in Colorado, party leaders urged a focus on economic issues, while downplaying the social issues that alienate the relatively young, well-educated Front Range population.1 It is a problem many state Republican parties outside the South face: conservatism on social/cultural issues attracts support of Republican activists who attend caucuses and win positions as delegates to party assemblies, yet these positions are unattractive to a majority of the statewide electorate. Colorado’s Republican and Democratic parties use caucuses, conventions, and direct primaries to nominate candidates. Precinct caucuses determine delegate selection, culminating in a state assembly attended by pledged and undecided delegates whose votes determine which candidates will appear on the ballot with party endorsement and top positions in the direct primary election. This process often favors more ideological candidates, as do Colorado’s closed primaries, though to a lesser extent. Tea Party activities have been particularly popular in Colorado. Rasmussen polling of likely Colorado voters repeatedly found higher support for the movement in Colorado than in the nation as a whole.2 In large part this reflects the fact that many Tea Party activists are from the most conservative wing of the Republican Party, a faction long powerful in Colorado. In addition, given that the original organizing glue of Tea Party groups in early 2009

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was antipathy toward Obama, perhaps his campaign’s considerable success in Colorado in 2008 sparked increased mobilization of anti-Obama factions than might have occurred in a state less initially supportive of Obama. Glenn Beck’s ‘‘9/12 Project,’’ announced in March 2009, shortly after the Tea Party Movement began, also found success in Colorado, with membership often overlapping that of Tea Party activists, as part of a larger amalgamation of like-minded, decentralized clubs known as ‘‘Liberty Groups.’’ The Tea Party Patriot website, hosting Colorado groups affiliated with a national Tea Party Movement, lists about sixty groups with names such as ‘‘Americans against Big Government,’’ ‘‘Guardians of Liberty,’’ ‘‘Prairie Patriots,’’ in addition to names with ‘‘Tea Party’’ or ‘‘9/12’’ in the title (Tea Party Patriot Website).

U.S. Senate Party Nomination Contests In 2004, Democrat Ken Salazar won the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by a Republican He won the open-seat race with an appeal to moderates and rural voters that was supportive of farming, ranching, and mining interests. In 2009, President Obama appointed Salazar secretary of the interior, which left his Senate seat vacant. The Democratic governor then appointed Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet to fill the unexpired term. Unlike Salazar, Bennet was not a native of Colorado, having moved to the state in 1997. Intelligent and accomplished with a varied background in business and public service, Bennet had never held or run for elective office. Though he had gained national attention and some acclaim as school superintendent (Boo 2007), his lack of electoral experience in a toss-up (or purple) state made him a key target for Republicans in 2010. Enough Democrats were wary of his reelection chances to support a strong challenge by former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff, although Bennet too had considerable support within the state as well as an endorsement from President Obama. Bennet narrowly lost to Romanoff at the party’s state convention in May, but decisively defeated Romanoff (54 percent to 46 percent) in the August primary. At least nine candidates were campaigning for the Republican nomination for Bennet’s Senate seat in the latter half of 2009, with former lieutenant governor Jane Norton the clear favorite. In the final months of 2009 through the early months of 2010, Liberty Groups had some success in defining frontrunner Norton as the Washington insider, establishment candidate (a ‘‘puppet’’ to special interests, they said) despite her repeated attempts to pin such labels on Buck. Though Norton’s issue positions differed little from those of her opponents, Liberty Group members strongly preferred the candidacy of

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Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck. This internecine struggle of Tea Partiers against the party establishment, evident in many Republican contests in 2010, pre-dated the Tea Party Movement. Liberty Groups seemed to graft onto, and in part be coincident with, the conservative wing of the party, which had a history of promoting candidates who had difficulty winning the general election. In the precinct caucuses held in March 2010, Buck beat Norton by a fractional percentage, with each candidate winning approximately 38 percent of the delegates.3 Outsider candidate Dan Maes, seeking the gubernatorial nomination, also beat the ‘‘establishment’’ candidate, Scott McInnis. This early caucus victory boosted the visibility of the Buck campaign. The subsequent endorsement of Buck by Jim DeMint in April led to a surge in fund-raising for a campaign that desperately needed it. By the time of the Republican State Convention in May, Norton had decided not to participate in the process but rather to petition for ballot access. Buck secured an overwhelming victory of 77 percent, with his closest rival, former state senator Tom Wiens, dropping out the following Monday and endorsing Buck. When Sarah Palin spoke in Denver on the same day that the Republican’s Colorado State Assembly was held in northern Colorado, Norton supporters hoped Palin would add their candidate to her list of ‘‘Mama Grizzlies,’’ but Palin was silent about the Senate race (Tomasic 2010). Only the week before, she had mentioned Norton as a like-minded conservative (Axelrod 2010), fueling speculation of a formal endorsement. As it turned out, Palin offered no endorsement in the primary or in the general election for the Colorado Senate race. Norton did, however, win the endorsement of John McCain shortly before the Republican primary, a questionable asset for a candidate who had spent the prior months trying to woo many of McCain’s detractors, who considered both Norton and McCain ‘‘Republican in name only’’ (RINO). Buck’s inexperience resulted in gaffes, which colored his candidacy as they cycled through news stories, blogs, and forwarded e-mails. Norton had charged, in the spirit of Sarah Palin’s emasculating phrases used when criticizing male opponents, that Buck was not ‘‘man enough’’ to take responsibility for attack ads against her. At other times, she noted that, unlike her opponent, she was female (‘‘I’m a girl’’). Her campaign manager had joked that she would kick Harry Reid in the shins while wearing her high heels. In July, at a small campaign event, an attendee asked Buck, ‘‘Why should we vote for you?’’ He flippantly replied, ‘‘Because I do not wear high heels.’’ He went on to hold up his foot, noting that he wore cowboy boots that had ‘‘Weld County bullshit’’ on them rather than ‘‘Washington D.C. bullshit.’’ The news stories from this exchange, in Colorado and the national press,

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indicated that Buck thought he should be supported because he did not wear high heels. The takeaway from this comment, quoted from July through the end of the campaign in November, was that Buck was sexist in eliciting support based on the fact that he was not a woman. In the same month, at a campaign event at which he did not know he was being recorded, Buck said to a staffer, ‘‘Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera. God, what am I supposed to do?’’ In the following days, as the story cycled through the news, Buck apologized, saying he wanted to stay on topic and had used inappropriate language out of frustration and fatigue. The comment did not discernibly hurt Buck among Tea Party supporters. Because it may have actually made him more acceptable to moderate Republicans and unaffiliated voters, he was labeled ‘‘The Winking Extremist’’ in a New Republic article (Downie and Hart 2010) on Republican candidates. Despite Buck’s slipups, he continued to win support and funding from the Right, including an endorsement from FreedomWorks. In August, Colorado’s primary voters delivered Senate nominations to Buck over Norton and Bennet over Romanoff. With record-setting midterm turnouts in both parties, the insurgent candidates for senator and governor won the Republican nominations. Tea Party activists and other Liberty Group supporters won the day in Colorado’s closed primary system, which bans unaffiliated voters.

The Gubernatorial Republican Nomination Contest While the summer campaign season for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, leading to Colorado’s August 10 primary, was a two-person race, the gubernatorial nomination contest was more complicated. The two major Republican candidates, Maes and McInnis, both faced scandals involving questions of character. Despite a flawed candidacy in which he had misrepresented his past career and violated campaign finance laws, outsider and political neophyte Maes had the backing of most local Tea Party and 9/12 groups. McInnis, the early favorite, who, like Norton, Liberty Groups tagged as the establishment candidate even as he sought their support, saw his lead erode as the saga of his misdeeds involving a plagiarized publication unfolded in the press. Enter Tom Tancredo—former U.S. representative for Colorado’s Sixth District and, more recently, long-shot contender for the Republican nomination for president—threatening to join the race because he believed the dangers of immigration were not being addressed by the other candidates. He had briefly regained the national spotlight in February 2010 as the opening

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speaker for the Tea Party Convention in Nashville, where he lambasted Obama as a socialist, elected in part because there is no ‘‘civics literacy test.’’ ‘‘Barack Hussein Obama,’’ Tancredo told the convention audience, is ‘‘a committed socialist ideologue’’ elected by ‘‘people who could not even spell the word ‘vote,’ or say it in English.’’ He did identify a silver lining: the energized opposition to the president, the freeing of Sarah Palin from the constraints of John McCain’s RINO approach, and the creation of the Tea Party. He encouraged the audience to fight for the nation’s Judeo-Christian principles and ‘‘our culture,’’ closing with, ‘‘It is our nation: take it back!’’ (YouTube 2010) In mid-July, Tancredo issued an ultimatum that unless both candidates promised to withdraw from the race by July 26, regardless of who won the primary in August, Tancredo would enter as a Constitution Party4 candidate. Despite Republicans’ public and private attempts to dissuade him, fearing he would siphon votes from their nominee, thus ensuring a Democratic victory, Tancredo followed through on his threat. McInnis was an early Democratic target either because he was seen as the likely nominee or because he was the more formidable candidate for the general election. In August, with Democratic Party–funded ads against McInnis, as well as his support from Tea Party groups, Maes won the Republican nomination for governor. Tancredo’s candidacy doomed Maes and caused dissension among Tea Party groups. Though the movement had mobilized previously inactive citizens, many of its adherents were staunch Republicans seeking to purify their party. If Maes were to win less than 10 percent of the general-election vote, the Republicans would lose their status as a major party, thus relegating them to lower ballot placement and different rules for ballot access.

The General Election After winning the U.S. Senate primary, Buck began to moderate some of his positions (Sherry 2010). He attempted to focus the debate on Obama and the economy, and away from social issues. The Bennet campaign chose to keep the focus on Buck’s positions on such issues with its tagline on commercials: ‘‘Ken Buck. Too Extreme for Colorado?’’ Buck’s earlier gaffes no doubt made this characterization more believable. By September, with Republican gubernatorial nominee Maes increasingly seen as unqualified, Buck said he no longer supported his candidacy, though he did not endorse Tancredo, who was alienating Hispanic voters yet attracting many Republicans to his campaign. Throughout the fall, polls showed the race too close to call, though Buck

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typically led Bennet but within the margin of error. With no clear favorite, money poured into each campaign, with outside expenditures high as well. While expenditures in both campaigns exceeded the national averages for 2010 Senate races, the Bennet campaign outspent the Buck campaign by more than two to one. The Colorado race was not on the top-ten list of most expensive Senate contests, but it did take the number-one slot for the most ‘‘outside spending, excluding party committees’’ (opensecrets.org). In most of the Senate races on the top-ten list for outside money, the expenditures were one-sided, which was not true in Colorado. Bennet and Buck ranked first and second, respectively, among Senate candidates attracting the largest amount of outside spending in 2010. For both candidates, most of the expenditures were for negative messages. Buck appeared on Meet the Press, where host David Gregory asked if he believed being gay was a choice. Buck replied, ‘‘I do.’’ When probed by Gregory if Buck believed it might be determined at birth, Buck said, ‘‘I think that birth has some influence over it, like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you have a choice.’’ This comment, translated by detractors, became ‘‘Buck compares being gay to being alcoholic.’’ However unfair this translation, it fit his detractors’ narrative of a gaffe-prone, narrowminded candidate, which was established in the summer. The barrage of television advertising in the final weeks relayed simple messages. The anti-Buck message of extremism on social issues continued to portray him as out of step with Coloradans. People for the American Way called him the ‘‘Corporate Manchurian Candidate,’’ alluding to the issue concerning Chamber of Commerce money coming from unknown sources. But more typical attacks were Bennet campaign ads asking, ‘‘Who is Ken Buck?’’ which contained patched-together clips of Buck making statements critical of Social Security, the Department of Education, federal student loans, and legal abortion. The anti-Bennet message from Buck’s campaign told of a Washington insider who was close to Obama, supported by clips of the president praising Bennet. Ads described Bennet as a ‘‘rubber stamp’’ for Obama’s policies, a tax-and-spend liberal who supported bailouts for big business. The allegations each candidate had faced from his major primary challenger no doubt had different effects carrying over to the general election. Though both Bennet and Buck had faced rivals with whom each had no discernible ideological differences, the campaigns had promoted the idea that such differences were significant. Andrew Romanoff had positioned himself as the more progressive liberal candidate, a characterization that had appeal among the majority of participants in the Democratic caucuses and state convention but was possibly helpful to Bennet in the general election, where the reputation as the more moderate candidate is an asset. Norton’s charges

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against Buck did not involve ideology, but the Liberty Groups’ support of him cast him as the more conservative one in the race. Norton, not inclined to inflame Tea Party activists and their associated groups, struggled to change that perception; her criticism of Buck focused on his gaffes as evidence that he was not a serious candidate. In the general election, Bennet continued to build on Norton’s narrative in addition to attacking Buck’s ideology. Buck could draw on Romanoff’s narrative of Bennet as Washington insider but had to steer away from the characterization of him as a moderate. Buck had the more difficult task. Bennet defeated Buck by a slender margin (48.05 percent to 46.42 percent),5 yet given the strong anti-Democratic forces in 2010 as well as Bennet’s position as an appointed senator who had never run for elective office, the success is remarkable. While Bennet’s success, in addition to the Democratic victory for governor, may suggest that Republicans did poorly overall in Colorado, the broader picture, as state Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams continues to point out, was primarily one of Democratic losses. Nonetheless, the Democrats won the biggest electoral prizes. It is clear that Ken Buck could not have won the Republican nomination without the help of Jim DeMint and the Tea Party groups. The Liberty Groups’ support in the caucuses brought him to DeMint’s attention, and DeMint’s funding kept him viable. The effect in the general election is more difficult to assess because while DeMint and the Liberty Groups helped Buck’s fund-raising, independent spending, and mobilization of supporters, they also made Bennet’s charges of Buck’s extremism more believable. The Tea Party became less popular in Colorado from April to November, allowing Bennet to win critical support from unaffiliated voters. Each candidate had a sufficient advertising budget to get his message out. Bennet’s message of Buck’s social conservatism was powerful among the urbanized Front Range voters, enough so to counteract the huge Republican wave of 2010. Buck’s many gaffes certainly gave Bennet useful ammunition, but this is, in part, a function of Liberty Groups promoting candidates who are less experienced campaigners. State Party Chair Dick Wathams has bemoaned the fact that Buck did not think through some issue positions prior to the campaign. It is likely, though unknowable, that Jane Norton would have been a tougher opponent for Bennet. The governor’s race was a clear casualty of Liberty Group involvement. Elevating Dan Maes over Scott McInnis was a cataclysmic mistake. Tea Party advocate Tom Tancredo’s choice to run against Tea Party candidate Maes was a debacle that threatened to cost the Republicans their status as a major party. Palin’s endorsement of Tancredo in the eleventh hour could not have affected a race in which so much early voting occurred.

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Tea Party support for the Republicans may be most effective when it fails in the nomination phase in a state like Colorado. In Colorado’s Third Congressional District, Scott Tipton, one-term state representative, upset incumbent Democrat John Salazar with help from Liberty Groups. However, Tipton was not the original choice of the Tea Party. His primary opponent, Bob McConnell, secured Sarah Palin’s endorsement, and Liberty Groups rallied around this outsider from Steamboat Springs who had never run for elective office nor been a force in Republican politics. Palin’s endorsement led to a mention in Time Magazine, which kept McConnell’s candidacy alive (Steinmetz 2010). Had McConnell secured the nomination, Salazar would almost certainly have retained his seat. Tipton, with superior organization, more funding, and a lifetime commitment to party politics, was cast as the ‘‘establishment candidate.’’ In his primary bid, he chose to focus on Salazar rather than contrast himself with McConnell, with whom he did not find considerable ideological differences. After winning the primary by a comfortable margin, Tipton sought out Tea Party and 9/12 groups throughout the district. He believed he had won the support of most of these groups well before October, when a Palin staffer contacted him and inquired if he would welcome Palin’s visit to his district if she could arrange it. He said he would but heard nothing further. Shortly after this contact, he read that Palin had endorsed his candidacy. Tipton went on to defeat Salazar, 50 percent to 46 percent. He had experienced both opposition and support from Tea Party groups, neither of which he found to be central to his campaign. Tipton believed the Tea Party enthusiasts were a positive force in the general election, mobilizing those who had not previously participated and campaigning independently for him. He cited his polling of 42 percent in heavily Democratic Pueblo County as in part a function of Tea Party activism. Palin’s endorsement, he believes, came too late to help him. By the time the endorsement was announced, Tipton had already defined himself to Tea Party groups (Tipton 2010).

Conclusion The Colorado experience illustrates the difficulty in corralling the energies of a decentralized movement to achieve a political objective. Tom Tancredo himself had urged Tea Party activists to promote change within the GOP, yet subsequently ran against the party, ultimately securing endorsements from Tea Party leaders, as well as from Palin, the day before the election. The impact of the national Republican tide in Colorado is easily overlooked due to the Democratic victories at the top of the ticket. While Demo-

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cratic turnout was higher than Republican turnout, Republican candidates fared extremely well in the less-visible partisan contests. In elections with long ballots, roll-off is common, meaning voters tend to vote only in the more publicized contests, usually at the top of the ticket, ignoring those farther down the ballot. Since Republicans did well in the partisan races with lower vote totals—those most affected by roll-off—it seems that the Democrats’ greater success in their get-out-the-vote effort led to a small but significant minority of their supporters concentrating on the top of the ticket, as well as on the more controversial ballot measures. The three ballot measures supported by Liberty Groups, with each involving tax cuts and/or severe restrictions on the state’s ability to tax (Proposition 101, Amendment 60, and Amendment 61) were soundly defeated. Amendment 62, which called for a definition of ‘‘personhood’’ beginning at conception, was also overwhelmingly rejected. Coloradans elected Democrats to the two key state positions and rejected drastic antitax and pro-life measures, but in low-information races with party labels, Republicans had an advantage. The highest aggregate statewide vote totals, in descending order, were for governor, U.S. senator, combined U.S. House districts, Amendment 61, Proposition 101, Amendment 60, and Amendment 62. Among the contests with the highest voter participation, only in House district races did the Republican/Tea Party/Conservative position prevail, with Republicans winning five of the seven seats, and 50 percent of the aggregate vote to the Democrats’ 45 percent. The activities and financial support of DeMint, Palin, and the Tea Party were all significant in Colorado’s 2010 elections, but none provided a clearcut advantage for conservative forces. The energy and money provided by these forces also produced backlash, with energy and money of its own. There is no statewide or congressional race in Colorado in which these forces led a candidate to victory who would not have won without them, and in the governor’s race and possibly the Senate race, their participation helped the opposition. As they continue trying to reform the Republican Party, they may do more harm than good in states with a competitive Democratic Party.

References Axelrod, Ethan. (2010, May 14). Sarah Palin Gives Nod to Jane Norton as ‘‘Commonsense, Conservative Woman.’’ Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost .com/2010/05/14/sarah-palin-gives-nod-to_n_576960.html. Barone, Michael, and Michael Cohen. (2009). The Almanac of American Politics. Washington D.C.: National Journal Group. Boo, Katherine. (2007, January 15). Expectations: Can the Students Who Become a Symbol of Failed Reform be Rescued? The New Yorker.

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Colorado Secretary of State Election Division. (2010). http://www.sos.state.co.us/ pubs/elections/. Downie, James, and Alexander C. Hart. (2010, September 14). Year of the Nutjob: Meet This Election’s Most, Well, Interesting Candidates. New Republic. Kousser, Thad, and Megan Mullin. (2007, July 13). Does Voting by Mail Increase Participation? Using Matching to Analyze a Natural Experiment. Political Analysis, 428–445. Opensecrets.org. Total Outside Spending by Election Cycle, Excluding Party Committees. http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/index.php. Rasmussen Reports. (2010, April 19; August 2; September 1). Sherry, Allison. (2010, September 19). Buck Softens Stance on Abortion and ‘‘Personhood.’’ Denver Post. Steinmetz, Katy. (2010, July 22). A New ‘‘Papa Grizzly.’’ Time Magazine. Tea Party Patriot Website. http://www.teapartypatriots.org/state/Colorado. Tipton, Scott. 2010. Personal communication, December 22. Tomasic, John. (2010, May 23). Palin Gives Nothing to Norton in Denver. Colorado Independent, http://coloradoindependent.com/53958/palin-gives-nothing-to-nor ton-in-denver. Ubbelohde, Carl, Maxine Benson, and Duane Smith. (2006). A Colorado History (9th ed.). Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing Company. YouTube.com. Tom Tancredo Opens Up Tea Party Event (Racist?) Literacy Test for Voters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?vu27YopczkF4.

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11 The 2010 West Virginia Senate Race Robert Rupp

he Senate race started in July with a popular Democratic governor, who was expected to win the special election easily, and it ended with his landslide victory. The result was expected because Governor Joe Manchin III was one of the nation’s most popular governors, and his party enjoyed an almost two-to-one edge in voter registration. But the story of this election is what happened in the intervening three months before Manchin’s comfortable win—when the expected cakewalk provided the opportunity for West Virginia to elect its first Republican senator since 1956 and brought national attention and Sarah Palin to the Mountain State. Democrats have controlled West Virginia since turning the GOP out in 1932. The GOP held no statewide executive offices in 2010 and constituted a small minority in both houses of the legislature (Rupp 2006). But change at the national level was in the air. The state voted for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and John McCain in 2008, and in 2000, elected a Republican, Shelley Moore Capito, in the Second Congressional District. After David McKinley was elected in the First Congressional District in 2010, the GOP had a majority of West Virginia’s U.S. House delegation for the first time in generations. A Republican victory in the special Senate race would highlight the state’s status of trending Republican on presidential and congressional levels, while remaining Democratic on the state and local levels. West Virginia was not scheduled to have a Senate race until 2014, but the death of state political icon Robert C. Byrd on June 28, 2010, accelerated that

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timetable. To fill the unexpired term of the popular and powerful senator, the legislature scheduled a special primary in August and an election in November. Republican hopes for a Senate victory rested on John Raese, a wealthy Morgantown industrialist and media owner who was CEO of Greer Industries, a privately owned company whose holdings include limestone, steel, and asphalt companies, as well as a fifteen-station radio network (West Virginia Radio Corporation) and the Morgantown Dominion Post. This was Raese’s third Senate run. In 1984, the last competitive Senate election, he almost defeated then-governor Jay Rockefeller for an open seat. After his narrow loss, he served as GOP party chair in 1986, but resigned to unsuccessfully challenge incumbent Republican Governor Arch Moore. Raese reentered state electoral politics in 2006 when he ran against Byrd. While Byrd easily triumphed carrying fifty-four of fifty-five counties, the race provided Raese experience in running a statewide campaign after a twentysix-year absence. Raese had an easy primary victory in August 2010, collecting 71 percent of the votes in a six-candidate field. His nomination was assured when popular Congresswoman Shelly Moore Capito decided not to run. One primary opponent, Mac Warner, received Tea Party support when he ran in the May primary in the First Congressional District. That Tea Party support did not carry over to the August Senate primary (Rivard 2010a). Unlike in 1984 when he ran as a political novice and was outspent almost twelve to one, Raese entered the 2010 campaign with experience and access to funds for what proved to be the most expensive election in the state’s history. He benefited from his reputation as a successful businessman and the rising Republican tide fueled by voter dissatisfaction with the economy and the president. The GOP candidate attracted national attention beginning in September when polls showed the race to be competitive, with Raese with a slight lead within the margin of error (RealClearPolitics 2010). Sarah Palin endorsed Raese on October 11 via Facebook and attended a rally in Charleston. However, unlike in some other elections, her impact was not viewed as decisive or divisive. Likewise, the Tea Party Movement, which consisted of twenty-five organizations in fifteen counties—seven of which identified with Tea Party Patriots and five with ‘‘We the People’’—had little impact (Tea Party Patriots 2010). Although the Tea Party Movement lacked a strong organizational presence in West Virginia, Tea Party sentiments for low taxes and smaller government resonated with many voters and reflected Raese’s philosophy. A Fox News poll (October 2) found that 53 percent of West Virginians supported the Tea

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Party Movement, including 31 percent who were strongly supportive. Only 30 percent opposed the movement (Stirewalt 2010). Raese, who entered politics during the Reagan Revolution, told a CNN correspondent, ‘‘I’ve been a conservative in West Virginia before that was popular.’’ Moreover, he likes to ‘‘kid’’ the Tea Party that they are ‘‘a little bit to the left of me’’ (Bash 2010). Raese actively sought Tea Party support and embraced its criticisms of the Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service, but came out ‘‘absolutely’’ against the minimum wage—an issue not specifically identified with the movement (Bash 2010). Raese made a commercial on the need for ‘‘Star Wars’’—an antimissile defense—an issue seemingly incongruous in 2010, but in line with his entry into politics during the Reagan Revolution (Thomas and Dann 2010). Despite a Republican electoral tsunami, Raese was unable to defeat a wellliked governor who, after a belated start, initiated a successful strategy that incorporated conservative stands, antiadministration rhetoric, and a negative blitz that painted his opponent as out of touch with voters (Newton-Small 2010). That the contest became close was newsworthy. A poll taken in early August showing the popular Manchin ahead by twenty-two points was not surprising (RealClearPolitics 2010). A natural campaigner from a political family, Manchin had served in the state senate and then as secretary of state before winning his first term as governor in 2004. A social conservative (pro-life and pro-gun), Manchin had governed as a fiscal conservative, privatizing the state worker’s compensation system and setting aside funds for state debt relief. Manchin also benefited from the state’s strong financial situation. With many large states facing big deficits that led to drastic cutbacks, West Virginia was among the few that operated with a surplus (Wereschagin 2010). And Manchin benefited from his public role of ‘‘Comforter-in-Chief’’ to stricken families in the wake of the Sago mine tragedy in January 2006. He duplicated this role after the Big Branch mine disaster in April 2010, when he comforted families and championed mine-safety reforms (Breen 2010). Manchin gained a reputation as a consensus builder and entered the special election endorsed by the state and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the West Virginia and national AFL-CIO and UMW—the only Senate candidate in 2010 endorsed by these two very different sides. He was the only Democratic Senate candidate endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce (Rivard 2010c; Nyden 2010). Manchin easily won the primary, defeating several candidates including

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ninety-five-year-old Ken Hechler, a former congressman and West Virginia secretary of state. Given the governor’s popularity, it is not surprising that, during the summer, conventional wisdom and the political experts agreed Manchin’s victory was assured. The respected Cook Report placed the contest out of reach for the wealthy Morgantown businessman; Larry Sabato declared Manchin’s victory an ‘‘obvious assumption’’; and CQ-Roll Call reported that ‘‘Gov. Joe Manchin III (D) will be the 800-pound gorilla in the contest’’ to ‘‘fill the seat of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd.’’ The article speculated that Democrats are cheering because ‘‘if all goes as expected, the highly popular Manchin will be at the top of the ticket this fall, which should drive Democratic turnout statewide’’ and could help Democrats hold on to the ‘‘battleground 1st District’’ (Rivard 2010b; McArdle 2010b). The real top of the ticket in the minds of West Virginia voters—President Barack Obama—was not on the ballot. The Mountain State had shown little support for Obama. He lost the 2008 presidential primary to Hillary Clinton by forty-one percentage points and the general election by thirteen points. There was little love lost between West Virginia and Obama’s administration, and things got worse when his administration was perceived as anticoal, as Manchin and other state leaders quarreled with the EPA director over coal-industry regulations (Manchin 2009). Tensions were further aggravated when the House of Representatives passed ‘‘cap and trade.’’ Many considered the proposal unfair to the coal industry—a liability in a state in which the state flag has a coal miner on it (Murphy 2010). The Senate race became a duel between a popular governor with approval ratings in the seventies and an unpopular Democratic president who had an approval rating of 30 percent in the Mountain State. The contest came down to a simple question: would West Virginia voters send Manchin to the Senate or a message to Obama? Appalachian culture is strongly suspicious of outsiders, and Obama, an African American with a very foreign name and exotic background, was clearly an outsider (Crickard 1974; Weller 1968). Moreover, Obama’s policies on environmental regulation and healthcare were very unpopular in West Virginia. Raese’s strategy linking the very popular governor with the very unpopular president started in the summer when Raese portrayed Manchin as a ‘‘rubber stamp.’’ Raese’s focused and disciplined campaign message boosted him in the polls. From September 19 until the last week of October, Raese held a slight lead, almost always within the margin of error (RealClearPolitics 2010). A difficulty in studying this election is that the contest, as RealClearPolitics

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points out, was ‘‘underpolled.’’ Rasmussen conducted half the polls, which would become controversial (Silver 2010). The Manchin campaign initially did not take Raese seriously. Such complacency was dangerous in a time of an impending Republican tsunami on the national level and widespread voter disaffection with the president on the state level. The return of Laura Ramsburg, Manchin’s former communications director, coincided with the campaign’s more disciplined message and operation beginning in late September (Knezevich 2010c). But many wondered if the change was too late. On October 2, Phil Kabler (2010), political columnist for the Charleston Gazette, predicted a Raese upset, and ten days later, the Washington Post reported that the $1.2 million ad campaign launched by the National Republican Senatorial Committee ‘‘strongly suggests the party thinks they can pull off an upset in the Mountain State’’ (Cillizza 2010). The state GOP planted twenty-five hundred yard signs across the state that simply read ‘‘Obama Says ‘Vote Democrat’ ’’—one more attempt to make the race about the president in the state that gave him his third-lowest approval rating in the country. Later in the campaign, Raese supporters would hold up signs that said, ‘‘ObamaManchin’’ (Will 2010; Associated Press 2010). Usually a campaign cannot regain lost momentum, but West Virginia provided an exception. Manchin had five weeks to sever the link with Obama. He did so by helping to initiate a lawsuit against the EPA and by launching a television ad opposing the cap-and-trade legislation (Huber 2010). In one of the most memorable ads of 2010, Manchin is shown loading a gun and shooting at a copy of the cap-and-trade bill posted on a tree. While highlighting his endorsement by the NRA, the ad demonstrated his opposition to a proposed bill that enjoyed little support in the Mountain State. Raese’s strongest argument was that he could better protect West Virginia’s interests: ‘‘I will stand up against the president, against the administration, against any president or administration when what they’re doing is wrong for West Virginia. I can guarantee that’’ (Shiner 2010). But what Raese said, Manchin showed when shooting the ‘‘cap-n-trade’’ bill (Miller 2010). By distancing himself from the toxic issue, Manchin undermined Raese’s contention that Manchin would be a rubber stamp for the Democratic administration and demonstrated his desire to defend the state. Manchin’s effort to distance himself from the Obama administration was not an ‘‘October campaign conversion.’’ On the issue of coal and the environment, he had been an early critic of the Obama administration in general and of the EPA administrator in particular (Manchin 2009). The governor did retreat on healthcare. Manchin, who once said he was

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‘‘totally behind health care reform’’ now vowed to repeal the ‘‘bad parts of Obamacare.’’ Manchin’s recovery strategy was twofold. He not only separated himself from President Obama the outsider, but also reframed the contest by portraying Raese as the outsider. Manchin’s campaign questioned Raese’s residency, noting his second home in Florida, where his wife registered to vote and his children attended school (Douglas 2010; Pierce 2010). Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh contributed to this impression, saying of Raese ‘‘He’s a part-time resident here in Palm Beach, and he’s got a locker right across the bench from me at a prominent local club’’ (Madison 2010). The irony was that Raese was a son of ‘‘Dyke’’ Raese, a former head basketball coach at West Virginia University, and operated his business from Morgantown, where his company owned the newspaper. An ad by the National Republican Senatorial Committee helped advance Manchin’s questions about Raese’s ties to West Virginia. Raese had no control over the production of the controversial ‘‘hick’’ ad. The commercial filmed in Pennsylvania featured three ‘‘West Virginians’’ talking about their belief that Manchin would sell out the state when he went to Washington, a theme sounded by Raese throughout the campaign. The problem for the Raese campaign was that Politico reported that the casting call for actors asked for a ‘‘hicky’’ blue-collar look and recommended ‘‘beat up’’ trucker hats, jeans, and flannel shirts. The so-called hick ad aggravated voter sensitivities over Appalachian stereotypes and supported Manchin’s ‘‘us/them’’ assertion that Raese was ‘‘not one of us.’’ The Manchin campaign launched an ad charging that Raese ‘‘thinks we’re hicks.’’ The one-day story became a weeklong event, since it reinforced the Manchin narrative that Raese was not a West Virginian (Allen 2010a, 2010b). Manchin also benefited from Raese’s conservative pronouncements. In one of the poorest states in the country, Raese advocated abolishing the minimum wage. This was not a specific Tea Party issue but rather reflected the man who entered politics during the Reagan Revolution (Shiner 2010). Support for Raese peaked in an October 6 Rasmussen poll that had him up by six points. Five days later, Sarah Palin endorsed Raese via Facebook. Palin (2010) wrote that ‘‘the last thing Washington needs is another rubberstamp vote for President Obama and the liberal agenda.’’ A follow-up tweet captured national attention when it incorrectly placed Raese in Pennsylvania, not West Virginia1 (Kahn 2010; Knezevich 2010b). The geographic mistake, which was quickly corrected, supported Democrats’ claim that Raese was out of touch and from out of state. Palin’s erroneous tweet did not bother Raese, who said he was ‘‘just honored that Sarah Palin would endorse me’’ (Hamby 2010).

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Despite Palin’s endorsement, by the last week of October, polls for the first time since mid-September showed Manchin with a four-to-six-point lead (RealClearPolitics 2010). The findings confirmed that, as the election neared, disaffected Democrats were coming home and liberal Democrats were not interested in a third-party candidate, Jesse Johnston of the Mountain State Party. In an effort to woo those wavering Democrats, the Manchin campaign brought former president Bill Clinton to the state twice during the last week (Taylor 2010). At the request of Raese’s wife, Palin came to West Virginia on October 30 in an effort to rally support. Palin’s appearance marked only the third time she shared the stage with a Senate candidate in the postprimary cycle.2 Palin appeared at a state-capital rally sharing the stage with 1970s rock star Ted Nugent, an avid hunter and gun-rights advocate. Declaring, ‘‘There’s nothing wrong in America that a good ol’ election can’t fix,’’ Palin exhorted the state’s ‘‘mountain mamas’’ to keep Manchin away from the Senate. ‘‘It’s nothing personal, I like your governor. I’ve worked with him before,’’ said the former Alaskan governor. ‘‘But he’s such a nice governor I think that Manchin in the (governor) mansion just kind of fits, to keep him there’’ (Draper 2010; Bruce 2010). She sounded an argument raised by the Raese camp and used by both Ted Kennedy in 1994 against then-governor Mitt Romney and John Kerry against Governor William Weld in 1996. Afterward, Palin travel to Wheeling to support David McKinley, running in the First Congressional District. Three days later, McKinley won that open House seat by fifteen hundred votes. The national media continued to predict a close election, but Manchin won with 53 percent of the vote, carrying forty-two counties. He received 280,771 votes to Raese’s 227,960. Third-party candidate, Johnson, who some thought might siphon small but crucial support from Manchin, got only 10,011 votes. Manchin’s margin was not anticipated by public polls or election forecasters. Except for Sabato’s Crystal Ball website, which rated the contest ‘‘Lean Democrat,’’ Cook, Rasmussen, Real Clear Politics, and CQ Politics rated the contest a ‘‘toss-up’’ while Rothenberg labeled it ‘‘tossup/tilt D’’ (Cook Report 2010; Sabato 2010; Rothenberg Report 2010; Rasmussen Reports 2010; Real Clear Politics 2010a; CQ Politics 2010). The Senate contest received national attention, not just because it was considered close but also because it became crucial. The failings of Tea Party candidates in Delaware, Colorado, and Nevada meant that hopes for a Republican Senate majority rested on a Raese victory and a couple of other states—all of which had been off the radar at the start of the 2010 election cycle. West Virginia, because of its relatively early poll-closing time, became

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the bellwether. A Raese last-minute fund-raising letter quoted a Roll Call article: ‘‘It’s official: West Virginia’s special election is part of Senate Democrats firewall against a GOP takeover of the Senate’’ (Raese 2010). Politico noted that Raese hoped to ‘‘bank on the anti-incumbent, antiDemocrat fervor lifting Republican nominees nationwide’’ (Shiner 2010). But the national tide Raese spoke about did not overwhelm the Mountain State. Although the GOP narrowly won the open seat in the First Congressional District, the party had a net gain of only four seats in the legislature and failed to take the Senate seat Robert Byrd held for more than fifty years. As with most elections, speculation after the 2010 U. S. Senate race in West Virginia centered on what the winner did and the loser did not do. Raese ran a disciplined campaign but never expanded on his original message of ‘‘rubber stamp Joe.’’ Nor did he launch personal attacks, although the National Republican Senatorial Committee apparently bought time for, but did not show, an ad linking Manchin and his former chief of staff, whose company was allegedly targeted in a federal investigation (Kabler 2010; Cart 2010). Another factor was the limited impact of the Tea Party and Palin in an election that many believed would be close. Tea Party sentiment may be strong in the Mountain State, but its mobilization efforts were not prominent in the state, which has a two-to-one Democratic registration advantage and a history of strong get-out-the-vote efforts by Democrats and unions. Nor did Palin have a strong presence in the state. Her endorsement came late in the campaign, and her single appearance occurred less than three days before election day. The key to this election was that Manchin kept a high approval rating throughout the campaign, while his conservative stances and campaign strategy helped to undermine Raese’s attack. Manchin’s strategic adaption to a hostile voter environment was discussed by his opponent during the August primary campaign: ‘‘I think if I was Joe Manchin right now,’’ said Raese, ‘‘I’d be doing some denouncing now of what’s going on in Washington. And I don’t hear a lot of denouncing’’ (Rivard 2010a). But by October, Manchin had denounced both Washington and Raese. Manchin won by being in tune with his constituency, but that meant being out of sync with his party in Washington. Ironically then, the very campaign that brought him victory in November places him at odds with the administration. Manchin’s victory provides a blueprint for success by moderate Democrats in conservative states. But it remains to be seen if the course that served Manchin well in the Mountain State will be an asset or an aberration in the U.S. Senate.

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References Allen, Mike. 2010a. ‘‘GOP ad casting call: ‘hicky’ W.Va. look.’’ Politico (October 7) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43254.html. ———. 2010b. ‘‘National Republican Senatorial Committee fires ad maker over ‘hicky’ term.’’ Politico (October 15) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/ 43603.html. Associated Press. 2010. ‘‘GOP to blanket W.Va. with Obama yard signs.’’ GazetteMail (October 6) sundaygazettemail.com/News/mostRecent/201010060638. Bash, Dana. 2010. ‘‘Raese sees change in West Virginia.’’ CNN (October 4). http:// politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/04/raese-sees-change-in-west-virginia. Breen, Tom. 2010. ‘‘Manchin takes measured tone after mine explosion.’’ Charleston Gazette (April 7) http://www.wvgazette.com/News/politics/201004070763. Bruce, Mary. 2010. ‘‘Palin rallies ‘Mountain Mamas’ for Raese in West Virginia.’’ ABC News (October 30) http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sarah-palin-rallies-moun tain-mamas-raese-west-virginia/story?id12012991. Cart, Kallie. 2010. ‘‘WSAZ investigation reveals two more targets of federal probe of state.’’ W-SAZ (October 4) http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/103348024 .html. Cillizza, Chris. 2010. ‘‘Senate Republicans launch $1 million ad buy in West Virginia.’’ Washington Post (September 24) http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/ morning-fix/senate-republican-launch-ad-in.html. Cook Report. 2010. ‘‘Senate Report.’’ http://www.google.com/search?q%22Senate %22.CookPoliticalReport.http%3A%2F%2Fcookpolitical.com%2Fsenate October31wv&rlscom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ieUTF-8&o e UTF-8&sourceidie7&rlz1I7GPCK_en. Crickard, Betty P. 1974. ‘‘The Mountain State: A bicentennial cultural view.’’ In B. B. Maurer (ed.) Mountain Heritage (200–215) Parsons, WV: McClain Printing Co. CQ. 2010. ‘‘Sarah Palin headlining John Raese rally in West Virginia.’’ Roll Call (October 30) http://blogs.cqrollcall.com/eyeon2010/2010/10/sarah-palin-head lining-john-ra.html. CQ Politics. 2010. ‘‘Race ratings chart: Senate.’’ (October 31) http://www.cqpolitics .com/wmspage.cfm?docIDratings-senate. Douglas, William. 2010. ‘‘West Virginia likes its governor, but maybe not in the Senate.’’ (October 25) http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/10/25/102560/west-virginia -likes-its-governor.html. Draper, Robert. 2010. ‘‘The Palin Network Saturday the 30th October/ HolloweenSunday-10/31.’’ New York Times (November 17) www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/ magazine/21palin-t.html. Hamby, Peter. 2010. ‘‘Raese embraces the Palin stamp of approval.’’ http://political ticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/22/raese-embraces-the-palin-stamp-of-approval/. Huber, Tim. 2010. ‘‘W.Va. gov. in tough Senate race sues administration.’’ (October 6) http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2010/Oct/06/weva__gov…in _tough_senate_race_sues_administration.html. Kabler, Phil. 2010. ‘‘Phil Kabler: Predicting a Raese victory.’’ Charleston Gazette (October 2) http://wvgazette.com/News/201010010958.

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Kahn, Huma. 2010. ‘‘Gaffe watch: Sarah Palin touts John Raese, gets his state wrong.’’ ABC News (October 19) http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/10/gaffe-watch -sarah-palin-touts-john-raese-gets-his-state-wrong.html. Knezevich, Alison. 2010a. ‘‘Manchin camp internal poll: Gov. leads Raese by 5.’’ Charleston Gazette (October 22) http://blogs.wvgazette.com/squawkbox/2010/10/ 22/manchin-camp-internal-poll-gov-leads-raese-by-5/. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Palin tells Twitter followers to back Raese—in Pa.’’ Charleston Gazette (October 19) http://blogs.wvgazette.com/squawkbox/2010/10/19/palin -tells-twitter-followers-to-back-raese-in-pa/. ———. 2010c. ‘‘Ramsburg joins Manchin campaign.’’ Charleston Gazette (September 24) http://blogs.wvgazette.com/squawkbox/2010/09/24/ramsburg-joins-man chin-campaign/. Madison, Lucy. 2010. ‘‘Did Rush Limbaugh accidentally help Democrats in the West Virginia Senate race?’’ (October 20) CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/8301 -503544_162-20019758-503544.html. Manchin, Joe. 2009. ‘‘Statement from Gov. Manchin and DEP Secretary Randy Huffman: About Obama administration’s announcement today.’’ (June 11) http:// www.wvgov.org/sec.aspx?id32&articleid1808. McArdle, John. 2010a. ‘‘Democrats savor Manchin’s name on ballot’’ Roll Call (July 13) http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_4/-48251-1.html. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Democratic poll shows Manchin trailing Raese in W.Va.’’ Roll Call (September 21) http://blogs.cqrollcall.com/eyeon2010/2010/09/democratic-poll -sho ws-manchin.html. Miller, Sean J. 2010. ‘‘DNC chairman isn’t ‘wild about’ Manchin’s cap-and-trade TV ad.’’ (October 14) http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/124237-dnc -chairman-calls-out-gov-manchin-for-tv-ad-. Murphy, Patricia. 2010. ‘‘Democrats abandon cap ’n trade, focus on oil Spill for now.’’ (July 7) http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/22/new-climate-bill-will -focus-on-oil-spills-not-carbon-emissions/. Newton-Small, Jay. 2010. ‘‘West Virginia’s Senate race: Joe Manchin vs. John Raese.’’ Time (October 12) http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804 ,2019138_2019132e2024857,00.html. Nyden, Paul J. 2010. ‘‘U.S., W.Va. chambers snub Raese for Senate.’’ Charleston Gazette (September 2) http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201009200576?page2& buildcache. Palin, Sarah. 2010. ‘‘More great candidates to support this year.’’ (October 11) http:// www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id440080678434. Pierce, Emily. 2010. ‘‘Raese’s wife loses W.Va. voter status.’’ Roll Call (October 15) http://www.rollcall.com/news/-50765-1.html?zkPrintabletrue. Raese, John. 2010. ‘‘The closest Senate race in America.’’ (October 26) Newsmax.com. Rasmussen Reports. 2010. Nov.1-Monday-tossup. http://www.rasmussenreports .com/public_content/politics/elections/electione2010/election_2010_senate_elec tions/election_2010_senate_balance…of_power. RealClearPolitics. 2010. ‘‘West Virginia Senate special election: Raese v. Manchin.’’ www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/wv/west_virginiaesenate_special _election_raese_vs_manchin-1673.html/.

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Rivard, Ry. 2010a. ‘‘John Raese enters Senate race.’’ Charleston Daily Mail. (July 22) http://www.dailymail.com/News/201007220343 ———. 2010b. ‘‘Political expert offers his predictions—Election 2010.’’ Charleston Daily Mail (August 13) charlestondailymail.com/election10/201008120894. ———. 2010c. ‘‘Union, chamber support Manchin.’’ Charleston Daily Mail http:// www.dailymail.com/News/210100721820?page1&buildcache. ———. 2011. ‘‘Lawmakers scale back school reform.’’ Charleston Daily Mail (January 10) http://challengewv.org/newsletter/lawmakers-scale-back-school-reform/. Rothenberg Report. 2010. ‘‘Senate rating.’’ (October 31) http://rothenbergpolitical report.com/ratings/senate/october-31-2010-senate-ratings. Rupp, Robert. 2006. ‘‘Democratic Party.’’ In K. Sullivan (ed.), West Virginia Encyclopedia. Charleston, WV: West Virginia Humanities Council. Sabato, Larry J. 2010. ‘‘The Crystal Ball’s final calls’’ (October 28) http://www.cen terforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/category/2010-senate/. Shiner, Meridith. 2010. ‘‘John Raese: Abolish minimum wage.’’ Politico (October 13) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43474.html. Silver, Nate. 2010. ‘‘Rasmussen polls were biased and inaccurate; Quinnipiac, SurveyUSA performed strongly.’’ New York Times (November 4) http://fivethirtyeight .blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/rasmussen-polls-were-biased-and-inaccurate-quin nipiac-surveyusa-performed-strongly/. Stirewalt, Chris. 2010. ‘‘Fox News polls: GOP poised to gain or hold Senate seats in key states.’’ Fox News (October 5) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/10/05/ fox-news-polls-gop-poi sed-gain-hold-senate-seats-key-states/. Taylor, Jessica. 2010. ‘‘Bill Clinton goes on the attack for Joe Manchin.’’ Politico (October 11) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43417.html. Tea Party Patriots. 2010. www.teapartypatriots.org/. Thomas, Shawna, and Dann, Carrie. 2010. ‘‘Raese, missile defense, and ‘lasers in the sky.’ ’’ NBC News http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/13/5284516 -raese-missile-defense-and-lasers-in-the-sky-. Weller, Jack E. 1968. Yesterday’s People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press. Wereschagin, Mike. 2010. ‘‘West Virginia’s ‘centrist’ governor readies for national role.’’ Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (June 27) http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pitts burghtrib/news/regional/s_687877.html. Will, George F. 2010. ‘‘W.Va. election becomes a test for Obama.’’ Washington Post (October 21) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/ 20/AR2010102004781_pf.html.

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12 The Empire Strikes Back The 2010 Elections in New York Costas Panagopoulos

lections are not always eventful in New York, where presidential cycles are rarely competitive and party dominance is firmly rooted in regions. In many ways, 2010 was an exception, even though the eventual outcomes may not have been surprising to most. Top-of-the-ticket Democrats statewide bucked national trends to emerge victorious, but other developments were consistent with national patterns and the pro-Republican fervor that swept the nation on November 2. Republicans gained more U.S. House seats in New York than in any other state, but GOP candidates failed to capture any statewide office. The state witnessed the emergence of some colorful political characters, thanks in large part to the Tea Party revolt against the Republican Party’s standard-bearers. In this chapter, I reflect on the 2010 elections in New York, highlighting the major developments in key races and the impact of new players, including the Tea Party.

E

New York Governor By the middle of 2009, unelected Gov. David Paterson had hit record-low approval ratings. In May 2009, a Siena College poll found that only 8 percent of respondents wanted to see the governor reelected. That was less than the 14 percent of respondents who wished to see disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer back in office (Goldberg 2009). Paterson made repeated public statements that he intended to run for a full term in 2010, but few saw that pros— 137 —

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pect as promising for New York Democrats (Stein 2008). In September 2009, the titular head of the Democratic Party, President Barack Obama, asked the governor to drop out of the race to make way for a more viable candidate (Hernandez and Zeleny 2009). Paterson resisted and maintained that he would continue to seek a full term, despite the president’s request (Hakim and Confessore 2009). With Paterson fighting a public battle for the renomination and with his approval rating continuing to decline, Republican contenders began to emerge. In December 2009, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani removed his name from contention and endorsed former U.S. representative and 2000 Senate candidate, Rick Lazio (Buffalo News Editorial Board 2009). While there were some outside contenders for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, including Erie County Executive Chris Collins, Suffolk County executive and former Democrat Steve Levy, and Buffalo-area developer Carl Paladino, by the start of 2010, the governor’s race appeared to be shaping up to be a contest between Paterson and Lazio. Paterson faced a scandal when a former aide was arrested and charged with assault in October 2009 (Brosh and Lisberg 2010). Paterson was accused of intervening on the aide’s behalf and using his gubernatorial clout to help the aide escape charges. As the scandal began to develop, Paterson decided to remove his name from contention in February 2010 (Hakim and Peters 2010). No doubt, preelection polls that showed him trailing State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo by as much as twenty-eight points for the Democratic nomination influenced Paterson’s decision (Vielkind 2010). Not until May 2010 did Cuomo, son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo, announce that he would run for the state’s highest office. In an announcement before the Tweed Courthouse in Manhattan, he called the government in Albany a ‘‘national disgrace’’ and stated the level of corruption in state government would make the notorious nineteenth-century Tammany Hall boss, William Tweed, ‘‘blush.’’ The dynamic within the Democratic Party had little effect on the Republican nomination process, which was proceeding apace and widely expected to deliver the nomination to Rick Lazio at the state party’s convention in June. At the convention, Lazio received 59 percent of the first vote. Levy was still a registered Democrat and, according to convention laws, required more than 50 percent to receive a spot on the primary ballot—the best he received was 42.6 percent. Tea Party candidate and developer Carl Paladino received only 7.9 percent of the convention vote (Saltonstall 2010a). While Lazio’s nomination may have seemed an endorsement of the status quo by the convention’s delegates, there was regular talk of a ‘‘no confidence’’ vote against New York State Party Chairman Ed Cox due, in part, to

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the fury over Levy’s contention for the nomination (Benjamin 2010). This vote never came, and Lazio did his best to mend frayed relations among Republicans. However, as Lazio turned his attention to the race against Cuomo, Paladino hit the streets seeking the thirty thousand signatures required to get on the ballot for the September primary (AP 2010). Paladino pledged to spend $10 million of his own money in his underdog campaign to win the governor’s race, and he spent only a fraction of that sum garnering the thirty thousand signatures he needed to force a primary (Precious 2010). On Tuesday, September 14, 2010, due in part to depressed turnout downstate, Paladino won the Republican gubernatorial nomination with a resounding 62 percent of the Republican vote. Paladino was, in many respects, a wild card who surprised many with his come-from-behind primary victory over Lazio, but the antiestablishment sentiment was palpable. Immediately following the primary, Quinnipiac released a poll that showed Paladino receiving 43 percent of the vote against Cuomo’s 49 percent (‘‘Paladino Trails . . . 2010). With Paladino within striking distance of an apparently vulnerable Cuomo, the race for governor appeared to be competitive. The so-called Tea Partiers in New York supported Paladino and helped deliver the primary victory to him, but he was often quoted dismissing the prospect of a Sarah Palin presidential run in 2012. In one interview, Paladino called Palin a ‘‘TV personality’’ unprepared to be president (Confessore 2010). In an interview with WNYC on the subject of a potential presidential run by the former Republican vice presidential candidate, Paladino explained that he wanted a real leader to challenge Obama in 2012, ‘‘not someone who just wants to go throw a bunch of words and proverbs and—I want somebody that is going to be totally responsible. Someone that is a student of that government’’ (Paybarah 2010). Neither comment gained much traction among Tea Party supporters, and the potential intraparty dustup between Palin and Paladino was quickly overshadowed by subsequent gaffes by Paladino. Rick Lazio had secured the Conservative Party nomination but fought to have his name removed so that Paladino would not have to face a three-way race that could split the Republican vote. Lazio secured a nomination to a judgeship, the only way to remove a candidate’s name from a general-election ballot in New York (Gershman 2010). While it appeared that the gubernatorial race could be close, it was not long before the Paladino campaign imploded. On September 29, a video surfaced of Paladino apparently threatening bodily harm against New York Post reporter Fred Dicker, over members of the press allegedly following and taking pictures of Paladino’s daughter (Good 2010). The video received national attention, and the tough-talking

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Paladino was quickly characterized as hotheaded and ill suited for the job of governor. On October 10, Paladino was filmed speaking before a group of Orthodox Jews saying that children in the state should not be ‘‘brainwashed into thinking that homosexuality is an equally valid and successful option—it isn’t’’ (Serwer 2010). Paladino later apologized for this comment, but it may have been too late. Even former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani called Paladino’s remarks ‘‘highly offensive’’ (Chung 2010a). These, among other dustups, would prove to be too much for the iconoclastic candidate to overcome. Paladino’s performance in the September Quinnipiac poll would not be matched; every subsequent poll showed him running at least fourteen points behind Cuomo, and the deficit was often much larger. On election day, Paladino managed only 34.1 percent of the vote to Cuomo’s 61.4 percent. On election night, Paladino emerged onstage to make his concession speech holding a baseball bat, symbolic of his regular pledge on the campaign trail to use that tool to clean up Albany (Chung 2010b). He never got the opportunity.

U.S. Senate Election (Regular) In New York’s regularly scheduled U.S. Senate election, Charles Schumer, first elected to the Senate in 1998, faced only token opposition despite the anti-incumbent fervor sweeping the country. Already the third-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate and no longer in the shadow of the former junior senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, Schumer had achieved significant stature in his relatively short tenure. He was also well positioned for his reelection bid; by February 2009, he had already amassed more than $10 million in his reelection fund (Saltonstall 2009). In the race for the Republican nomination, early speculation focused on two candidates—retired CIA agent Gary Berntsen and professional political consultant Jay Townsend. Their campaigns followed a similar trajectory as the primary campaigns waged by Rick Lazio and Carl Paladino. At the Republican Convention in June, Berntsen received 43 percent of the vote to Townsend’s 37 percent on the first ballot. In the second round of balloting, Berntsen received 62 percent. Townsend’s tally was unchanged in the second round, but he crossed the threshold necessary to force a primary. In what was becoming a trend, the Republican rank and file bucked their party’s official nominee. On primary day, Jay Townsend walked away with

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56 percent of the vote to wrest the nomination away from the New York State Republican Party. Schumer was never predicted to be particularly vulnerable in 2010. Prior to the primary, no preelection poll showed him leading by less than nineteen points against either Berntsen or Townsend (Real Clear Politics 2010a). After the primary, Townsend experienced a brief bump in support, and a Quinnipiac poll showed him getting 38 percent of the vote against Schumer’s 54 percent (Little-Known New York . . . 2010). However, that burst of popularity faded as Schumer’s margins in every poll taken after September were comfortable; the last poll prior to election day showed Schumer with a thirtytwo-point lead (Siena College 2010b). On election day, Schumer won 65.4 percent.

U.S. Senate Election (Special) In January 2009, Gov. David Paterson appointed U.S. Representative Kirsten Gillibrand from New York’s Twentieth Congressional District to replace Hillary Clinton when she was appointed secretary of state. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the appointment. On January 23, 2009, politico.com quoted several anonymous U.S. House sources who said, ‘‘Nobody really likes her,’’ and ‘‘She’s rubbed people the wrong way’’ (Thrush 2009). In January 2010, speculation began to mount that Gillibrand’s appointment would be short-lived, when popular, former Tennessee representative Harold Ford Jr., a recent transplant to New York, expressed interest in challenging her (‘‘Former Tennessee . . . 2010). By March, however, the New York Times reported that ‘‘under intense pressure from Democratic Party officials,’’ Ford dropped his contemplative bid to challenge Gillibrand (Barbaro 2010). Gillibrand never polled particularly well against generic GOP candidates prior to the fall of 2010, prompting the field of challengers to become crowded quickly (Katz 2010a). Former chief economist for Bear Stearns, David Malpass, former Nassau County state legislator Bruce Blakeman, and Joe DioGuardi, a former U.S. representative from New York’s Twentieth District, all signaled their intentions to run. Blakeman and Malpass were considered early on to be the two front-runners, with DioGuardi maintaining a Tea Party–fueled insurgent candidacy with little official Republican Party support (Madore 2010). In preconvention polling, DioGuardi performed the best (‘‘Politics in New York . . . 2010). However, following multiple ballots at the GOP convention in June, the party endorsed Blakeman, with Malpass receiving enough votes to force a

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primary; DioGuardi received only 18 percent of the first roll-call vote of convention delegates (Madore 2010). DioGuardi vowed, like Carl Paladino, to get the fifteen thousand required signatures to get his name on the primary ballot; by July, he had twenty-five thousand signatures (Wygel 2010). With the race shaping up to be another fight between the party favorite and the grassroots contender, former New York City mayor and influential Republican figure Rudy Giuliani endorsed Malpass (Katz 2010b). In a sign of the Republican Party’s declining political clout, Giuliani’s endorsement may have helped Malpass rise to second place, a better performance than any of the preprimary polls suggested. In the September 14 primary, the grassroots candidate, DioGuardi, received 42 percent of the vote. Malpass received a substantial 38 percent and Blakeman, the Republican Party’s designated nominee, garnered only 21 percent. As the general election neared, very few polls showed the contest between Gillibrand and DioGuardi to be competitive. A SurveyUSA poll showed DioGuardi receiving a postprimary bump, narrowing the Senate contest to a one-point lead for Gillibrand (‘‘Results . . . 2010). No poll taken thereafter showed Gillibrand with less than a ten-point lead (Real Clear Politics 2010b). On election day, Gillibrand won with 62 percent.

U.S. House Races New York had several competitive U.S. House races in 2010. Below, we describe developments in several of the more competitive contests. First District Democrat Tim Bishop had represented the First District, a traditional swing district that includes most of Suffolk County on Long Island, since 2002. In that year, a good midterm election for the GOP, he was one of only two Democrats to narrowly defeat an incumbent Republican (Keneally 2010). In his reelection bids, Bishop never won by commanding margins, even in strong Democratic years like 2006 and 2008. Bishop faced a crowded field of challengers that included Chris Cox, the grandson of President Richard Nixon and New York’s executive director for Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid, George Demos, a former SEC prosecutor and Suffolk County native, and Randy Altschuler, a businessman and the Suffolk County Republican Party’s favorite to take on Bishop in November (Strassel 2010). The primary race attracted the attention of Republican opinion leaders like Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani,

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Chris Christie, and Rush Limbaugh—all of whom supported Altschuler, with the exception of Limbaugh, who endorsed Demos (Peoples 2010). On September 14, Altschuler won with 45 percent to Cox’s 31 percent and Demos’ 24 percent. Initially, it appeared Bishop had defeated Altschuler by 3,500 votes. However, the Suffolk County Board of Elections discovered their count was off by nearly 4,000 votes, and when corrected, it gave Altschuler a 400-vote lead. During more than a month of re-canvassing, the lead alternated between Altschuler and Bishop. Altschuler eventually conceded on December 8 that Bishop had won the race by just 263 votes. Thirteenth District The Republican-leaning Thirteenth Congressional District in Staten Island and portions of southern Brooklyn was taken by Democrat Michael McMahon in the wave election of 2008. Rep. Vito Fossella had represented the district since 1997. In the race to challenge McMahon, two Republicans faced off—Brooklyn oil company owner Michael Allegretti and Michael Grimm, a former FBI agent and Gulf War veteran. The primary became vicious when Allegretti, Fossella’s pick to face McMahon, accused Grimm of falsifying his military service records (Freedlander 2010). Grimm responded by calling Allegretti a ‘‘petulant child.’’ The Staten Island Republican Party establishment backed Allegretti but, in what had become a theme of Republican primary races in the Empire State, was rebuffed by voters. The primary election resulted in the resounding nomination of Mr. Grimm with 62 percent of the vote. Grimm quickly became a rising star within the small-but-vibrant Tea Party Movement on Staten Island and received the endorsement of Sarah Palin. The Republican wave of 2010 proved too strong for McMahon, and Grimm defeated him and the Republican Party establishment on election night with 51.5 percent to McMahon’s 47.8 percent. Nineteenth District Former musician John Hall had represented the Nineteenth District, which includes much of Westchester County along with parts of Duchess, Orange, and Rockland counties, since 2006. Hall defeated his 2008 opponent, Iraq War veteran Kiernan Lalor, by more than seventeen points. Hall’s early Republican opponent, State Assemblyman Greg Ball, dropped out of the race when it became clear in December of 2009 that wealthy oph-

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thalmologist Nan Hayworth planned to seek the Republican nomination (Ross 2009). Ball had suffered from lackluster grassroots support; voters were far more energized by the potential Hayworth candidacy. Local Republicans were fundamentally mistrustful of Ball, a career politician whose Washington bona fides only counted against him in an anti-incumbent year. Hayworth faced another Tea Party–backed candidate, Neil Di Carlo, and a short-lived battle ensued between the two as both fought to receive the backing of as many local Tea Party groups as possible (Bartley 2010). Di Carlo had considerable success, receiving the backing of several New York State Tea Party chapters, but in the primary, Hayworth received more than 69 percent of the vote. Hayworth quickly became the subject of national attention. Her positions, including support for repealing financial-industry regulations and healthcare reform, were caricatured as the typically unrealistic legislative objectives of the Tea Party and their supporters (Jaffe 2010). Her election was not assured in a swing district, but on election day, Hayworth received 53 percent of the vote. Twentieth District In the special election to replace Senator Kirsten Gillibrand in 2009, Democrat Scott Murphy defeated Republican Jim Tedisco by a narrow 0.4 percentage points—726 votes of the 160,940 cast in that special election. A swing district, the twentieth had been in the hands of a Democrat since 2007. Christopher Gibson, army veteran and Cornell University PhD, ran uncontested in the primary to face Murphy in November, after local Tea Party–backed candidate Patrick Ziegler dropped out in March and endorsed Gibson (Donges 2010). While this race was competitive, few political analysts believed the seat was vulnerable to a Republican takeover. Gibson released a Public Opinion Strategies poll that showed him trailing his Democratic opponent in October by four points, while a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee poll showed Murphy defeating Gibson by thirteen points (Dlouhy 2010). Campaign observers Larry Sabato, Charlie Cook, and Stuart Rothenberg all called this race leaning Democratic by election day. But in the end, Gibson won a resounding upset victory with 55 percent of the vote. Twenty-third District New York’s Twenty-third District became the subject of national attention in 2009 when a special election to replace outgoing Republican Rep. John M.

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McHugh became a contest between the nascent Tea Party Movement and the Republican establishment. The Conservative Party nominee, Doug Hoffman, challenged the Republican nominee, Dee Dee Scozzafava. Democratic candidate Bill Owens captured a seat that Democrats had not held since the nineteenth century, when Scozzafava secured 5 percent of the vote—enough to deny Hoffman the votes he needed to win the election. The 2010 election almost became a rematch between Hoffman and Owens, but Hoffman failed to secure the Republican nomination. The new Republican nominee, Matt Doheny, won the nomination by less than one thousand votes. Hoffman did receive the Conservative Party nomination (New York allows for fusion candidate ballots, with one candidate running under multiple labels) and threatened a repeat scenario of a three-way race that could split the Republican vote and again deliver the seat to the Democrat. Hoffman conceded the primary, but was unable to remove his name from the ballot as a Conservative Party nominee (Weiner 2010a). In November, Rep. Owens received 48 percent of the vote to best Doheny’s 46 percent. Hoffman received 6 percent of the vote, just enough to derail the election for Doheny. This district was widely expected to be returned to a Republican representative after Owens’ unlikely 2009 win, but Owens bucked national anti-incumbent, pro-Republican trends to emerge victorious.

Twenty-fourth District Michael Arcuri secured New York’s Twenty-fourth Congressional District seat in 2006 and was narrowly reelected in 2008 by a four-point margin over Republican Richard Hanna. Hanna faced no opposition in the Republican primary despite a 2008 interview in which he said, ‘‘I never really thought of myself as a Republican. I still don’t.’’ He challenged Arcuri again in November 2010 (Rothenberg 2010). A Siena poll taken immediately after the primary showed no bounce for Hanna—he suffered from an eight-point deficit against Arcuri (Weiner 2010d). That margin would later shrink, and the race was widely considered a toss-up by late October (Ackerman 2010). However, unlike the narrow victory Arcuri won in 2008, this race was easily decided on election day; Hanna secured 53 percent of the vote.

Twenty-fifth District New York’s Twenty-fifth District, which stretches from Syracuse to Lake Ontario, has been a swing district that leans Democratic but had elected a

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Republican until 2008 when Democrat Dan Maffei was elected after longtime incumbent Rep. James Walsh retired. A number of Republican hopefuls entered the race to challenge the freshman Democrat, including local conservative activist Paul Bertan, Lysander businessman Mark Bitz, retired teacher Mario Paolini, and former Syracuse Common Council member, Ann Marie Buerkle (Weiner 2010b). By March, Republican county representatives had come together around Buerkle; Bertan and Bitz suspended their campaigns in early March. It was not long before it became clear that Buerkle was a credible candidate, but she never polled well against Maffei. A Republican poll conducted July 28–August 1, commissioned by Ayres, McHenry & Associates, showed Buerkle trailing Maffei 41 percent to 44 percent (American Action Forum 2010). However, with Maffei at less than 50 percent, Buerkle’s supporters had reason to be optimistic. Buerkle quickly became a rising star within the Tea Party Movement. She was labeled one of a select few of Sarah Palin’s ‘‘Mama Grizzlies,’’ receiving the endorsement of the former vice presidential candidate via her Facebook page (Weiner 2010c). Palin’s endorsement provided a much-needed fundraising bump—Buerkle’s campaign had only $100,000 in cash on hand at the end of the first quarter; that amount would increase by more than 200 percent in the next quarter. Buerkle’s fund-raising prowess, aided no doubt by Palin’s endorsement, earned her the designation of ‘‘Young Gun’’ by the National Republican Congressional Committee, even though her secondquarter fund-raising numbers totaled only $340,000 to her Democratic opponent’s $2.3 million (Harding 2010). In October, the signs were not good for Buerkle. A poll gave Maffei a twelve-point advantage (Siena College 2010a). At 11:30 p.m. on election day, it appeared that Maffei had defeated Buerkle, who had only 47 percent of the vote. Two days after the election, however, the absentee ballots began to tell a different story. Both camps launched re-canvassing challenges. The recount dragged on for the better part of the month, with both camps challenging every vote. When Buerkle’s lead reached approximately seven hundred votes, Maffei conceded. Buerkle’s win gave the Republican Party a total of sixtythree new seats in the 112th Congress.

Conclusion The 2010 New York elections were quite animated. Developments, especially on the Republican side, reflected significant impact of the Tea Party Movement, whose support helped to catapult several contenders over GOP estab-

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lishment hopefuls. In few other states did activists wrest control of the nominating process away from the party apparatus as in New York. In the end, some candidates proved unviable, but electability seemed to be beside the point. The intention of Tea Party activists—and voters—was to express their exasperation with the state of the party apparatus, not the system itself. The electorate was engaged—they did not abandon the system, they challenged it. Developments in 2010 are certain to have implications for subsequent cycles as Tea Party supporters statewide cultivate an infrastructure in New York and as both major parties (but the GOP establishment in particular) strive to determine how to respond to this emerging threat—or opportunity. References Ackerman, Byron. 2010. ‘‘Siena Poll: Margin Shrinks in Arcuri/Hanna Race.’’ Utica Observer-Dispatch (October 27). http://www.uticaod.com/elections/x1696233959/ Siena-poll-Margin-shrinks-in-Arcuri-Hanna-race. American Action Forum. 2010. ‘‘Survey of Likely Voters in NY 25.’’ (July 28, 29, 30, August 1). http://americanactionforum.org/files/NY%2025%20Toplines.pdf. AP. 2010. ‘‘Paladino Mounts Effort to Oust Lazio as GOP Choice.’’ (June 30). http:// www.king5.com/news/politics/95518999.html. Barbaro, Michael. 2010. ‘‘Ford Decides Not to Run.’’ New York Times (March 1). http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/ford-decides-not-to-run/?hp. Bartley, Tom. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Favorite Seeks to Add GOP Nod in 19th Congressional District.’’ Bedford Patch (August 19). http://bedford.patch.com/articles/tea -party-favorite-seeks-to-add-gop-nod-in-19th-congressional-district. Benjamin, Elizabeth. 2010. ‘‘GOP Shopping for Replacement for State Chairman Ed Cox; Ed Lurie Said to Be Eyeing Up Spot.’’ New York Daily News (May 31). http:// www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/05/31/2010-05-31_ny…gop_hones_ax_for _boss_cox.html. Brosh, Brendan, and Adam Lisberg. 2010. ‘‘Ex-Paterson Aide David Johnson Surrenders; Arrested on Assault Charges in Sherr-una Booker Case.’’ New York Daily News (August 13). http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/08/12/2010-08 -12_expaterson_aide_david_johnson_surrenders_arrested_on_assault_charge_in _sherruna_.html. Buffalo News Editorial Board. 2009. ‘‘Race for Governor Widens.’’ Buffalo News (December 29). http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial-page/buffalo-news-editori als/article27783.ece. Chung, Jen. 2010a. ‘‘Giuliani Calls Paladino’s Gay Remarks ‘Highly Offensive.’ ’’ Gothamist (October 12). http://gothamist.com/2010/10/12/giuliani_calls_pala dinos_gay_remark.php. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Politicians Worry about Paladino’s ‘Violent Talk.’ ’’ Gothamist (September 16). http://gothamist.com/2010/09/16/democrats_worry_about_paladinos _vio.php.

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Confessore, Nicholas. 2010. ‘‘Carl Paladino Threatens Shutdown if Budget Is Late.’’ New York Times (October 25). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/nyregion/ 26paladino.html. Dlouhy, Jennifer. 2010. ‘‘Murphy-Gibson Match-Up Not the Tight Contest Some Predicted—but Other New York Races Are.’’ Times Union Capitol Confidential (October 18). http://blog.timesunion.com/nypotomac/murphy-gibson-match-up -not-the-tight-contest-some-predicted-but-other-new-york-races-are/4092/. Donges, Patrick. 2010. ‘‘Patrick Ziegler Drops Out of 20th Congressional District Race.’’ Saratogian (March 31). http://www.saratogian.com/articles/2010/03/31/ news/doc4bb399305cb44694949727.txt. ‘‘Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford May Challenge Gillibrand in New York Democratic Primary.’’ 2010. FOX News (January 12). http://www.foxnews.com/politics/ 2010/01/12/tennessee-rep-challenge-gillibrand-new-york-democratic-primary/. Freedlander, David. 2010. ‘‘Michael Allegretti Doubles-Down on Claims Michael Grimm Faked Military Status.’’ New York Observer (September 1). http://www.ob server.com/2010/politics/michael-allegretti-doubles-down-claims-michael-grimm -faked-military-status. Gershman, Jacob. 2010. ‘‘Once a Potential Paladino Spoiler, Lazio out of Governor’s Race.’’ Wall Street Journal (September 27). http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2010/ 09/27/paladino-spoiler-lazio-drops-out-of-governors-race/. Goldberg, Delen. 2009. ‘‘Gov. David Paterson’s Popularity Tanks; New Yorkers Prefer Eliot Spitzer over Paterson.’’ New York Daily News (April 20). http://www.syra cuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/gov_david_patersons_popularity.html. Good, Chris. 2010. ‘‘Carl Paladino vs. NY Post’s Fred Dicker: The Best Campaign Confrontation of 2010.’’ Atlantic (September 30). http://www.theatlantic.com/pol itics/archive/2010/09/carl-paladino-vs-ny-posts-fred-dicker-best-campaign-con frontation-of-2010/63818/. Hakim, Danny, and Jeremy Peters. 2010. ‘‘David Paterson Drops Out of New York’s Governor’s Race.’’ New York Times (February 26). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/ 02/27/nyregion/27paterson.html. Hakim, Danny, and Nicholas Confessore. 2009. ‘‘Resisting Obama, Paterson Vows to Remain in New York Governor’s Race.’’ New York Times (September 20). http:// www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/nyregion/21paterson.html. Harding, Alison. 2010. ‘‘CNN 100: A Familiar Story in New York’s 25th.’’ CNN (September 25). http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/25/cnn-100-a-familiar -story-in-new-yorks-25th/. Hernandez, Raymond, and Jeff Zeleny. 2009. ‘‘Obama Asks Paterson to Quit New York’s Governor’s Race.’’ New York Times (September 19). http://www.nytimes .com/2009/09/20/nyregion/20paterson.html. Jaffe, Matthew. 2010. ‘‘The Rookies: Nan Hayworth Makes Strong Push for Congress in New York.’’ ABC News (October 12). http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/2010 _Elections/vote-2010-elections-nan-hayworth-tea-party-ally/story?id11850904. James, Will. 2010. ‘‘Bishop Appears to Win in Photo Finish.’’ The Southampton Press (November 3). http://www.27east.com/news/article.cfm/Other/310158/Voters -Turn-Out-For-Key-State-and-Federal-Races. Katz, Celeste. 2010a. ‘‘One More from Siena: Good News for Sen. Gillibrand.’’ New

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York Daily News (August 18). http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/ 2010/08/one-more-from-siena-good-news.html. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Rudy Giuliani Endorses David Malpass in GOP Senate Primary.’’ New York Daily News (September 7). Keneally, Meghan. 2010. ‘‘As Recount Drags On, Tim Bishop Decamps for Florida.’’ New York Observer (November 24). http://www.observer.com/2010/politics/ bishop. ‘‘Little-Known New York Attorney General Candidates Tied, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds Gillibrand up by Only 6 Points.’’ 2010. Quinnipiac University (September 23). http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1318.xml?ReleaseID1505. Madore, James T. 2010. ‘‘Blakeman, Malpass on Ballot for GOP Senate Primary.’’ Newsday (June 3). http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/blakeman-mal pass-on-ballot-for-gop-senate-primary-1.1976240. ‘‘Paladino Trails Cuomo by 6 Points in New York Gov Race.’’ 2010. Quinnipiac (September 22). http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1318.xml?ReleaseID1504. Paybarah, Azi. 2010. ‘‘Paladino Doesn’t Like Palin.’’ The Empire/WNYC (September 16). http://empire.wnyc.org/2010/09/paladino-doesnt-like-palin/. Peoples, Steve. 2010. ‘‘NY: Limbaugh, Gingrich Wade into 1st District Primary.’’ Congressional Quarterly Roll Call Blog (September 10). http://blogs.cqrollcall.com/ eyeon2010/2010/09/conservatives-pundits-on-diffe.html. ‘‘Politics in New York State: The Races for Governor and U.S. Senate.’’ 2010. Marist College Institute for Public Opinion (May 11). http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp -content/misc/nyspolls/NY100503/Tuesday%205.11%20Release/Complete%20 May%2011,%202010%20NYS%20Poll%20Release%20an d%20Tables.pdf. Precious, Tom. 2010. ‘‘Paladino Says Signatures Put Him in GOP Primary.’’ Buffalo News (July 15). http://www.buffalonews.com/city/capital-connection/albany/ article75636.ece. Real Clear Politics. 2010a. ‘‘New York Senate—Berntsen vs. Schumer.’’ (June 7–July 12). http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/ny/new_york_senate _berntsen_vs_schumer-1610.html. ———. 2010b. ‘‘New York Senate Special Election.’’ http://www.realclearpolitics .com/epolls/2010/senate/ny/new_york_senate_dioguardi_vs_gillibrand-1469.html. ‘‘Results of SurveyUSA Election Poll 17132.’’ 2010. http://www.surveyusa.com/ client/PollReport.aspx?gddf78dd6-bef1-44e3-af71-225f2d2da637. Ross, Selena. 2009. ‘‘In Hudson Valley, Local GOP Revolt against WashingtonBlessed Candidate.’’ City Hall News (December 13). http://www.cityhallnews.com/ newyork/article-1059-in-hudson-valley-local-gop-revolt-against-washington -blessed-candidate.html. Rothenberg, Stuart. 2010. ‘‘The Most Refreshing, Yet Unusual, Candidate Interview I Have Done.’’ Rothenberg Political Report (March 10). http://rothenbergpoliti calreport.blogspot.com/2010/03/most-refreshing-yet-unusual-candidate.html. Saltonstall, David. 2009. ‘‘Sen. Chuck Schumer Unlikely to See Competition in 2010 Reelection Bid.’’ New York Daily News (February 1). http://www.nydailynews.com/ news/politics/2009/01/31/2009-01-31_sen_chuckeschumer_unlikely_to_see_com pet.html. ———. 2010a. ‘‘Rick Lazio Wins New York State GOP Nomination for Governor.’’

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New York Daily News (June 2). http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/ 06/02/2010-06-02_rick_lazio…wins_new_york_state_gop_nomination_for_gover norwith_twice_as_many_vo.html. Serwer, Adam. 2010. ‘‘The Plum Line: Paladino’s Apology Shows Dem Timidity Enables Discrimination.’’ Washington Post (October 13). http://voices.washing tonpost.com/plum-line/2010/10/paladino_finally_apologizes_fo.html. Siena College. 2010a. ‘‘Dan Maffei has 12-Point Lead over Ann Marie Buerkle.’’ Siena Research Institute (October 17). http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/ Parents_and_Community/Community_Page/SRI/SNY_Poll/25th%20CD%20201 0%20Poll%20Release%201%20—%20 Final.pdf. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Cuomo Nears Election Day with Big 25-Point Lead.’’ Siena Research Institute (October 31). http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/Parents_and _Community/Community_Page/SRI/SNY_Poll/103110SNYPollReleaseFINAL .pdf. Stein, Sam. 2008. ‘‘David Paterson Formally Declares Plans to Run for Reelection.’’ Huffington Post (October 6). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/06/david -paterson-formally-d_n_132460.html. Strassel, Kim. 2010. ‘‘New York’s GOP Never Learns.’’ Wall Street Journal (August 19). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870447610457543972258403 8824.html. Thrush, Glenn. 2009. ‘‘She’s Not Miss Popularity.’’ Politico (January 23). http://www .politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0109/Shes_not_Miss…Popularity.html. Vielkind, Jimmy. 2010. ‘‘New Poll: Paterson Gets Trounced by Cuomo in Primary.’’ New York Observer (February 17). http://www.observer.com/2000/new-poll-pater son-gets-trounced-cuomo-primary. Weiner, Mark. 2010a. ‘‘Doug Hoffman Concedes NY-23 GOP Primary, but Stays in Race on Conservative Line.’’ Syracuse.com (September 23). http://www.syra cuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/doug_hoffman_to_concedeeny-23.html. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Paul Bertan Drops Out of Race in NY-25, Endorses Ann Marie Buerkle.’’ Post-Standard (March 1). http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/ 2010/03/paul_bertan_drops_out_of_race.html. ———. 2010c. ‘‘Sarah Palin Endorses Ann Marie Buerkel in NY-25 Congressional Race.’’ Post-Standard (July 12). ———. 2010d. ‘‘Siena Poll: Rep. Michael Arcuri Jumps Out to 8-point Lead in NY24 Congressional Race.’’ Post-Standard (September 20). http://www.syracuse.com/ news/index.ssf/2010/09/siena_poll_rep_michael_arcuri.html. Wygel, Barry. 2010. ‘‘25,000 Signatures Should Put DioGuardi on the Ballot.’’ Legislative Gazette.com (July 20). http://a.44.linearpublishing.com/Articles-c-2010-07-20 -69330.113122_25000_signatures_should_put_DioGuardi_on_the_ballot.html.

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Part III States Not in the Tea Party Playbook

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13 Arkansas The Kettle That Didn’t Whistle Andrew Dowdle and Joseph D. Giammo

n the months leading up to the 2010 midterm congressional elections, Arkansas seemed like the perfect ground for a Tea Party revolt. The state’s political culture is embodied in its motto ‘‘regnat populus’’ (‘‘the people rule’’), and the state has traditionally refused to embrace an activist agenda that would have utilized government activity to address inequality and poverty (Blair and Barth 2005). Contemporary factors also made Arkansas look like a possible arena for Tea Party activity. President Obama had been unpopular within the state, even before the 2010 campaign. The state’s Republican Party had been viewed as more ‘‘progressive’’ than its counterparts in most of the South (Blair and Barth 2005), which would seem like grounds for intraparty opposition from its growing conservative wing. This combination of an unpopular Democratic Party plus a fiscally moderate GOP made the state seem to be perfect ground for a Tea Party revolt. At first glance, electoral results seem to confirm this prediction of popular conservative discontent sweeping away an unpopular Democratic Party. A Republican won a U.S. Senate seat for only the second time in the state since Reconstruction, and Republicans won three of the four House races. This represented a sizable shift in the state’s delegation from 2008, when Democrats occupied both Senate seats and three of the four House seats. The results were dramatic in the state races as well. The GOP picked up eighteen seats in the Arkansas House and seven seats in the state senate. While Arkansas was the only southern state legislature with a Democratic majority, Republicans reached postbellum high-water marks with forty-six of one hun-

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dred state house seats and fifteen of thirty-five state senate seats under their control. Also remarkable was the party’s success in statewide constitutional races, which we will discuss in more detail later in the chapter. Despite these dramatic gains for Republicans, the Tea Party was the kettle that didn’t whistle in Arkansas during 2010. We contend that the real story of the midterm election was the surge of the mainstream Republican Party at the expense of the long-dominant Democratic Party, not the growth of a grassroots Tea Party Movement within the state. The movement was weak within the state and failed to sway the few elections in which it demonstrated anything more than minimal activity. These Republican successes were due primarily to trends occurring before the emergence of the Tea Party, and its activists played a minimal role in achieving these GOP victories.

The Political Environment in Arkansas In many ways, the outcome of the 2010 Arkansas midterm seemed almost predetermined by the results of the 2008 presidential elections. Despite a number of national trends favoring the Democratic Party, Arkansas was one of the few states where Barack Obama underperformed John Kerry’s 2004 results. The margin was substantial, since Kerry lost the state by nine points while Obama lost by twenty points. Obama’s race probably played a role in his unpopularity within Arkansas, but there were a number of other factors as well. Partially, the disadvantage was due to differences in the candidates’ re´sume´s. Kerry was a decorated war veteran, while Obama was running against a decorated war veteran in 2008. Kerry had certain electoral advantages that Obama did not have, including a southern vice-presidential nominee and state Democrats who were willing to fund radio advertising featuring endorsements by two popular Democratic former senators, Dale Bumpers and David Pryor. By contrast, when the Obama campaign decided to write off Arkansas, no other organization stepped in to fill this gap. (Brummett 2010a) Additionally, the very public sparring between Bill Clinton and several Obama supporters during the 2008 nominating campaign probably hurt Obama more in Clinton’s home state than in other parts of the country. Even accounting for these factors, Obama’s presence as the chief partisan was a liability for Democrats within the state, especially in rural areas where Democrats had traditionally done well. In the mostly rural First Congressional District, Al Gore had actually managed to win 50 percent of the vote in 2000 compared to Obama’s 38 percent in 2008. Observers have argued that race was compounded by other personal factors (i.e., his name, the

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nationality of his father, his time in Indonesia and Hawaii, his work as a community organizer, his Ivy League education) that painted him as ‘‘exotic’’ to many voters outside the state but as ‘‘alien’’ to many Arkansans. When this background was combined with unpopular policies such as cap-and-trade legislation, Republicans succeeded in painting Obama and fellow Democrats as either elitists or simply ‘‘different’’ from most Arkansans. In a state where populism and cultural affinity had typically been a Democratic advantage, this disconnect proved problematic in 2010 (Stiles 2010). In fact, more than two-and-a-half times as many voters said they cast their votes to express opposition to the president than said they did to express support for him (Arkansas Exit Poll 2010). Interestingly enough, short-term factors plaguing the Democratic Party probably played less of a role in Arkansas than in other states. Arkansas, relatively speaking, avoided the worst part of the recession. The state unemployment rate was approximately 2 percent below the national average, and the state government was one of the few that managed to avoid large deficits and cuts (Stiles 2010). In part, the 2010 results were also presaged by demographic trends that had favored the Republican Party in recent years. While the rural areas that were the mainstays of the Democratic Party have lost population, the highgrowth areas in the northwestern part of the state and the suburbs around Little Rock have been Republican electoral strongholds (Brummett 2010a). These trends will even be more apparent after redistricting in 2012, particularly now that Republicans are in position to influence the process. As appeared to have been the case in much of the country, however, the 2010 election seemed to be more about voters expressing their unhappiness with the Democratic Party than about them embracing the Republican Party. In 2008, 36 percent of Arkansas voters identified as Democrats, compared to 32 percent who identified as Republicans and 31 percent who called themselves ‘‘Independents’’ (Arkansas Exit Poll 2008). In 2010, the numbers were similar, but Independents became the largest group at 37 percent, while both Democrats (34 percent) and Republicans (29 percent) comprised a smaller part of the electorate (Arkansas Exit Poll 2010). Further evidence that this election was more about dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party than it was about support for Republicans can be found in the same poll. While more voters had a favorable than had an unfavorable impression of the Republican Party (51 percent to 43 percent), the disparity for Democrats was more strongly negative, with 40 percent reporting a favorable opinion compared to 57 percent unfavorable. One of the problems for the Democratic Party in Arkansas was that the significant gains made by the party nationally in 2008 created a new set of

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challenges. The Arkansas electorate leans noticeably to the right. In fact, in each of the past two elections, not only did conservatives make up the largest share of the electorate, but in each case, voters were more than three times as likely to identify themselves as conservatives than they were to identify themselves as liberals (Arkansas Exit Poll 2008 and 2010). For the Democratic Party to be not just competitive in such a state, but, in fact, to dominate state and local politics, suggests that voters saw a clear distinction between a state Democratic Party that reflected their views and a national Democratic Party that was out of touch with them (Dowdle and Giammo 2010). This is especially clear when the Democratic candidates for president in 2004 and 2008 had such a difficult time gaining traction in the state, while Democrats running for Congress and state offices won easily. Maintaining that distinction, however, became more difficult after the 2008 presidential election. From the late 1960s until January of 2009, the national government had been under divided control, unified under the GOP, or unified under a Democratic president from the South and, not coincidentally, from the moderate-to-conservative wing of the party. The success of the Democratic Party in 2008 at the national level produced a very different set of circumstances. Democrats enjoyed a significant majority in each house of Congress under a president with an active agenda that was out of step with the conservative plurality in the state. This placed Arkansas’ congressional Democrats in a difficult position. On issues such as the healthcare bill, the stimulus, cap-andtrade legislation, and union reform, they often faced intense pressure from Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress to support the president’s agenda, while at the same time facing opposition to that agenda from their constituents. The votes for these bills by some in the congressional delegation seem to have linked the national and state parties more closely in the minds of voters. Certainly, unhappiness with the president and the Democratic Party hurt Democratic candidates further down the ballot. Other than the gubernatorial election, every Democrat who faced a Republican challenger for statewide office lost. The only member of the congressional delegation to win reelection, Mike Ross, was the one who was most visible in the press opposing the health-care reform bill and deficit spending. Even at the level of state legislative contests, the gains Republican candidates made are hard to explain without reference to voters’ dissatisfaction with the national Democratic Party. The Tea Party Movement within Arkansas One of the limits on the Tea Party Movement’s effectiveness was its lack of visible political activity, which can be partially attributed to its organizational

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weakness in the state. In many ways, this lack of strength mirrored some national trends. While lists identify more than twenty-three hundred Tea Party–related groups, one study found contact information for only threefifths of these groups and could actually reach only about one-fourth of them. Most of these groups had small membership lists and were dominated by novices. As a result, 70 percent of these groups did not engage in political campaigning in 2010 (Gardner 2010). In addition to this lack of organizational strength, Tea Party groups active in Arkansas surfaced only late in the electoral season. One independent source tracking ‘‘Tea Party Meet-ups,’’ or Tea Party meetings advertised on Meetup.com, nationwide from July 2010 to October 2010 reported no meeting in the First, Third, and Fourth congressional districts. While it reported twenty-three meetings in the Second District, more than half of those occurred in October (Chinni 2010). This limited their opportunities to influence voters because, by that time, the highest-profile races were all but decided. This sparse and inconsistent activity, as we will discuss later in the chapter, gave the GOP and most of its candidates little incentive to do more than simply acknowledge the occasional Tea Party endorsement. One of the other reasons why Arkansas Republican candidates may not have openly courted Tea Party groups was the views of some individuals who publicly identified themselves as part of the state’s Tea Party Movement. One such individual, Billy Joe Roper, was the former leader of the National Alliance, a white separatist group founded by William Turner. Turner was the author of The Turner Diaries, a novel that called for a race war against African Americans and other minorities. Roper was also the founder of White Revolution, a group that held events with white supremacists groups such as Aryan Nation. Roper was also a member of ResistNet Tea Party, an umbrella group representing a number of Tea Party groups, and the group hosted his website (Burghart and Zeskind 2010, 61). Roper ran a runoff campaign for governor in 2010 and participated in a few Tea Party events to rally support for his bid. Initially, he received a mixed reception. When newspapers and a local television station ran stories about Roper’s background and connections to the Tea Party Movement, local leaders disassociated themselves from him (Burghart and Zeskind 2010, 62). In many ways, the Tea Party Movement was an odd fit for Arkansas Republicans. While it had a significant focus on issues related to spending, taxation, and deficits, many observers have pointed out the movement represents an implicit, if not explicit, rejection of George W. Bush’s vision of a multicultural Republican Party grounded in ‘‘compassionate conservatism.’’ Instead, the movement’s more vocal elements seemed to embrace a vision

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closer to Pat Buchanan’s vision of social conservatism, cultural war, and skepticism toward immigration and multiculturalism (Dionne 2010). Recent history, however, had suggested that Bush was very popular in the state and had coattails built on more than just a simple usage of cleavage issues such as opposition to legalizing gay and lesbian marriage (Dowdle and Wekkin 2008). Jim Holt, the socially conservative Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in 2006, tried to use anti-immigrant appeals that were more in line with Buchanan Republicanism than with the views of Bush, but those appeals failed to have a net positive electoral effect (Price 2007). This divisiveness clashed with Republican traditions in the state. While Republicans in other parts of the South used a racially divisive ‘‘Southern Strategy’’ during the late 1960s and 1970s to lure whites from their traditional Democratic affiliation, Arkansas’ Republican Governor Winthrop Rockefeller strongly supported civil rights (Urwin 1995). A final factor that may have contributed to the lack of a strong Tea Party Movement in Arkansas was the lack of a strong Republican Party organization to rebel against. In many ways, the Tea Party began as protest by fiscal conservatives who had lost faith in the national Republican Party leadership’s willingness to tackle issues of spending and the deficit. While Arkansas had seen some significant victories by individual Republican candidates, such as Mike Huckabee and Win Rockefeller (the son of former governor Winthrop Rockefeller), over the previous decade, the state party remained very much a top-down organization that never developed a strong grassroots network or pool of candidates to build upon the success of the big names at the top of the ticket (Dowdle and Wekkin 2006). When Huckabee was term-limited out of office and Rockefeller tragically passed away in 2006, there was not much left of a mainstream Republican Party organization in the state (Dowdle and Giammo 2010). Without a strong organization to rebel against, the Tea Party Movement never had the impetus to take off in Arkansas like it took off in many other places in the country.

The Federal Races Even if the Tea Party did not provide a particularly compelling story in the midterm elections, the dramatic changes from the previous election more than made up for it. In 2008, the congressional races in Arkansas were over before they even began. The incumbent senator and four incumbent representatives running for reelection faced no major party opposition, and Democrats maintained control of both Senate seats and three of the four House seats. It was clear early on, however, that 2010 would be a dramatically differ-

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ent election. Blanche Lincoln, one of the most moderate Democrats in the Senate, had managed to alienate people to her right and to her left in the state through a series of actions. She alienated liberals with her opposition to the public option in the healthcare debate and to legislation making it easier to form unions. At the same time, she alienated conservatives by voting for the final version of healthcare reform and the stimulus. Dissatisfaction with her record encouraged candidates to run against her from inside and outside the Democratic Party. She first had to fend off a strong primary challenge from Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, whose campaign was supported in part by angry union leaders who spent almost $6 million trying to defeat her (Dewan and Greenhouse 2010). She did prevail, but only after a close and costly runoff election. In the meantime, with most of the focus locally and nationally on the Democratic primary, a field of eight Republican candidates competed comparatively quietly for the chance to oppose her. Despite the large number of candidates, John Boozman, who represented the Third District, won without a runoff. With the general dissatisfaction with Democrats in the state, a lack of enthusiasm for Lincoln’s campaign from many in her base, and an energized Republican base, Lincoln trailed by double digits throughout the campaign and lost to Boozman in a landslide. However, it is difficult to credit the Tea Party with any significant role in this victory. The various Tea Party groups in the state did not make endorsements in either of the contested primaries or the general election. Most observers noted the lack of enthusiasm Tea Party activists had for Boozman, even though he looked from the start of the contest to be one of the strongest Republican senatorial challengers nationwide and did make some efforts to court them (Talk Business 2010). Palin endorsed Boozman on October 19, but her late involvement had no appreciable effect. Compared to 2008, the House races got off to a dramatically different start when two Democratic incumbents announced that they would not seek reelection. Vic Snyder, representative from the Second District, announced that he wanted to spend more time with his family, while Marion Berry, representative of the First District, decided to retire because of concerns about his health (Daniels 2010a and 2010b). While there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their explanations, it is also likely that the poor climate for Democrats played a role in their decisions. After all, a tough reelection campaign would mean more time away from family for Snyder and would be more taxing on Berry’s health. With Boozman’s decision to seek the Senate seat rather than run for reelection to the House from the Third District, the state was guaranteed that three of its House seats would be filled by new members after the election.

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That combination of a poor political climate for Democrats and the absence of the two Democratic incumbents contributed to Republicans winning the First and Second districts. Rick Crawford, a businessman with no previous elected experience, defeated Berry’s chief of staff, Chad Causey, while Tim Griffin, a former U.S. attorney and Bush administration official, beat State Senator Joyce Elliot. Steve Womack, the mayor of Rogers, was elected to replace Boozman. The only Democrat to win a congressional race was Mike Ross of the Fourth District, who comfortably beat Beth Anne Rankin. Ross made perhaps the most concerted effort of any of the incumbent Democrats to distance himself publicly from the administration, especially during the healthcare debate, where he was viewed as one of the leaders of the effort to eliminate the public option and a strong proponent of keeping the legislation from increasing the deficit (Bendavid 2009). What was clearly missing from any of these races was a prominent role for the Tea Party. While Crawford, Griffin, and Rankin all received endorsements from some Tea Party–related organization in the general election, it was not a significant part of their campaigns and none of them highlighted the endorsements prominently on their campaign websites (Crawford n.d., Griffin n.d., Rankin n.d.). Again however, the Tea Party’s influence was minimal when it did become involved in the campaign. In the congressional primaries, the only noteworthy endorsements involved support for Cecile Bledsoe in the Third District. Bledsoe, a state senator who was involved in a runoff with Womack, was endorsed by conservative luminaries such as Sarah Palin and by various Tea Party groups. However, she lost to Womack, who was probably the most moderate of the Republican candidates in the original field. In the general election, the Tea Party put most of its limited efforts into the Fourth-District race where Rankin, a former Huckabee staffer, challenged the Democratic incumbent, Mike Ross (Brummett 2010b). Notably, Rankin was the only Republican congressional candidate in Arkansas not to win. A number of factors made this race the most difficult of the four for the Republican Party, and it would be unfair to blame the Tea Party for the failure to defeat Ross. However, this negative result demonstrates a lack of ability by the Tea Party to sway an election in a district Obama lost two years earlier by nearly 20 percent.

State Races The state elections saw significant Republican gains also, with little or no visible action by the Tea Party. At the statewide level, Democratic candidates

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could be divided into three categories—those with Republican opposition, those without Republican opposition, and Governor Mike Beebe. The popular incumbent was the only Democrat running for constitutional office who avoided the effects of the pro-Republican wave, beating businessman Jim Keet by a comfortable margin. Republicans ran candidates in only three of the other statewide races, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and land commissioner. In all three cases, Republican candidates won close races over arguably stronger Democratic candidates. Democratic candidates won the remaining statewide races for attorney general, treasurer, and auditor without Republican Party opposition. In all three cases, however, roughly 30 percent of voters supported the Green Party candidate, suggesting that there was enough opposition to their candidacies that a Republican candidate could have won, had one been on the ballot. The state legislative races, much like the congressional races, were noticeably more competitive than in 2008. There were only thirty-one state house seats contested by both parties in 2010, but that was up from twenty-two in 2008. Similarly, only seven of the state senate seats were contested in 2010, but that was up significantly from the one contested seat in 2008. While Democrats retained majorities in both chambers, Republicans won more than two-thirds of the contested house seats and all of the contested senate seats, reducing the Democrats’ margins considerably. In other words, the story behind the state GOP’s success lies more with its increased long-term emphasis on candidate recruitment than on any populist wave.

Conclusion In many ways, the 2010 election represents a likely breakthrough for the Arkansas Republican Party. Traditionally, the GOP has been a rump party in the state legislature that has had difficulties in winning elections, often failing to field candidates outside its traditional bases in northwest Arkansas and suburban Little Rock. While Republicans have been able to win a few statewide elections under particularly favorable circumstances or with particular popular individual candidates, 2010 represents a much broader victory for the party. The fact that this breakthrough came without much impact from the probably ephemeral Tea Party Movement means that the state GOP does not need to worry greatly about knitting together competing or even antagonistic wings of the party as it moves forward. Republican optimism, however, should be somewhat tempered by the realization that voters rejected Democrats more than they embraced Republicans. Certainly, this gives the Republican Party a great opportunity to make permanent inroads with Arkansas

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voters and end the days of Democratic Party dominance. Whether they will do so, however, remains to be seen. If Republicans use their newfound relevance in the state government and the state’s congressional delegation to win over Arkansans, Arkansas may begin to look much more like other southern states politically. If, however, Republicans do not use this opportunity to build a vibrant party organization and develop a pool of potential future candidates in lower-level offices, or if Republican officeholders alienate those voters like Democrats did after 2008, the gains may be short-lived, and the 2010 election may eventually be seen as just an aberration in an otherwise long period of Democratic successes. At the same time, Arkansas Democrats now need to worry about reestablishing their identity as separate from the national party to try to win back the support of those moderate-to-conservative voters who abandoned them.

References Arkansas Exit Poll. 2010. CNN’s Election Center 2010. http://www.cnn.com/ELEC TION/2010/results/polls/ARS00p1. Bendavid, Naftali. 2009. ‘‘Blue Dog Democrats Hold Health-Care Overhaul at Bay.’’ Wall Street Journal. July 27, A1. Blair, Diane D., and Jay Barth. 2005. Arkansas Politics and Government, 3rd ed. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Brummett, John. 2010a. ‘‘Is It Racist? Is It Forever?’’ Arkansas Times. October 7, 2010. http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/is-it-racist-is-it-forever/Content ?oid1325201. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Tea Party Direct Endorsement.’’ Northwest Arkansas Times. September 28, 2010, 5A. Burghart, Devin, and Leonard Zeskind. 2010. Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions. Kansas City, MO: Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights. Chinni, Dante. 2010. ‘‘Mapping Voter Anger, Foreclosure Rates by District.’’ Retrieved from http://www.patchworknation.org/content/mapping-voter-anger -foreclosure-rates-b y-district. CNN’s Election Center. 2008. Arkansas Exit Poll. http://www.cnn.com/Election/ 2008/results/polls/ARP00p1. Crawford, Rick. n.d. Rick Crawford for Congress Campaign Website. http://www .meetrickcrawford.com/. Daniels, Alex. 2010a. ‘‘Snyder Cites Family, Won’t Seek an 8th Term.’’ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. January 16. Retrieved December 1, 2010, from the Lexis-Nexis Academic database. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Won’t Run Again, Berry Confirms. 7-termer Cites Health.’’ Arkan-

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sas Democrat-Gazette. January 25. Retrieved December 1, 2010 from the LexisNexis Academic database. Dewan, Shaila, and Steven Greenhouse. 2010. ‘‘Unions Make a Stand in Arkansas Race.’’ New York Times. June 6. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/us/politics/ 06labor.html. Dionne, E. J. Jr. 2010. ‘‘Is the Tea Party Out to Banish Bush-Style Conservatism?’’ Washington Post. November 18. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2010/11/17/AR2010111705313.html. Dowdle, Andrew, and Joseph D. Giammo. 2010. ‘‘Arkansas: Deep Blue and Bright Red at the Same Time?’’ In The New Politics of the Old South, 4th ed., ed. Charles S. Bullock, III and Mark J. Rozell. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Dowdle, Andrew, and Gary Wekkin. 2006. ‘‘Arkansas: The Post-2000 Elections in Arkansas: Continued GOP Growth or a Party That Has Peaked?’’ In The New Politics of the Old South, 3rd ed., ed. Charles S. Bullock, III and Mark J. Rozell. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ———. 2008. ‘‘Moral Values and Candidate Effects in Arkansas Elections, 2000– 2004.’’ Midsouth Political Science Review 9, no.1 (2007–2008): 1–18. Gardner, Amy. 2010. ‘‘Gauging the Scope of the Tea Party Movement in America.’’ Washington Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/ 10/23/AR2010102304000.html. Griffin, Tim. n.d. Tim Griffin for Congress Campaign Website. http://www.meetrick crawford.com/. Price, Lizzy. 2007. ‘‘Latino Bashing? Modern Race-Baiting in 2006 Arkansas Elections.’’ Paper presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Arkansas Political Science Association. Rankin, Beth Anne. n.d. Beth Anne Rankin for Congress Campaign Website. http:// www.bethannerankinforcongress.com/. Stiles, Andrew. 2010. ‘‘National Review: Turning Arkansas Red.’’ National Review online http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId130855895. Talk Business. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Treads Lightly with John Boozman.’’ TalkBusiness .net http://www.talkbusiness.net/article/TEA-PARTY-TREADS-LIGHTLY-WITH -JOHN-BOOZMAN /100/. Urwin, Cathy Kunzinger. 1995. ‘‘Nobless Oblige and Practical Politics: Winthrop Rockefeller and the Civil Rights Movement.’’ Arkansas Historical Quarterly 54 (Spring 1995): 30–52.

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14 Coats vs. Ellsworth The 2010 Indiana Senate Race Michael A. Maggiotto and Raymond H. Scheele

love working for the people of Indiana. . . . But I do not love Congress.’’ With those words, Evan Bayh, the most visible statewide Democrat, shocked Indiana voters and Hoosier political pros alike. Sen. Bayh ended—or paused—his political career of more than two decades, which included serving as Indiana secretary of state, two terms as governor, and two terms as U.S. senator, on the day before the state’s candidate qualification deadline, with an election war chest of over $13 million. Even his staff seemed unaware of the decision. Only days earlier, they had contacted state party officials for ballot access information and had discussed developing key contacts across the state. On February 15, 2010, what did Evan Bayh give back? Two strong and visible Republicans had eliminated themselves from Senate contention. After prayerful consideration—and reflection, perhaps, about a January 25 Rasmussen poll (Rasmussen 2010) showing him beating Bayh among likely voters by 47 percent to 44 percent—Rep. Mike Pence, leader of the Republican Conference, decided to remain in the House, secure in his east-central Indiana district. In addition, Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a successful statewide vote getter, opted to run for the District Four House seat, vacated by ten-term Congressman Steve Buyer, who stepped down under an ethics cloud on January 29. Rokita had served two terms as secretary of state and made it a practice to visit each of Indiana’s ninety-two counties every year. He was well-known as the prime advocate of state-issued photo identification to reduce vote fraud, a practice upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court

‘‘I

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Michael A. Maggiotto and Raymond H. Scheele

in January 2008. The departures of Pence and Rokita left Republican former senator Dan Coats, whose resignation created the open seat vacancy that Bayh filled in 1998, as the front-runner.

The Context of 2010 President Obama’s ability to carry Indiana in 2008 was read by some as a signal that the state had moved from securely ‘‘red’’ to at least ‘‘purple’’ status in presidential politics. That was a hopeful sign for Democrats in a year when Republican Mitch Daniels easily won reelection as governor, when the Indiana Senate remained solidly Republican, and when the Democrats retained only a thin majority in the Indiana House. The problem for Democrats was to scale and generalize the president’s achievement and brand them with a Hoosier stamp, to localize not only his electoral victory but also his agenda for the nation. Realists understood that it would be almost impossible for 2010 not to be a referendum on the president, at least in part, and that their primary assets, his name and charisma, would not top the ticket. Republicans wanted to build on the governor’s momentum. ‘‘Our man Mitch’’ had faced up to controversy in his first term and won. Cracking sixteen years of Democratic control over the governor’s residence, ‘‘the blade,’’ as he was known during his stint as Bush 43’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director, proved his acumen as a budget manager. Indiana was one of only a handful of states that remained in the black—and raised its credit rating to AA in 2006 and AAA in 2008—while the national economy collapsed under the worst recession since the Great Depression, swamping surrounding states in a sea of red ink. There was pain, to be sure. Indiana was tied to manufacturing and particularly to the automotive industry. Elkhart County prided itself as being the nation’s RV capital, which led it to over 15 percent unemployment. But there was innovation too: the state leased the Indiana Toll Road (I-90) for seventy-five years to a Spanish-Australian consortium; the state assumed control over K–12 finances and capped propertytax rates, while raising the sales tax by 1 percent, with little controversy. State agencies were compelled to tighten their belts and streamline procedures. By the beginning of the 2010 election cycle, Mitch Daniels, who had campaigned as an agent of change in 2004 and 2008, and Barack Obama, who had appropriated change with the mantra, ‘‘This is our time. This is our moment,’’ had records of achievement. How did Hoosiers view those records? The 2009 Hoosier Survey (Bowen Center 2009) provides useful information about public policy priorities for the state. Jobs topped the list: 73 per-

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cent of respondents replied that the state needs to do more to bring jobs to the state. Other top priorities included affordable healthcare (56 percent), making government run more efficiently (53 percent), and improving local schools (50 percent). Reducing illegal immigration (just over 40 percent), protecting the environment (just over 30 percent), and improving transportation (just under 20 percent) followed. There was strong statewide support (64 percent) for a constitutional amendment to cap property taxes. Should the state need new revenues, respondents guided legislators toward expanding casino gaming (35 percent) or extending the current sales tax to services, exempting medical and legal services (22 percent). If cutting services proved to be necessary, Hoosiers overwhelmingly targeted government operations (66 percent), followed by parks and recreation (47 percent). Hoosiers, smarting from double-digit unemployment, mindful of the raging debate over healthcare, and digesting a steady diet of disappointing news about student learning in public schools, responded accordingly. Bring in jobs. Make healthcare accessible and affordable. Fix the schools. Become as efficient as the private sector, but insulate police, schools, and fire services as much as possible from cuts. And don’t raise taxes! The 2009 Hoosier Survey also revealed interesting information about the Obama administration’s top legislative goal, national healthcare. Almost equal numbers of Hoosiers favored (49 percent) as opposed (46 percent) requiring all Americans have health insurance. By 50 percent to 42 percent, Hoosiers favored having a federal health-insurance plan to compete with private-sector plans, which almost exactly reflected results from a nationwide November 2009 Washington Post–ABC News poll (Washington Post 2009). Events early in 2010 seemed to return Hoosiers to an earlier time, one perhaps captured best by James Carville’s famous sign during the 1992 presidential campaign, ‘‘It’s the Economy, Stupid!’’ Real jobs—like old manufacturing jobs lost to technology or outsourced overseas—would enable workers to pay taxes to support a more efficient, results-oriented government that could provide good schools and well-trained, well-equipped first responders. For those who needed it, healthcare could be provided, even by a government option. Jobs were the key—jobs. Squabbling about anything else wasted precious time and threatened to sink the state, as it had sunk too many home mortgages.

The Nominees When the Democratic State Party Committee assembled to make its choice on May 15, it rapidly closed ranks behind Rep. Brad Ellsworth. Said one Democratic Party insider, ‘‘[Rep.] Baron Hill [District Nine] was on a con-

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gressional trip to Afghanistan and couldn’t be reached. Ellsworth was here. Others weren’t considered. Ellsworth said he was interested, and people coalesced quickly around him.’’ This fait accompli produced a candidate whose voting record paralleled closely the man whom he sought to succeed. Bayh was somewhat more liberal (Americans for Democratic Action–ADA) and somewhat more favorably disposed to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) positions than was Ellsworth, and about equivalently supportive of pro-environment positions (League of Conservation Voters–LCV) and the positions of the Chamber of Commerce (COC). Both men were almost equally modest in their support of positions championed by conservatives (American Conservative Union– ACU). Bayh’s reputation as a left-leaning centrist is born out by these ratings, as is Ellsworth’s independence as a swing-vote, ‘‘Blue-Dog’’ Democrat. Additionally, Ellsworth was the kind of faithful public servant that Bayh portrayed himself to be in his withdrawal speech. A lifelong Hoosier and resident of the Eighth Congressional District in southwestern Indiana, Ellsworth began a twenty-five-year career with the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Department upon graduation from Indiana State University South (Evansville) that culminated with two terms as sheriff, before running successfully for Congress in 2006. From the moment Dan Coats first hinted at running against Bayh, Democrats were poised to pounce. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a video of Coats speaking to the North Carolina delegation at the 2008 Republican National Convention in which he said he and his wife ‘‘have a home’’ in North Carolina and plan to be ‘‘a North Carolinian’’ but ‘‘don’t tell the good people of Indiana.’’ Television stations in Indiana ran the video remarks, putting Coats on the defensive (YouTube 2008). Combined with the residency problem, Coats was painted as a lobbyist for ‘‘special interests’’ and a person who ‘‘stands with foreign countries and Wall Street banks’’ (Eggan 2010). Coats used interviews to defuse the residency issue, but the lobbying charges continued. In the GOP primary, Coats faced State Senator Marlin Stutzman and former U.S. representative John Hostettler, a party maverick who had a history of refusing PAC contributions and the uncanny ability to eke out narrow victories by appealing to social conservatives. Don Bates Jr., a financial advisor from the rural east-central Indiana county of Randolph, and Richard Behney, a self-described ‘‘Tea Party guy’’ from Fishers, a northern suburb of Indianapolis, were the other two first-time candidates. The race gained national attention on April 20, when South Carolina Senator James DeMint, the ‘‘Tea Party Kingmaker’’ (Zernicke 2010) endorsed Stutzman, calling him ‘‘the conservative outsider in the Indiana Senate race

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who will take on the Washington establishment’’ and ‘‘a young conservative . . . who could pull off one of the biggest upsets of the year. He’s surging because he’s an authentic conservative who doesn’t apologize for his principles’’ (Davis 2010). A Survey USA preprimary poll of registered voters found that 42 percent had a ‘‘favorable’’ view of the Tea Party, compared to 23 percent ‘‘unfavorable’’ and 20 percent ‘‘neutral.’’ Overall, 27 percent answered ‘‘yes’’ when asked if they identified with the movement, while 48 percent said ‘‘no.’’ Table 14.1 shows Republican primary voting preferences by favorability to the Tea Party Movement and identification with the movement (Downs Center 2010). Although DeMint had endorsed Stutzman, Coats maintained a solid lead among those having a favorable opinion of the Tea Party. Richard Behney, who claimed to have founded the Indiana Tea Party, received the least support among those favorably disposed to the movement, as well as those who directly identified with the Tea Party. This survey of likely Republican primary voters reveals no indication that DeMint’s endorsement of Stutzman would impact primary voting preferences of Hoosiers favorable toward the Tea Party. The same survey predicted Coats’ victory by a comfortable margin, which proved accurate. Coats led the field with 39.47 percent of the 550,369 ballots cast. Stutzman (29.25 percent) and Hostettler (22.62 percent) were the closest contenders. The Downs Center (2010) also asked a larger sample of likely Hoosier voters about preferences in three matchups against likely Democratic nominee TABLE 14.1 GOP Primary Preferences by Tea Party Favorability and Tea Party Identification, in Percent Tea Party Movement

Bates Behney Coats Hostettler Stutzman Undecided TOTALS

Tea Party Identification

Favorable

Unfavorable

Neutral

No Opinion

Yes

No

7 4 34 21 20 14 100

— — — — — —

7 — 47 27 8 11 100

— 2 41 48 6 3 100

9 5 30 21 23 11 100

3 4 36 27 18 12 100

Source: Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics/Survey USA, Indiana University–Purdue University, Fort Wayne. Note: Numbers are percentages. A dash (—) represents less than 1 percent. Totals may not appear to equal 100 due to rounding. N 407 Likely Voters in the Republican Primary

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Brad Ellsworth. Each Republican beat Ellsworth. Even before the nomination phase, the presumptive Democratic nominee seemed destined for an uphill fight.

The General-Election Contest After Coats’ primary victory, his general-election campaign was quickly moved off the front pages by Indiana’s Republican Third District congressman, Mark Souder, who abruptly resigned his office. Souder won renomination but then admitted that he ‘‘sinned against God, my wife and my family by having a mutual relationship with a part-time member of my staff’’ (Leonnig and Akers 2010). Marlin Stutzman, the second-place finisher to Coats in the Senate primary, received the GOP caucus nomination to succeed Souder and was favored to win the November election in the Republicandominated district. The turmoil in the GOP did not seem to impact the U.S. Senate. Opinion polls both immediately preceding and after the primary showed Coats with a solid lead over Ellsworth. From March through late October, Coats hovered around 50 percent while Ellsworth seldom reached the mid-thirties, in part because he was a virtual unknown outside his congressional district. To combat this, Ellsworth relied on television advertising to promote statewide name recognition. TV advertising presents a difficult and expensive challenge in Indiana. Although small geographically—the smallest state west of the Appalachians in the lower forty-eight—Indiana has ten media markets, including the country’s third largest, Chicago. The Indianapolis market reaches about one-half of Hoosier households, and the remaining markets are in South Bend, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, Terre Haute, Evansville, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Dayton. Each of these, except for the Lafayette station, has viewers in adjacent states. Ellsworth had enough money to air an ad in midsummer, introducing himself to Hoosiers as a man with a law-enforcement background, who was independent and stood up for Hoosiers rather than special interests. Ellsworth sought to paint Coats as the Washington ‘‘insider’’ who left the U.S. Senate after ten years to make money as a lobbyist. The Ellsworth ad in the Indianapolis market ran for about three weeks, but the polling did not reveal any movement in his numbers vis-a`-vis Coats. Then, apparently out of money, Ellsworth came off television, not to reappear on air until October. One would expect Ellsworth to follow the Hoosier tradition of retail politics: pressing the flesh at every opportunity, making the most of his Hoosier

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roots in a year when being a Washington outsider was thought to be an advantage. We verified our assumption with Robin Winston, former Indiana Democratic Party chair and president of the Winston-Terrell Group, an Indiana-based governmental relations firm. He concurred: The thought was [that] this year a Washington insider was a negative. Coats was a former senator, Ambassador to Germany, a lobbyist—the ultimate insider. And we elected an insider. Having said that, what could have been done? Portray Ellsworth as what he is: a personable man, a congressman with long years of local service and local knowledge as sheriff of Vanderburgh County. Then put him in 92 counties at union halls, factory gates, at barbecues, at dinners and picnics—in retail politics. Prioritize that. You’re not going to reach [mentioned a large donor] or wealthy doctors at 7:30 at night in their homes. Call times to raise money are 9-to-5. But you can go to Democratic rallies at night. Ellsworth had to spend time going around the country, the state and into DC for money. People didn’t get to know him. He had to raise money.

The Indiana Debate Commission sponsored three debates in October with Coats, Ellsworth, and the Libertarian nominee, Rebecca Sink-Burris. In the debates, Coats and Ellsworth appeared to agree on many specific issues such as abortion (both oppose), same-sex marriage (both oppose), and term limits (both favor). Ellsworth frequently referenced Coats’ Washington lobbyist work, saying ‘‘I doubt [Coats is] going to cast a vote in the Senate without a conflict of interest’’ (Tully 2010). Ellsworth stayed with the lobbyist issue and never questioned Coats’ residency. Polling showed Coats slowly expanding his lead over Ellsworth. In October, Ellsworth spent valuable time in Washington, where Vice President Biden hosted a fund-raiser. This last-minute help was not enough. Coats maintained a large financial advantage from the beginning. By the end of the race, ‘‘Dan Coats spent more than $4.3 million to win back the Senate seat he gave up in 1998, compared to about $2.6 million spent by . . . Brad Ellsworth.’’ (Groppe 2010). We asked Winston about Ellsworth’s financial disadvantage. ‘‘Remember,’’ he said, ‘‘that’s 2-to-1 in campaign dollars. That doesn’t count external funds. That’s not from 527s. They went dark on TV for six weeks, after a warm intro. I assume that it was money. . . . You can’t buy media on a promise. It’s cash on the barrelhead. No credit. I can’t believe Ellsworth’s strategy was to go dark.’’ Ellsworth faced another handicap, according to Winston, ‘‘Nobody thought of having to hold Bayh’s Senate Seat. Capable [campaign] folks signed up for the Indiana House and the congressional campaigns. Baron Hill’s staff was locked down for a brawl in the fall. Donnelly’s people were

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ready for his race. Everybody knew we must have Districts 2 and 9 and the Indiana House.’’ Senator Bayh assisted Ellsworth in two ways. First, he transferred $1.5 million from his campaign account to the Indiana Democratic State Committee, and second, he joined Ellsworth on two separate statewide campaign events. But these efforts did not move the poll numbers. Robin Winston wondered aloud about the relative absence of Senator Bayh from the campaign. I don’t remember Evan Bayh doing an eye-in-the-face ad for Ellsworth. Some campaigns don’t want to do that. But then it’s like going to the Super Bowl without Peyton Manning. I’d have wrapped the campaign around Evan Bayh. You know, ‘‘I supported this, like Senator Bayh. Senator Bayh and I opposed that. Senator Bayh and I worked on this for all Hoosiers.’’ They should have framed Coats in terms of his $685,000 income, not in abstractions like lobbyist or governmental affairs. Put him in terms people understand, especially in these times of high unemployment and underemployment.

Then, more pointedly, he added, ‘‘They played the teaser game with the North Carolina card, but never used it. Did you see an ad with video on it? I don’t know why.’’ In the end, 41 percent of registered voters turned out, casting 1,744,481 votes in the Senate contest. Official results were Coats 54.6 percent, Ellsworth 40 percent, and Sink-Burris 5.4 percent.

Candidates, Issues, and the Tea Party Movement We recognized at the outset that the 2010 midterm elections would be at least a partial referendum on the achievements of the two men who best symbolized their parties for Hoosier voters, President Obama and Governor Daniels. The 2010 Hoosier Survey (Bowen Center 2010), conducted immediately after the election, asked respondents about their top priorities. Much as in 2009, top priorities in 2010 were jobs (77 percent), more efficient government (60.7 percent), improving local schools (57.9 percent), and affordable healthcare (51.9 percent). With the exception of healthcare, it resembled Republican Governor Daniels’ agenda. Probing the healthcare issue, respondents were asked about ‘‘their overall impression of the healthcare law passed by Congress.’’ Only 35.1 percent held very or mostly favorable impressions, while 50.1 percent held mostly or very unfavorable impressions. The signature proposal of the Obama administration attracted scant support in Indiana—scant, that is, until one scratches off the label and looks at the fabric of the bill itself. Then we see that 78.5 percent

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of Hoosiers think ‘‘making healthcare more affordable’’ is very important; 52.6 percent consider ‘‘ensuring health coverage for everyone’’ very important; 72.4 percent find ‘‘prohibiting insurance companies from cancelling health plans due to pre-existing conditions’’ very important; and 66.1 percent agree that extending parents’ health insurance to their children under the age of twenty-six is very or somewhat important. Democrats failed to translate the elements of the president’s most visible achievement, healthcare legislation, into a symbol that catalyzed positive affect even among Hoosiers who apparently agreed with major provisions of the law. Jobs, efficient government, better schools—the mantra of Governor Daniels and state-level Republicans—won out. Another interesting aspect of this midterm election is the role and future of the Tea Party. Indiana’s individualistic political culture (Elazar 1966) would seem to make it ripe for penetration by the Tea Party Movement. The 2010 Hoosier Survey by the Bowen Center at Ball State University asked: ‘‘From what you know, do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the Tea Party movement, or don’t you have an opinion either way?’’ Table 14.2 shows that almost two-thirds, of those who have an opinion about the Tea Party, agree with it (Bowen Center 2010). On the other hand, nearly half of Hoosier adults have no opinion one way or the other about the movement. The Tea Party Movement has not penetrated Indiana to the extent it has some other states, where Tea Party adherents reached 50 percent. On the other hand, the 32 percent of respondents who agree with the Tea Party closely corresponds to the 30 percent national figure (Gallup Survey 2010). It is important to note that ‘‘agreeing’’ with the Tea Party Movement is not the same as ‘‘identifying’’ with the movement, which is how the question is worded in some other surveys. The 2010 Hoosier Survey shows the candidate preference in the U.S. Senate race for voters who ‘‘agree’’ with the Tea Party Movement. The 83.9 percent of those agreeing with the Tea Party Movement voting for Coats in table

TABLE 14.2 Hoosier Opinions of Tea Party Movement, 2010

Agree Disagree No Opinion Either Way Refused/Haven’t Heard TOTALS

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N

Percent

193 116 278 14 601

32.1 19.3 46.3 2.3 100

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14.3 is virtually identical to the exit-polling results. ‘‘Faced with a choice between [Coats] and Democrat Bard Ellsworth, 84 percent of Tea Party voters opted for Coats.’’ (msnbc.com 2010). Tea Party Movement support for Coats mirrors Tea Party backing of Republican candidates across the country. This conclusion is reinforced in Indiana by examining the party identification of Tea Party adherents. Table 14.3 shows the self-reported party identification of those who agreed, disagreed, or had no opinion of the Tea Party. Clearly, those agreeing with the Tea Party Movement also identified with the Republican Party and, to a substantially lesser extent, declare themselves ‘‘Independents,’’ with only one in ten claiming to be Democrats. In contrast, about six in ten of those disagreeing with the Tea Party are Democrats and another 31 percent are Independents. While the Tea Party and Sarah Palin had little interest in the Senate contest, they did become involved in several congressional contests. Both supported Todd Young, who defeated five-term incumbent Baron Hill in the perennially competitive Ninth District. They also united behind Jackie Warloski, who narrowly failed to unseat the incumbent in the Second District. Stutzman, who lost the Senate nomination to Coats, succeeded in winning the Third District with Tea Party support. A Palin endorsee, Larry Buschon won in the open Eighth District. With three freshmen as well as fifth-termer Mike Pence having ties to Palin or the Tea Party, these conservative forces claim linkages to a larger share of the Indiana delegation than they do in most states. On December 2, 2010, a panel of state political reporters representing both

TABLE 14.3 Attitudes about the Tea Party Movement and Voter Preferences in Indiana Senate Race and Party Identification Agree with Tea Party

Disagree with Tea Party

No Opinion on Tea Party

Candidate Preference Coats (R) Ellsworth (D) Sink-Burris Total

83.9% 10.5 5.6 100%

15.3% 83.5 1.2 100%

56.7% 37.8 5.5 100%

Party ID Democrat Independent Republican Total N

11.7% 34.7 53.6 100% 179

60.4% 31.5 8.1 100% 111

32.8% 34.8 32.4 100% 247

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newspapers and broadcast outlets were asked about their views of the Tea Party Movement in Indiana. The five panelists agreed that the Tea Party was hardly a factor in the election outcomes, including the Senate race, and concluded that the Tea Party had not established itself firmly in Indiana. Matthew Tully, political columnist for the Indianapolis Star, responded that the Tea Party had accomplished ‘‘not much’’ in 2010, while Niki Kelly, a reporter for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, remarked that the Tea Party ‘‘has not come together as an organized unit’’ in Indiana. The question remains, why wasn’t the Tea Party more active in Indiana, particularly in the Senate race? Dan Coats did not give Tea Party activists any reason to criticize his candidacy. The conservative positions espoused by Tea Party activists were congruent with the positions taken by Coats. In the first debate among the three candidates, Coats said he wanted to ‘‘repeal’’ the Health Care Reform Act and then ‘‘reform’’ it, calling it a ‘‘massive government intrusion’’ and ‘‘a prime example of what is wrong with Washington, D.C.’’ His statements made it virtually impossible for Tea Party supporters to criticize him. Moreover, he stood with them, saying: ‘‘The Tea Party here in Indiana; they’re conservatives, they want fiscal responsibility, they want less taxes not more, they want less spending not more, they want less government not more. That’s the same agenda that I stand for, and we’re working together to achieve that.’’ Coats’ preemption of the Tea Party does not mean that the movement will disappear. In fact, some Tea Party activists have already indicated that they are searching for a primary challenger to Senator Richard Lugar in 2012. Lugar, who is viewed as more moderate in many of his positions than is Coats, is taking the threats seriously and released polling results after the November 2010 election that show him with a 66 percent favorable rating among registered voters (Schneider 2010). A Tea Party primary challenge to the senior senator has the potential to fracture the coalition between the Tea Party supporters and the Republican Party organization. Both parties, it seems, have the need and the opportunity to define themselves. To the degree that the Tea Party can transform itself from a disconnected set of local activists into an organized force capable of articulating political objectives that make concrete their cry that less is more, it may affect the course of Indiana Republicans. At this point, the nascent movement appears to have been co-opted successfully by skillful politicians—Dan Coats among them. References Bayh, Evan. 2010. ‘‘Announcement: He Will Not Seek a Third Senate Term.’’ bayh .senate.gov/news/press/release; accessed October 7, 2010.

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Bowen Center. 2009. Hoosier Survey, 2009. Bowen Center for Public Affairs. Muncie, IN: Ball State University. Bowen Center. 2010. Hoosier Survey, 2010. Bowen Center for Public Affairs. Muncie, IN: Ball State University. Davis, Susan. 2010. ‘‘DeMint Backs Stutzman in Indiana Senate Race.’’ Washington Wire. Blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/04/20/demint-backs-stutzman-in-ind-senate -race; accessed December 10, 2010. Downs Center. 2010. ‘‘Coats Leads in Statewide Poll of Likely Republican Voters, Top Three Republican Candidates Lead Ellsworth in Hypothetical General Election.’’ Fort Wayne, IN: Mike Downs Center for Indiana Politics, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne. April 29, 2010. Eggan, Dan. 2010. ‘‘Lobbyist Who Wants Senate Seat Back Receiving Criticism.’’ www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/10/AR 20100210035 29; accessed December 16, 2010. Elazar, Daniel J. 1966. American Federalism: A View from the States. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. Gallup Survey. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Supporters Overlap Republican Base.’’ www.gallup .com/poll/141098/tea-party-supporters-overlap-republican-base.aspx? accessed December 3, 2010. Groppe, Maureen. 2010. ‘‘4.3M returned Coats to Senate.’’ December 8, 2010. www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Aid201012080364; accessed December 22, 2010. Leonnig, Carol D., and Mary Ann Akers. 2010. ‘‘Indiana Rep. Mark Souder Resigns after Admitting Affair.’’ PostPolitics. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2010/05/18/AR 2010051803059; accessed December 16, 2010. msnbc.com. 2010. ‘‘What Exit Polls Say about Tea Party Movement,’’ updated November 3, 2010. www.msnbc.msn.cm/cleanprint/CleanPrint Proxy.aspx?129148 3397763; accessed December 3, 2010. Rasmussen. 2010. www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections/elec tion_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/indiana/indiana_senate_2010_pence _r_47_bayh_d_44; accessed December 10, 2010. Schneider, Mary Beth. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Movement Might Spur Challenge for Lugar.’’ Indianapolis Star. November 30, 2010. www.indystar.com/print/article/20101130/ NEWS05/11300325/Tea-party-movement-might-spur-challenge-for-Lugar; accessed December 4, 2010. Tully, Matthew. 2010. ‘‘Ellsworth, Coats Took Their Best Shots.’’ October 12, 2010. www.indy.com/articles/matthew-tully/thread/tully-ellsworth-coats-took-their-be st-shots; accessed December 16, 2010. Washington Post. 2009. www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/ssi/wpc/postpoll_111 609.html; accessed December 16, 2010. YouTube. 2008. www.youtube.com/watchtv1_SQEfMDLvE; accessed December 16, 2010. Zernicke, Kate. 2010. ‘‘Teak Party Kingmaker Becomes Power unto Himself.’’ New York Times. October 30, 2010. www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/us/politics/31_de mint; accessed December 15, 2010.

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15 The Blue and the Red in the Land of Obama The 2010 Midterms in Illinois Janna L. Deitz

eading into the 2010 midterms, the Illinois Democratic Party controlled all state constitutional offices, the state legislature, and the majority of the congressional delegation. As the home state of President Barack Obama, one might expect Illinois to be somewhat insulated from the partisan tide in 2010 that so heavily advantaged Republicans. The Land of Lincoln has not voted for the Republican presidential candidate since 1988. While the vast majority of the rural downstate votes Republican, the highly concentrated population of the Chicago metro area and its overwhelming Democratic strength in key locales translate into electoral advantages for Democrats statewide. History is often known for repeating itself, but the dynamics of the 2010 election at the state and national level presented opportunities for political change in Illinois. Strong political currents in this state collided with the national anti-incumbent tide, producing upsets of four Illinois Democratic House incumbents while also delivering President Obama’s Senate seat to a Republican. This chapter examines how these state and national factors shaped the 2010 electoral outcomes for U.S. Senate and House contests in Illinois.

H

A Tarnished Brand: The Ghost of Blago and Budgetary Woes In December 2008, federal agents arrested Governor Rod Blagojevich on charges of political corruption. The most damaging allegation was that Bla— 177 —

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gojevich had tried to sell the appointment to the vacant Obama Senate seat. A little over a month after Blagojevich’s arrest, the Illinois legislature voted to impeach and remove him from office. During his trial that next summer, prosecutors reportedly stated that the former governor’s conduct ‘‘was so despicable it would make Abraham Lincoln ‘roll over in his grave’ ’’ (Davey and Saulney 2010). The impeachment and the jury trial that ensued did not help fellow Democrats running under this tarnished label. Alexi Giannoulias, the 2010 Democratic Senate nominee, was subpoenaed but did not testify in this trial. This political scandal was bad news and bad timing for Democrats in Illinois hoping to stem the tide of Republican gains in the 2010 midterms. While Illinois is no stranger to political corruption, the charges and allegations in the Blagojevich trial coincided with the proposed constitutional amendment for a gubernatorial recall. Two years prior to the impeachment, Rep. Jack Franks proposed a recall amendment to the Illinois Constitution, citing Blagojevich scandals as the impetus (Long 2007). Having the popular recall amendment on the 2010 ballot (it received 65 percent support) no doubt helped remind voters of the not-too-distant Blagojevich corruption charges. The governor’s race was expected to be close, as had been the 2006 vote won by Blagojevich with less than a majority (the Green Party candidate earned 10 percent). Voter frustration with the political leadership in Springfield, the trial of the former governor, and the lackluster performance by Blagojevich’s successor combined to sap the enthusiasm of the Democratic electorate. The state of the economy frustrated many voters nationwide in the congressional midterms, and the reaction from voters in Illinois was no different. Currently facing a budget deficit in the $13 billion range (47 percent of its total budget—the highest of any state), Illinois’ economic situation was the worst in the nation (Powell 2010). One month before the elections, unemployment in the state was around 11 percent; the state also ranked tenth nationally in number of foreclosures (Powell 2010). Moody’s downgraded Illinois’ bond rating, making it more difficult for the state to borrow money to cover its budgetary shortfalls; only California had a worse credit rating (McKinney 2010). With $62.4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and counting, Illinois’ public employee unions pushed for ‘‘responsible budget-making,’’ including raising income taxes to provide more revenue. Many Illinois voters were disillusioned by the failure of past and current Democratic elected officials to provide leadership on the serious budgetary and economic challenges. Illinois Senate Race: Mark Kirk vs. Alexi Giannoulias Senator Roland Burris, controversially appointed by Governor Blagojevich to fill the Obama vacancy, announced that he would not seek reelection to the

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full term in July 2009. This announcement was not exactly sad news for Democrats, as Burris did not have strong approval numbers. Per a state court ruling, there would be two elections on the November ballot for Illinois voters to decide with regard to this Senate seat: one to fill the remainder of Burris’ term through January 2011 and one to fill the six-year Senate seat beginning January 2011. Burris attempted to remain on the ballot for the rest of the unfilled term, but ultimately lost his legal battle. Against this backdrop of Senate appointment controversy, state budgetary woes, and unsatisfactory political leadership, Democrats knew retaining the Senate seat was not going to be easy. One early warning sign was the candidate field itself; potential strong Democratic candidates with name recognition and popularity refused to run. Both Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and ex–Commerce secretary Bill Daley declined to run despite encouragement from Democratic leaders and the White House. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, longtime supporter and friend of President Obama, became the most viable prospect for the party’s nomination and won 39 percent of the vote in a five-candidate primary. The Democratic nominee, however, did have some real vulnerabilities. In 2006, Giannoulias had won election for state treasurer handily, yet this position represented the extent of his elected political experience. Giannoulias was plagued by questions about his role in the eventual failure of his family-owned Broadway Bank, seized by federal regulators in April 2010. He also faced questions regarding loans the bank had made to Tony Rezko, a controversial Democratic fund-raiser in Chicago, currently serving time in prison. These weaknesses in the Giannoulias background fit perfectly into the Republican playbook themes of fiscal responsibility and trustworthiness. The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) ran ads on Giannoulias’ alleged ‘‘mob connections,’’ including bank loans made to Rezko and family connections to former governor Blagojevich, stating Giannoulias would ‘‘make Tony Soprano proud.’’ The ‘‘Tax Hike’’ ad emphasized a statement made by Giannoulias as state treasurer that Illinois needed to raise its income tax, while also reporting that Giannoulias paid no income tax in 2009. (The Chicago Tribune found that the $30,000 in tax refunds Giannoulias received for that year were due to losses from the bank failure; Giannoulias pledged to donate the entire refunded amount to charity.) The ad wars were especially nasty and fully exploited the vulnerabilities of the Democratic candidate in the effort to pick up this seat for the GOP. Although Barack Obama had won this Senate seat with 70 percent of the vote in 2004, no one predicted a repeat of this margin for the Democratic candidate in 2010. It wasn’t exactly all downhill for the Republicans either, as their nominee also carried baggage, mostly of the handmade variety. Congressman Mark

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Kirk easily won his party’s nomination. A five-term member of Congress, Kirk had been a commander in the naval reserves and served briefly in Afghanistan. Kirk was a moderate on the issues, voting with Democrats on the cap-and-trade emissions bill and supporting the bank bailouts. Sensing the national tide and the need to appear more conservative, Kirk appealed unsuccessfully to Sarah Palin for her endorsement. He faced criticism by some conservatives for being a RINO (Republican in name only), and local Tea Party activists opposed him in the primary. Yet a moderate voting record had served Kirk well; he had fended off serious challenges to his seat in 2006 and 2008. During these Democratic-wave years, Kirk held on by ‘‘running scared’’ and separating himself from an unpopular president (Steger 2010). Strong campaigner that he was, however, Kirk was still beset by the problem of exaggeration, particularly when it came to telling stories about his military and teaching experience. For example, Kirk’s official campaign biography included a claim that he had won the Naval Intelligence Officer of the Year Award for his service in NATO’s Serbian conflict. An investigation by the Washington Post (Smith 2010) found this claim to be false. When addressing the Illinois Education Association, Kirk recalled his own teaching experience: ‘‘As a former nursery school and middle school teacher, I know some of what it takes to bring order to class.’’ However, the New York Times later found that the extent of his teaching experience was also overstated, having worked a year at a private school in London and part-time for a nursery as part of a work-study program during college (Zeleny 2010). Kirk’s storytelling weaknesses became the focus for many attack ads. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s first negative ad against Kirk, ‘‘Problems,’’ began by stating: ‘‘We’ve heard a lot about Mark Kirk’s problems lately . . . but Kirk doesn’t know much about ours.’’ The ad then discussed Kirk’s votes against increasing the minimum wage and expanding unemployment benefits. Toward the end of the race, a second DSCC ad called ‘‘Honor’’ focused on Kirk’s embellishment of his military service. The RSC responded quickly, pointing out that there was only one candidate who had served his country honorably in this election, and that was Kirk. The massive amounts of money targeted at this seat meant voters were constantly hit with negative ads. In the Chicago media market alone, $45 million was spent on political ads from September through the end of October, enough to buy all local advertising for an entire month (Pearson et al. 2010). The vast majority of these ads were negative; conventional campaign wisdom tells us that these ads work because voters remember them. However, the sheer amount of negative advertising led voters to remember many

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more reasons to vote against Giannoulias or Kirk than reasons to vote for them. Giannoulias announced a suspension of his negative ads and vowed to run positive ones until the end of the race; he challenged Kirk to do the same. Neither side dropped their weapons as the negative ads continued until the bitter end. While the Giannoulias campaign did turn positive with ads featuring President Obama and the First Lady’s endorsement, the DSCC continued to run negative ads. A survey conducted by the Associated Press showed that over one-third of voters thought that neither Senate candidate was honest and trustworthy, and more than half said that the Senate candidates attacked each other unfairly. The brutal nature of the campaign-ad environment risked turning off voters in this Senate race. The open Senate seat attracted a lot of money, as Democrats worked hard to defend the former Obama seat and Republicans worked just as hard to claim this seat as their own. Table 15.1 reports campaign-finance information for each candidate. According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website, Kirk raised and spent more money than did Giannoulias, with more cash on hand going into the final weeks of the election. In addition, outside money totals demonstrate that Giannoulias had at that time approximately $1 million more in outside money spent against him than did Kirk. Contributions by groups not formally connected to a candidate were especially influential in this election cycle due to the Supreme Court’s January 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which opened the door for unlimited donations from these ‘‘independent expenditure-only’’ groups. The 2010 congressional midterms were the first general election conducted in the aftermath of this court decision, and groups on both sides of the ideological aisle increased spending. Corporations, unions, and other organized interests were ready to respond to this new campaignfinance ruling. One group that was particularly organized and well funded was American

TABLE 15.1 2010 Illinois Senate Campaign Finance Candidate Mark Kirk Alexi Giannoulias

Total Raised

Total Spent

Cash on Hand

Outside Money— Opposed*

$12,759,089 $ 8,404,220

$10,527,229 $ 7,840,259

$2,311,727 $ 491,984

$7,436,932 $8,508,180

Source: Center for Responsive Politics, available at www.opensecrets.org. Reported as of October 13, 2010. *Totals reported as of December 5, 2010.

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Crossroads, a Super PAC formed under the new campaign-finance guidelines and guided by Karl Rove. This group formed its own independent expenditure-only PAC called Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (Crossroads GPS) to campaign against Democratic congressional candidates across the country. According to OpenSecrets.org, as of December 5, 2010, Crossroads GPS had raised a grand total of $16,017,664, and spent $15,184,029 to oppose Democratic candidates. Crossroads GPS had its focus on Democratic candidates in key races, and the Illinois Senate race attracted much of its attention. In fact, the group spent the most money ($4,479,605) against Alexi Giannoulias, more than it spent against other top targets like Senator Patty Murray (WA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The primary source of outside money against Mark Kirk was the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which spent $5,932,520 on negative ads criticizing his exaggerated claims about his military service, and his votes in the House against veterans’ issues like job training and combat bonuses. Eighty percent of all the outside money spent against Kirk came from the DSCC. These two examples demonstrate that campaign finance in this new post–Citizens United era is a function of raising and spending money not just by candidates but also by outside groups. Polls consistently showed that the Illinois Senate race was a toss-up. Rasmussen Reports and Chicago Tribune polls in late August showed the candidates tied at 34 percent, but beginning in September, most polls showed Kirk with a small but consistent lead. Around 17 percent of voters remained undecided as late as October (Davey 2010). Disillusioned Democrats could defect to the Green Party candidate in the race (LeAlan Jones) as they did in the 2006 gubernatorial election. To combat these concerns, the Giannoulias campaign focused on mobilizing their base. The Kirk campaign appealed to undecided and Independent voters, hoping to benefit from the antiestablishment mood in Illinois (Wing 2010). The Tea Party Movement had no effect on the Illinois Senate race. Kirk did not receive endorsements by any Tea Party groups, Sarah Palin, or Jim DeMint. He did line up support from the Chamber of Commerce and newspapers across the state including the Chicago Tribune, Peoria Journal Star, Daily Herald, Pantagraph (Bloomington), and Quincy Herald. Giannoulias was endorsed by the Chicago Sun-Times and Springfield State Journal-Register and received help from high-profile Democrats. Former president Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, and President Obama—who made three visits to his home state—all campaigned for Giannoulias. Kirk emerged victorious winning 48.2 percent of the vote to Giannoulias’ 46.3 percent. Although the outcome was close, the symbolism of the former Obama seat going to the Republican Party far outweighed the margin of vic-

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tory. In his acceptance speech, senator-elect Kirk declared, ‘‘A tsunami just hit the heartland’’ (Nagourney and Davey 2010). Exit polling indicated that Kirk carried Independents, men, and those most worried about the economy. Geographically, Kirk won by large margins in the collar counties outside Chicago and the downstate. He won among Independents by a two-to-one margin (‘‘Poll: Kirk Benefits . . .’’). Giannoulias had the strong support of African Americans, winning nine out of ten black voters. He also did well among Hispanics and voters under age forty. He attracted one in six Obama voters and over half of the late deciders (‘‘Poll: Kirk Benefits . . .’’). Geographically, Giannoulias’ strength was concentrated in three counties: Cook, St. Clair, and Alexander. The day after the election, senator-elect Mark Kirk and Giannoulias met at the Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago to bury the hatchet, a meeting many referred to as another ‘‘Beer Summit’’ similar to that hosted by President Obama the previous year (Pallasch 2010). Giannoulias expressed his hopes that Kirk would support the president and Kirk acknowledged the close outcome, stating, ‘‘Forty-six percent of the electorate voted for Alexi and my job is to represent them too’’ (Pallasch 2010). On November 29, Mark Kirk was sworn in to the U.S. Senate to fill the remainder of Burris’ term; shortly thereafter, he delivered the first Republican radio address following the midterms. Several political factors facilitated this Republican victory in the Illinois Senate contest. The national anti-incumbent mood coupled with the antiestablishment mood in Illinois increased the chances of Republican victory. The Democratic brand, tarnished by recent political corruption and the lack of strong leadership during a bad economy, also hurt Democratic attempts to maintain the former seat of President Obama. The depths of Illinois’ economic and budgetary difficulties added intensity to the anti-incumbent mood felt nationally. Although not part of the overall Tea Party Movement, this election demonstrated the role that state political dynamics can play in a nationalized campaign.

Republican House Gains in Illinois: Tea Party and Palin Endorsements In April 2010, the Gallup Poll reported that 65 percent of registered voters believed that most members of Congress did not deserve reelection (Saad 2010). This poll foreshadowed the partisan change to come in Illinois, as four U.S. House seats (Districts Eight, Eleven, Fourteen, and Seventeen) changed from Democratic to Republican control and an open House seat that leaned

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Democratic (District Ten) went Republican. Local Tea Party organizations, the Tea Party–affiliated FreedomWorks PAC, and Sarah Palin made endorsements in these competitive House contests in Illinois. Table 15.2 describes aspects of these partisan seat changes. In each district, the Democratic incumbent ran ahead of Obama in 2008. Yet, all four Democratic incumbents in 2010 saw significant decreases in their vote share compared to 2008. In 2004, Melissa Bean defeated Eighth District Congressman Phil Crane, who had held the seat for thirty-five years, making her the only female challenger in the country that year to upset an incumbent (Dolan et al. 2007). Representing this historically Republican district, Bean was ideologically moderate, serving as vice chair of the centrist New Democrats (Barone et al. 2010). She had won her 2008 reelection easily, taking 61 percent of the vote, but her previous election margins were lower. Bean’s opponent in 2010, conservative Joe Walsh, was endorsed by local Tea Party organizations in Chicago’s northwest suburbs and FreedomWorks PAC (Hinkel and Skiba 2010). Walsh won without having previous political experience, without raising much money (Bean outraised her opponent four to one), and without party support. Walsh’s 291-vote victory over Bean returned this seat to Republicans for the first time in six years. Debbie Halvorson was the second female Democrat from Illinois defeated in 2010. Halvorson took 58 percent of the vote in her initial 2008 victory. Her 2010 opponent was Adam Kinzinger, a thirty-two-year-old Republican ‘‘Young Gun’’ who had served as a pilot in the Air National Guard. Sarah Palin endorsed Kinzinger in March, following his primary win, as did the Tea Party–affiliated FreedomWorks PAC. Caterpillar Incorporated gave $10,000—the maximum amount allowed—to Kinzinger, citing the need to support more pro-business candidates (Merrion 2010). Corporate PACs usually support incumbents; this contribution from a key Illinois corporation further signaled the extent of the anti-incumbent mood among organized

TABLE 15.2 Illinois Congressional Seat Change in the 2010 Midterms

District

Democratic Incumbent

IL-8 IL-11 IL-14 IL-17

Bean Halverson Foster Hare

2008 Presidential Vote %

2008 Incumbent Vote %

2010 Incumbent Vote %

Tea Party and/or Palin Endorsement

56 53 55 56

61 58 58 100*

48 43 45 43

Local Tea Party FreedomWorks, Palin Palin FreedomWorks

*Incumbent ran unopposed.

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interests. Kinzinger defeated Halvorson 57 percent to 43 percent and became the youngest member of his freshman cohort in Congress. Representative Bill Foster of the Fourteenth District was the other freshman member of the Illinois congressional delegation to fall in the midterms. Elected in 2008 with 58 percent support, Foster, a conservative Democrat, won the seat once held by former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. However, heading in to 2010, the Cook Political Report rated this race a toss-up. State Senator Randy Hultgren challenged Foster and attacked him on his votes in support of President Obama’s policies, specifically healthcare reform. Hultgren attracted the endorsement of Sarah Palin, Tea Party support, as well as the GOP label of ‘‘Young Gun,’’ after proving his viability by defeating Hastert’s son in the Republican primary. Caterpillar PAC again gave the maximum allowable to Hultgren, although Foster held a significant fund-raising advantage. Hultgren defeated Foster, holding the incumbent to only 45 percent of the vote. Democratic Representative Phil Hare (IL-District Seventeen) also lost in 2010. First elected in 2006 with 57 percent of the vote, Hare faced no opposition in 2008 in a district drawn to benefit the Democratic Party. Opponent Bobby Schilling, a pizzeria owner and ex–union steward, ran primarily on socially and fiscally conservative issues. Schilling earned the endorsements of FreedomWorks PAC, Representative Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney. Additionally, a visible influence was the local Friends of the Constitution PAC, which posted highly visible billboards along interstate highways all over the district that stated simply ‘‘Vote Out Phil Hare.’’ This race was not on the radar of many political analysts or pundits until early fall, when polling showed Hare significantly trailing his opponent. Hare’s approval numbers were not high, and some key industry endorsements in the area, such as John Deere and Caterpillar Inc., went to Schilling (Center for Responsive Politics 2010). The House seat left vacant by Mark Kirk was the only open-seat contest. Because the Tenth District leaned Democratic, it offered one of the few opportunities nationally for Democrats to pick up a House seat. In 2008, Obama carried this district with 61 percent of the vote, and Kirk won with 53 percent. Kirk raised and spent the third-highest amount of money of all House candidates that election cycle (Barone et al. 2010). The Democratic candidate for this open seat, Dan Seals, had unsuccessfully challenged Kirk twice. Republicans nominated small-business owner Bob Dold. Despite its Democratic leanings, the district gave Dold 51 percent of the vote. While he had run to the right in the primary, he attempted to become more centrist in the general election, presumably to follow in the steps of Kirk (CQ Weekly October 25, 2010).

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Tea Party and Palin-endorsed candidates in Illinois defeated Democrats in moderate districts. These Democratic incumbents, who benefited from having Obama on the top of the ticket in 2008, were not able to count on similar turnout from their base in 2010. Three of the four defeated incumbents had served less than two terms; all had supported the president on key issues like healthcare reform. Given the national climate, these aspects translated into Republican advantages, regardless of Tea Party or Palin connections. Strategically, these Republican challengers capitalized on the anti-incumbent national mood that was loudly echoed in these Illinois districts.

Conclusion Illinois was practically and symbolically important to the 2010 Republican tide. Tea Party and Palin-endorsed congressional candidates defeated four Democratic incumbents, and the Republican Party won the Senate seat formerly held by President Barack Obama. Yet, state political factors and structural features of these elections were also critical in explaining these Republican and Tea Party Movement–declared successes. Voter distrust of political leadership and the economic crisis facing Illinois greatly affected these elections. A Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll found that more than six in ten Illinois voters lacked confidence in Democratic leadership in Springfield and 55 percent didn’t trust the federal government (Davey 2010; Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV Poll 2010). Exit polling showed that four in five voters said that issues of corruption and ethics were important in their decisions (Davey 2010); the ghost of Blagojevich haunted this election. Illinois’ dire economic situation added fuel to the anti-incumbent fire. Conservative Tea Party and Palin-endorsed candidates capitalized on these opportunities in key congressional districts, while a moderate Republican won President Obama’s former Senate seat. The political landscape and economic crisis in Illinois helped turn the opportunity for partisan change in the 2010 congressional midterms into reality.

References Barone, Michael, Richard E. Cohen, and Grant Ujifusa. 2009. The Almanac of American Politics 2010. Washington, D.C.: National Journal Group. Burns, Alexander. 2010. ‘‘NRCC Adds 16 Top Targets.’’ Available at http://www.poli tico.com/news/stories/0610/39212.html. Center for Responsive Politics. 2010. OpenSecrets.org. ‘‘2010 Race: Illinois District

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17.’’ Available at http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?idIL17& cycle2010. Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV Poll. 2010. ‘‘Illinois Voters Don’t Trust Government.’’ Available at http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/09/tribunewgn-tv-poll -illinois-voters-don’ttrust-government.html. Davey, Monica. 2010. ‘‘Race for Seat That Was Once Obama’s Stirs Passion in Illinois.’’ New York Times (October 7): A22. Davey, Monica, and Susan Saulny. 2010. ‘‘For Blagojevich, A Guilty Verdict on 1 of 24 Counts.’’ New York Times (August 18): A1. Dolan, Julie, Melissa Deckman, and Michele L. Swers. 2007. Women and Politics: Paths to Power and Political Influence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, Inc. Eldridge, David. 2010. ‘‘Rove’s Group Ramping Up Ad Buys in Target Races.’’ Washington Times (October 28): A4. Farnam, T. W. 2010. ‘‘72 Super PACs Spent $83.7 Million on Election, Financial Disclosure Reports Show.’’ Washington Post (December 4): A3. Hinkel, Dan, and Katherine Skiba. 2010. ‘‘Tea Party Favorite Claims Victory in U.S. House Race—But Nothing Settled Yet.’’ Chicago Tribune (November 3): A1. Long, Ray. 2007. ‘‘It Worked for Arnold.’’ Chicago Tribune News Blog. (August). Available at http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/clout_st/2007/08/it-worked-for -a.html. McKinney, Dave. 2010. ‘‘State’s Credit Rating Downgraded.’’ Chicago Sun-Times (July): News-12. Merrion, Paul. 2010. ‘‘Cat’s PAC Punches Hard for Challengers in Congressional Races.’’ Crain’s Chicago Business (October 18): 3. ‘‘Midwest: Realignment Theory Gets Tested.’’ 2010. CQ Weekly (October 25): 2442– 2443. Nagourney, Adam, and Monica Davey. 2010. ‘‘GOP Expands a Base from South to Midwest.’’ New York Times (November 4): P16. Pallasch, Abdon M. 2010. ‘‘Giannoulias and Kirk Toast End of Their Bitter Campaign at ‘Beer Summit.’ ’’ Chicago Sun-Times (November 4): A12. Pearson, Rick, David Kidwell, and Todd Lighty. 2010. ‘‘Money Rolls In, Campaign Ads Roll On.’’ Available at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-10-30/news/ct -met-campaign-cash-flood-20101030_1_senate-race-republican-mark-kirk-demo crat-alexi-giannoulias. ‘‘Poll: Kirk Benefits from Voter Dissatisfaction.’’ 2010. Available at http://www .dailyherald.com/article/20101103/news/101109875/. Powell, Michael. 2010. ‘‘Illinois Stops Paying Its Bills, but Can’t Stop Digging Hole.’’ New York Times (July 3): A1. ‘‘Recall Amendment More Harm Than Good.’’ 2010. Chicago Sun-Times (October 21): Editorials-24. Saad, Lydia. 2010. ‘‘Voters Issue Strong Rebuke of Incumbents in Congress.’’ Available at http://www.gallup.com/poll/127241/voters-issue-strong-rebuke-incum bents-congress.aspx. Schorsch, Kristen. 2010. ‘‘Politics Has Long Been a Passion for US Rep.-Elect Kinzinger.’’ Chicago Tribune (November 3). Available at http://articles.chicagotribu

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ne.com/2010-11-03/news/ct-met-congress-kinzinger-1104-20101103_1_adam -kinzinger-businesses-greater-access-rep-elect. ‘‘The Senate: Distant Thunder Signaled the Storm.’’ 2010. CQ Weekly (October 25). 2437–2439. Skiba, Katherine. 2010. ‘‘Kirk Sworn In as Senator.’’ Chicago Tribune (November 29): News-1 Smith, R. Jeffrey. 2010. ‘‘Illinois Senate Candidate Admits Claim about Military Award Was Inaccurate.’’ Washington Post (May 30): A3. Steger, Wayne P. 2010. ‘‘Running Scared from the Hill and at Home: Kirk vs. Seals in Illinois’ Tenth Congressional District,’’ in Cases in Congressional Campaigns: Incumbents Playing Defense. Randall E. Adkins and David A. Dulio, eds. New York: Routledge. Tareen, Sophia. 2010. ‘‘GOP Focuses on 3 Key Illinois Congressional Seats.’’ Associated Press State & Local Wire (September 25). Tumulty, Karen. 2010. ‘‘GOP Eyes ‘Trophy’ Seats in Senate; Party Has a Chance to Win Obama’s, Biden’s, and Reid’s Spots.’’ Washington Post (April 29): A1. Wing, Nick. 2010. ‘‘Illinois Senate Race: Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk Enter Eleventh Hour.’’ Huffington Post (November 1): Available at http://www.huffington post.com/2010/11/01/illinois-senate-race_n_777224.html. Zeleny, Jeff. 2010. ‘‘In Illinois, a Teaching Career Is Questioned.’’ New York Times (June 17): A16.

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16 The 2010 Washington U.S. Senate Race Two Familiar Faces and Two Potential Wild Cards Edward Anegon and David Nice

n comparison with elections in some other states, the U.S. Senate race in Washington State resembled politics as usual. The race boiled down to a contest between two fairly well-known candidates, each of whom was well connected with the regular party organizations in the state. Two comparatively unusual features of the campaign proved to be of only modest significance, however.

I

Two Familiar Faces One of the familiar elements in the 2010 U.S. Senate race was the incumbent, Patty Murray. Her political career began with a 1980 battle over proposed cuts to a parent-child education program. She lobbied the state legislature and mobilized citizens across the state, with the result that the cuts were not adopted (biographical information is found on Senator Murray’s website, pattymurray.com, and the websites of the Seattle Times [seattletimes .nwsource.com] and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer [seattlepi.com]). She later ran (unsuccessfully) for a seat on her local school board but was eventually appointed to fill a vacant seat. In 1988, she became a state senator by defeating the incumbent. During her time in the legislature, she was a strong advocate for education programs, from early childhood education to higher education, and a strong supporter of human service programs. Approximately two-and-one-half years after she was elected to the state — 189 —

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legislature, Murray surprised many observers by launching a bid for a U.S. Senate seat. She further surprised those observers by winning the Democratic Party primary and then winning the general election. In both the primary and the general election, she defeated candidates with more experience in public office than she had at the time. Her reelection campaigns in 1998 and 2004 were quite successful; her margins of victory were sixteen percentage points in 1998 and twelve points in 2004. In both races, she defeated candidates with significant political experience. Senator Murray gradually secured seats on a number of important committees, including Appropriations; Budget; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; and Veterans’ Affairs. She was the first woman to serve on the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee; her interest in services for veterans stems, in part, from being the daughter of a disabled veteran. She has devoted considerable effort to educational programs, services for veterans, and all manner of issues of interest to people in Washington State. For example, she has pushed for greater security at major ports (including the ports of Seattle and Tacoma), and she helped launch a review of a Defense Department decision to award a major defense contract to the European Airbus consortium instead of to Boeing Aviation, a major Washington aircraft manufacturer and employer. The other familiar face in the Senate contest was Dino Rossi, whose first run for public office was, like Senator Murray’s first effort, unsuccessful. His unsuccessful state senate campaign was, however, followed by a successful run in 1996. Four years later, he was reelected in a landslide with a victory margin of forty percentage points (biographical information about Rossi is from his campaign website, dinorossi.com, and the websites of the Seattle Times [seattletimes.nwsource.com] and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer [seattle pi.com]). While he was in the state senate, Rossi developed a reputation for working with members of both parties, even on controversial issues. He eventually chaired the Senate Ways and Means Committee, where he helped to close a spending/revenue gap without a tax increase. His efforts won praise from legislators of both parties and from Democratic Governor Gary Locke’s budget director. State Republican leaders also noted his efforts and began to regard him as a prospect for higher office. With encouragement from a number of Republican leaders, Rossi launched a bid for the governor’s office in 2004. Even though he entered the race earlier than did a number of other candidates, he gained the Republican Party nomination. The general-election results were a virtual tie and triggered an excellent example of ‘‘governing ugly’’ (Sinclair 1998, 195–196). The closeness of the original vote count, which placed Rossi in the lead, trig-

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gered an automatic recount, which produced an even closer result, with Rossi leading by only forty-two votes. At that point, the Democratic candidate, Chris Gregoire, requested a hand recount of the ballots (for more information on the election, see the websites of the New York Times [nytimes.com] and the Seattle Times [seattletimes.nwsource.com]). The hand recount gave Chris Gregoire a razor-thin lead but revealed a number of problems with the election’s administration. A number of ballots had been improperly excluded, and several counties found ballots that had not been included in the first two counts. Because the hand recount placed Gregoire in the lead and because of problems with the vote tabulations, Rossi and a number of state Republican leaders began to call for a new election (Kaushik 2004). However, the secretary of state’s office indicated that the only recourse open to Rossi was a lawsuit. Accordingly, Republicans filed suit to overturn the election results in January of 2005. Ultimately, their efforts were not successful; after losing their case in a state district court chosen because it was believed to be receptive to Rossi’s grievances, he finally admitted defeat (Howland 2005). With such a strong showing in 2004, Rossi decided to try for the governor’s office again in 2008. However, Gregoire’s popularity and the pro-Democratic tide sweeping much of the country (see dinorossi.com) produced another defeat for him. Nevertheless, his strong performance in the race gave him considerable credibility as a potential statewide candidate.

A Potential Wild Card The 2010 Washington Senate race included one new face: farmer and former professional football player Clint Didier. Didier had never run for or held public office, unlike Murray and Rossi, although he had been active in the Washington Farm Bureau and in local politics. His lack of experience reduced his appeal as a candidate in many circles. In addition, although a number of prominent athletes have subsequently been elected to major public office, many of them became prominent as athletes in the jurisdictions that subsequently elected them. However, Didier’s professional football career was based in Washington, D.C., not in the state of Washington. Didier’s campaign received an important boost in May of 2010 when he was endorsed by Governor Sarah Palin and by Texas Representative Ron Paul. Didier’s issue views also attracted support from various elements of the Tea Party Movement and from a modest number of state and local officials (see Didier’s campaign website, mobi.clintdidier.org and the website of the Seattle Times [seattletimes.nwsource.com]). In a time of voter restlessness,

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his outsider status and lack of political experience may have enhanced his appeal to some people.

Another Potential Wild Card: The Cajun Primary The 2010 U.S. Senate campaign in Washington included a relatively new feature for the state: a new set of rules for conducting primaries. For many years, Washington nominated partisan candidates through the blanket primary, which allowed voters to switch from one party to another as they shifted from one office to another. However, a federal court struck down the blanket primary on the grounds that it violated freedom of association rights for the political parties. The court ruling set off a round of wrangling regarding what should replace the blanket primary. The major parties supported a relatively open primary, which would limit voters to participating in only one party’s primaries in a given election year but not require a declaration of party affiliation. However, Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed and the Washington State Grange supported a Louisiana-style Cajun primary, in which all candidates for a given office are put into a single pool, and the top two vote getters are the nominees for the general election, regardless of their party affiliations. They regarded the Cajun primary as the closest available approximation to the blanket primary. Critics complained that the Cajun primary could produce a general election in which one of the major parties might not have candidates in some races. That has not happened very often since the Cajun primary was adopted in Washington, however, apart from some races in which one of the major parties failed to field any candidates for the nomination.

The Nomination Phase of the Race Because Senator Murray was the only Democratic candidate in the 2010 primary for the Senate nomination and because of her popularity and large campaign treasury, considerable attention focused on the Republican candidates in the primary. Although Rossi had performed strongly in two previous statewide campaigns and had significant experience in public office, he initially seemed reluctant to run. A number of Republican Party leaders, both nationally and in Washington, encouraged Rossi to enter the race (Yardley 2010), a development consistent with congressional elections in many parts of the country (Herrnson 2000, 47–49). Party leaders’ interest in Rossi was

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undoubtedly spurred by early polls that showed him in a virtual tie with Murray even before he had officially entered the race (for a chronology of campaign developments, see the website of the Seattle Times [seattletimes.nwsource.com]), as well as concerns that some of the other Republican contenders might not be very strong competitors in the general election. Early in the race, one indication of Rossi’s importance was a series of Democratic Party campaign commercials that attacked his record in the business world. Much of that criticism did not focus on Rossi’s actions but rather on the actions of other people with whom he had business relationships. These commercials were first shown amid rumors that Rossi might be considering a run but before he had officially declared. These early developments took place months before the Republican nomination had been decided. While Rossi considered whether to launch another statewide bid for office, Clint Didier emerged as the leading declared Republican candidate. Didier’s position was, in part, an outgrowth of the early decision by other Republicans to bow out of the race. Didier’s repeated professions of agreement with the major principles of the Tea Party helped him win an endorsement from Sarah Palin in May of 2010 and support from various Tea Party groups. Later that same month, Rossi formally entered the race. Just days after Rossi’s announcement, a new Washington Poll analysis found that he was leading the race with 42 percent of registered voters supporting him. Murray was virtually tied with him, however, with 39 percent of the registered voters preferring her. Moreover, she had a considerably larger pool of campaign funds on hand than did Rossi in the early months of the race. Within days after Rossi’s declaration, two other Republican candidates withdrew from the race. A series of complex maneuvers followed. Because Murray and Rossi and their advisors believed that they were the most serious contenders, they and their allies attacked one another in speeches and advertisements. Rossi and his allies charged that Murray had been too focused on pork barrel spending and received too many campaign contributions from interest groups and lobbyists. Murray and her supporters shot back that Rossi was overly friendly with Wall Street financiers. Didier continued to cultivate Tea Party supporters but also reached out to numerous ‘‘regular’’ Republican Party organizations, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee. His campaign’s repeated emphasis on his professional football career and recurring use of football imagery, however, did not seem to help, particularly as it may have reinforced concerns about his lack of experience in public office. However, his campaign website and many of his speeches dealt with a number of policy issues, including opposition to higher taxes, inheritance taxes, the 2010 healthcare reforms, abortion,

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and many governmental regulations affecting the economy. He called for balancing the federal budget by cutting spending, and congressional term limits (see clintdidier.org). He seemed to devote more emphasis to what he opposed than what he favored. In contrast with Didier’s strategy, Rossi generally kept his distance from Tea Party events and focused his attention on Republican Party organizations and Independent voters. He emphasized his governmental experience, which has traditionally been an advantage in congressional elections (Jacobson 2009, 140–141; Erikson and Wright 2009, 90), and his ability to work with members of both parties. He reached out to some conservative groups, which led the Murray campaign to accuse him of shifting to the right to undercut Didier and a less formidable Republican/Tea Party candidate, Paul Akers. At the same time, Didier accused Rossi of being too moderate on some issues. For example, although Didier favored complete repeal of the 2010 healthcare reforms, Rossi advocated replacing the law with a more bipartisan package that would utilize market incentives to improve healthcare. Rossi also called for spending cuts, more secure borders, and greater economic growth (see dinorossi.com/issues). Shortly before the primary, two of the state’s most influential newspapers, the Seattle Times and the Spokane Spokesman-Review, endorsed Murray and Rossi as the best candidates for the general election. Murray and Rossi achieved the top two places in the primary and, therefore, advanced to the general election. Murray’s share of the primary vote fell short of 50 percent, and some analysts considered that a possible danger sign in view of her status as a long-term incumbent. The national political tides that favored Republicans added to the dangers facing her campaign. Rossi finished considerably behind Murray, however; his chances for victory appeared to hinge, in part, on his ability to win over voters who had supported the other Republican contenders.

The General-Election Campaign Because much of the nomination contest revolved around Murray and Rossi, the general-election campaign resembled the nomination contest in many ways. However, several new dynamics appeared after the nominations were formally decided. On the Republican side, Clint Didier, the second-highest Republican vote getter in the primary, announced that he would not support Rossi unless he committed himself to support policies on abortion and government finances that essentially mirrored Didier’s views. Rossi rejected that demand, with the

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result that Didier declined to endorse him. The other unsuccessful Republican contender, Paul Akers, did endorse Rossi. In addition, Rossi garnered support from a number of Tea Party activists and from Senator Scott Brown (R-MA), who was recently elected to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Senator Edward Kennedy. More than a third of Washington voters (37 percent) supported the Tea Party and, according to the exit polls, 92 percent of these individuals voted for Rossi, a level of support higher than achieved by candidates in some other states who boasted Tea Party endorsements. With polls in Washington State continuing to show a close contest (see ‘‘Election 2010 Dashboard’’ 2010) and with national projections forecasting a large loss of Democratic seats in Congress, national Democratic leaders became more involved in assisting Murray’s campaign. President Obama, Vice President Biden, former president Bill Clinton, and First Lady Michelle Obama visited the state and attended fund-raisers, made public appearances, and had meetings in a variety of settings. By contrast, national Republican leaders were less conspicuous in making campaign appearances on Rossi’s behalf. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Thune (R-SD) helped raise campaign funds for Rossi, and John McCain (R-AZ) provided some support by telephone. Murray’s and Rossi’s campaigns both poured millions of dollars into the race, with Murray having a large financial edge as of mid-October ($15 million compared with Rossi’s $7.6 million; see Zak 2010). However, other conservative groups spent $2.6 million on a series of advertisements criticizing Senator Murray as a supporter of big government and excessive governmental spending. Murray received help from the Washington State Labor Council, which criticized Rossi for being unfriendly to working people because of his votes to cut benefits for some unemployed workers, to cut benefits for some people injured on the job, and to freeze the state’s minimum wage, among other things (‘‘What Union Members Should Know About Dino Rossi’’ 2010).

The Results After polls showed that the race remained close throughout the general-election campaign, Murray emerged as the winner but by a comparatively narrow margin: she received approximately 51 percent of the vote, while Rossi received a respectable 49 percent. Election analysts pointed to a number of explanations for the outcome of the election (see Brunner 2010; Mak 2010). First, Washington voters were concerned about the economy but were divided regarding who was to blame and nearly equally divided on which

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candidate was likely to make better economic policy decisions. By a modest margin, more Washington voters approved of than disapproved of Obama’s economic stimulus package and more blamed the Republicans than blamed the Democrats for the economy’s problems (Mak 2010). In a related vein, liberals voted overwhelmingly (92 percent) for Murray, while conservatives voted equally overwhelmingly for Rossi. Murray, however, did considerably better than Rossi among moderates (Mak 2010; Washington Poll 2010). Second, Washington Democrats seem to have been more effectively mobilized than have the Republicans. That difference in mobilization may have been helped by the appearances of national Democratic leaders, such as President Obama, as well as reports of impending Republican gains in other parts of the country. However, it also stemmed from state and local Democratic Party efforts (Brunner 2010) and, perhaps, the Democrats’ series of successes in a number of statewide races in recent years. Voter decisions were strongly related to party loyalties, with more than 90 percent of Democrats backing Murray and more than 80 percent of Republicans supporting Rossi (Washington Poll 2010). Third, Murray turned in a very strong showing in King County, the state’s most populous county by a wide margin and a traditional Democratic stronghold. Murray received more than 60 percent of the votes cast there, which outpolled Rossi by more than 150,000 votes. In the rest of the state, Rossi outpolled Murray by roughly 90,000 votes (Brunner 2010; Mak 2010). Fourth, Murray emerged as the candidate more people trusted, in part due to Democratic attacks that raised doubts about Rossi’s relationships with business lobbyists and business partners who had tarnished reputations. By the last phases of the campaign, 49 percent of the voters said that they trusted Murray, while only 37 percent trusted Rossi. Voters were also slightly more likely to think that Rossi was more inclined to be influenced by lobbyists than was Murray (Brunner 2010; Mak 2010). More broadly, slightly more voters had generally favorable feelings about Murray than about Rossi, although Murray’s advantage on favorability was modest, approximately five percentage points (Brunner, 2010; Mak 2010; Washington Poll 2010). Finally, Murray has a record as a practical problem solver who pays attention to people all over the state of Washington, including areas where voters have not given her solid support. Although campaigns in many parts of the country included denunciations of ‘‘pork barrel spending,’’ Murray’s success at helping gain funds for projects in various parts of the state seems to have strengthened her position, especially coupled with her ability to justify her actions in terms that ordinary people can understand and often accept (Connelly 2010; on the importance of legislators being able to explain their voting decisions, see Kingdon 1989).

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References Brunner, Jim. 2010. ‘‘5 Reasons Murray Bucked Trend, Got Re-elected.’’ Seattle Times, web edition. clintdidier.org. (campaign website). Connelly, Joel. 2010. ‘‘The Amazing Patty Murray Does It Again,’’ Seattle Post-Intelligencer, web edition. dinorossi.com. 2010. (campaign website). ‘‘Election 2010 Dashboard.’’ 2010. Huffington Post, web edition. Erikson, Robert, and Gerald Wright. 2009. ‘‘Voters, Candidates, and Issues in Congressional Elections,’’ in Lawrence Dodd and Bruce Oppenheimer, eds., Congress Reconsidered, 9th ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 71–96. Herrnson, Paul. 2000. Congressional Elections, 3rd ed. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. Howland, George. 2005. ‘‘A Fraudulent Finish: Republican Dino Rossi Ends His 2004 Bid for Governor by Attacking the Judiciary,’’ Seattle Weekly, June 8, web edition. Jacobson, Gary. 2009. The Politics of Congressional Elections, 7th ed. New York: Pearson Longman. Kaushik, Sandeep. 2004. ‘‘Vote for Governor in Washington Certified,’’ Boston Globe, December 31, web edition. Kingdon, John. 1989. Congressmen’s Voting Decisions, 3rd ed. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. Mak, Robert. 2010. ‘‘Race for Senate: Six Things That Explain the Result,’’ Northwest Cable News, November 3, web edition. mobi.clintdidier.org. nytimes.com. pattymurray.com. (campaign website). seattlepi.com. seattletimes.nwsource.com. Sinclair, Barbara. 1998. ‘‘The Plot Thickens: Congress and the President,’’ in Herbert Weisberg and Samuel Patterson, eds., Great Theatre: The American Congress in the 1990s. New York: Cambridge University, 175–196. Washington Poll. 2010. University of Washington School of the Social Sciences. ‘‘What Union Members Should Know about Dino Rossi.’’ 2010. Washington State Labor Council (web document: wslc.org). Yardley, William. 2010. ‘‘A Washington Senator Fights to Keep Her Seat.’’ New York Times, October 17, web edition. Zak, Dan. 2010. ‘‘Murray, Rossi Spend Millions in Tightening Race.’’ Washington Post, November 2, web edition.

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17 Connecticut Too Liberal to Be Palin’s Cup of Tea Diana Evans

onnecticut’s Senate race pitted Attorney General Richard Blumenthal against former World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) executive Linda McMahon. The campaign was notable for the sheer volume of money spent and advertising run by McMahon, which included TV images of McMahon in the wrestling ring kicking her husband, Vince McMahon, in the groin. Another notable event involved a classic ‘‘gotcha’’ moment when the New York Times reported that Blumenthal on several occasions referenced serving in Vietnam, when in fact he remained stateside in the marine reserves. Notably absent was any role by Tea Party–affiliated groups. The unexpectedly competitive race was set into motion in 2008, when Senator Christopher Dodd mounted an unlikely bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Investing everything in an attempt to win the Iowa caucuses, Dodd took the extraordinary step of moving his family temporarily to that state. Following that futile effort, Dodd was drawn into the mortgagelending debacle upon revelation that Countrywide Financial, widely suspected of predatory lending practices, had placed him in a V.I.P. program (Paletta 2008). As chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Dodd’s reputation also declined with rising voter anger over the role of big banks in the financial crisis (Hernandez and Kaplan 2009). Predictably, these events deeply damaged the once-popular Dodd, who had sailed to victory since his first win in 1980. A March 10, 2009, Quinnipiac poll showed him tied with his then–likely Republican challenger, former representative Rob Simmons. By April 2, the Quinnipiac Poll found Simmons

C

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leading 50 percent to 34 percent (‘‘Dodd Falls Way Behind’’ 2009). Dodd never regained much ground; he announced his retirement on January 5, 2010. When Connecticut’s most popular Democratic politician, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, announced he would run for the seat, Democrats breathed a sigh of relief, calculating that Republicans had no one who could beat the popular nineteen-year veteran of the attorney general’s office. Known as a workaholic who never missed a photo op, Blumenthal was recognized for taking on big business interests in high-profile cases and winning. However, things were not quiet on the Republican front. Dodd had already attracted the interest of WWE’s CEO, Linda McMahon, who resigned her position in September 2009 to run for the Senate. McMahon’s public office experience consisted of a seat on the state board of education to which Governor Jodi Rell had appointed her that same year. McMahon possessed a big advantage over the early leader for the Republican nomination, Rob Simmons: money, and lots of it. Making it clear that she would spend as much as necessary to win, McMahon quickly assembled a high-powered campaign organization and began running ads against Dodd. It is doubtful that these ads precipitated Dodd’s fall—voters had already lost trust in him. But the ads introduced McMahon and her outsider, anti-Washington message to Connecticut voters. The Nominations The nomination process in Connecticut, unlike other states, gives the party convention an unusually prominent, if not always determinative, role. The party convention endorses a candidate, but any candidate who wins at least 15 percent of the delegate vote can force a primary. Alternatively, candidates can petition their way onto the primary ballot. The week leading up to the Democratic Convention did not start well for Blumenthal. On Monday night preceding the Friday convention, the New York Times website dropped a bomb. An article entitled ‘‘Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ from History,’’ (Hernandez 2010a) complete with damaging video, revealed that Blumenthal had falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam in a 2008 speech honoring Connecticut veterans: ‘‘We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,’’ Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. ‘‘And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it— Afghanistan or Iraq—we owe our military men and women unconditional support.’’

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There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal . . . never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records. (Hernandez 2010a)

The article noted that Blumenthal actually served in the marine reserve, spending his time with a unit in Washington that conducted drills and organized ‘‘Toys for Tots’’ drives. In quick succession, accounts appeared in the Connecticut Post and Stamford Advocate of several similar misstatements in other settings, although there were numerous examples of Blumenthal correctly describing his service in the reserves. In a nationally televised news conference held at a VFW hall the day following the New York Times story, Blumenthal apologized, saying that his misstatements were ‘‘totally unintentional’’: ‘‘On a few occasions I have misspoken about my service, and I regret that and I take full responsibility. But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.’’ The revelation did not hinder Blumenthal’s inexorable drive for the Democratic nomination despite the damage recorded by a Rasmussen poll taken the day after the New York Times story broke. That poll showed McMahon within three percentage points of Blumenthal (45 percent to 48 percent), a statistically insignificant lead for the Democrat (‘‘Connecticut Senate: Blumenthal Loses Ground’’ 2010) and a six-point increase for McMahon in only two weeks. On May 21, the Democratic Convention nominated Blumenthal by acclamation after his very weak opponent, Merrick Alpert, withdrew during the balloting, eliminating the need for a primary. Upon nomination, Blumenthal, the ultimate insider, staked out an antiWashington position: ‘‘People look at Washington and can’t find anyone standing up for them. What they see is a wasteland—a gigantic mess. Well, you know what? My very first job was shoveling manure for my grandfather on his farm. Noisy animals and big messes don’t faze me,’’ Blumenthal said. ‘‘So when I hear that our political system is stuck, our government is broken, and Washington just plain stinks, I say: Give me a shovel and let me go to work’’ (Pazniokas and Frahm 2010). Over the next two weeks, Blumenthal seemingly recovered from the damage done by his misstatements on military service. Polls by Quinnipiac and Rasmussen found Blumenthal leading McMahon by more than twenty percentage points (Rabe 2010). However, McMahon had not yet saturated the air with ads ripping Blumenthal for lying about his service. In the meantime, the Republican Convention, which a year earlier was expected to nominate Rob Simmons, instead endorsed McMahon and her

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prospective $50 million self-funded campaign. The candidates had few substantive policy differences—both were socially moderate and fiscally conservative. However, despite her rich self-funded campaign, many establishment Republicans viewed McMahon’s candidacy with trepidation, given the negative image of professional wrestling. Although Simmons had led McMahon as late as mid-January, by mid-March, McMahon had a ten-point lead in the Quinnipiac Poll (‘‘McMahon Wrestles to the Top’’ 2010). Simmons received enough convention votes to wage a primary fight, but he vowed during the nomination campaign not to do so if he did not win the party’s convention endorsement. However, given the revelations of Blumenthal’s misstatements about his military service, Simmons, with threeand-a-half years in Vietnam (two years as a CIA officer) and two Bronze Stars, appeared to be the more promising candidate (Applebome 2010b). Soon after the convention, Simmons decided to wage a primary fight but soon reversed his position yet again. Nevertheless, Simmons’ name remained on the ballot, and in late July, he changed his mind once again, spending $350,000 for an ad to remind voters that he was on the ballot (Pazniokas 2010b). Not surprisingly, he never truly revived his campaign. In late June, a second challenger to McMahon, Peter Schiff, petitioned his way onto the Republican primary ballot. Schiff, named a ‘‘Tea Party favorite’’ by the Connecticut Mirror, served as economic advisor in Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential run and favored cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits (Pazniokas 2010a, 2010b), dangerous positions that McMahon and Simmons did not take. Schiff was the most conservative candidate and the only one likely to generate enthusiasm among Tea Party adherents. Neither Simmons nor Schiff had a chance against McMahon’s money machine, which spent $22 million. She won with 49 percent of the vote; Simmons garnered 28 percent, while Schiff finished with 23 percent.

The General-Election Campaign The candidates had one thing in common: their anti-Washington messages. Both stressed jobs and the economy, the driving issues of the 2010 election. Blumenthal (unlike McMahon) criticized the bank bailout and supported recently enacted banking reform legislation. Both focused on the need to create jobs in Connecticut, especially by assisting small businesses. Predictably, however, their diagnoses and prescriptions differed. McMahon stressed the dangers of the deficit and the purported job-killing effects of taxes and regulation. Her ads often featured her own experience at creating jobs. For exam-

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ple, the following ad featured McMahon standing in a kitchen with a battered lunch box: A lot of people ask me why I’m running for Senate. Here’s why: this lunch box. It represents a lot of people who’ve lost jobs. Washington has created the perfect job-killing storm with higher taxes, deficit spending, and expensive healthcare mandates. We need experienced job creators in Washington, not more job killers. I’m Linda McMahon, and I approve this message because we need this lunch box and a lot more like it back at work.

Blumenthal’s ads highlighted his efforts as attorney general to protect jobs, such as his office’s successful lawsuit opposing Pratt and Whitney’s plan to move one thousand jobs out of the state. The following ad exemplified one of Blumenthal’s major themes: he stands up and fights for the people; other ads asserted that McMahon values ‘‘profits before people’’: My opponent has said she will spend $50 million tearing me down. But you know me. I’ve always stood with you against the most powerful interests—no amount of money can change that. I haven’t been perfect, but I’ve never backed down from a fight to protect the people of Connecticut. I’m Dick Blumenthal, I approve this message; if you send me to the Senate, you can count on me to fight for you first, last, and always.

One environmental issue was a flash point in the campaign. McMahon repeatedly ran ads asserting that cap-and-trade legislation to reduce greenhouse gases amounted to an energy tax, a ‘‘tax’’ that Blumenthal allegedly supported. Blumenthal generally avoided that issue, instead stressing his numerous accomplishments in environmental protection as attorney general. In other policy areas, both candidates took positions characteristic of their respective parties. Blumenthal supported the 2010 healthcare reform act, partly on the grounds of savings projected by the Congressional Budget Office. McMahon, on the other hand, advocated repealing the measure and starting again; she objected especially to the mandate that people buy health insurance. Social issues were not prominent in an election dominated by a poor economy, but here there were more similarities than one might observe in more socially conservative states. Both candidates were pro-choice and offered some support for gay rights, although Blumenthal generally went further in the liberal direction on both issues (Shesgreen 2010). Most important, Blumenthal was far more expansive on women’s issues, taking strong positions on reproductive rights, domestic violence, workplace equality, and women’s healthcare (http://richardblumenthal.com/Issues/Women). By contrast,

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McMahon’s website contained a terse two-sentence statement on abortion, the sole explicit comment on women’s issues (http://www.linda2010.com/ issues/). The differences between the two campaigns on women’s issues were reflected in (but did not cause) McMahon’s chronic difficulty in appealing to women, discussed more fully below. One of the most incendiary issues of the campaign concerned the minimum wage. In accepting the endorsement of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, which seeks to freeze the minimum wage, McMahon was vague about her own position. When a reporter asked whether she thought that the minimum wage should be frozen or if there should be a minimum wage at all, she answered: I think we need to review how much it ought to be and whether or not we ought to have increases in the minimum wage, and if it is, how is it planned. Does it get tied to inflation? Are there just automatic increases in it? And I think that we should always review the policies that are put in place to make sure we are keeping with today and the needs of today. (Pazniokas 2010c)

By mid-afternoon, Democratic and labor groups attacked her for being open to reducing the minimum wage. Within hours, her campaign e-mailed reporters asserting that she opposed lowering the minimum wage (Pazniokas 2010d). Nonetheless, the Blumenthal campaign moved quickly to exploit McMahon’s temporary uncertainty on the issue. Within twenty-four hours, Blumenthal began running this ad: ‘‘Her business is under investigation for failing to pay Social Security, Medicare, or unemployment. She took home $46 million, and now she’s talking about lowering the minimum wage.’’ McMahon’s gaffe could not have come at a better time for Blumenthal. In mid-September, the Cook Political Report reclassified the race from ‘‘leaning Democratic’’ to ‘‘tossup.’’ And two days before her remarks, the widely watched Quinnipiac Poll found that Blumenthal’s lead had shrunk to a statistically insignificant three points (figure 17.1). On the day of the first debate, the McMahon campaign, in an obvious effort to shake Blumenthal’s composure, released a powerful new negative commercial showing two of the five known instances of Blumenthal’s misstatements about his military service (Pazniokas 2010e). The final voice-over asked, ‘‘If he lied about Vietnam, what else is he lying about?’’ The debates reflected the drama and bitterness of the campaign. In the October 4 opener, Blumenthal pounced on the minimum-wage issue, asserting that McMahon would support a reduction. ‘‘That’s a lie, and you know it’s a lie,’’ she snapped back. In turn, one reporter on the panel asked him (predictably) about his misstatements on Vietnam. He paused momentarily,

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FIGURE 17.1. Poll Results in Connecticut Senate Race, Quinnipiac Poll

then apologized again. In the end, both candidates passed the minimum threshold of the political debate: do no harm (to yourself). During the second and third debates, Blumenthal intensified his attacks on McMahon’s greatest weakness: her policies and practices as CEO of the WWE. Among other things, he attempted unsuccessfully to force her to respond to charges that she alerted one of the organization’s doctors about a federal investigation of possible steroid use by wrestlers. In the final debate, he pressed home his comparison of her years in professional wrestling with his decades of public service. McMahon was increasingly forced on the defensive over her history with WWE, despite her efforts to inoculate herself against it. In an appearance on ABC’s This Week, she defended herself against tough questioning in which interviewer Christianne Amanpour noted the degrading depiction of women, including a skit in which a female wrestler was forced to partially undress, go on all fours and bark like a dog. McMahon noted that WWE had in recent years become tamer, moving from TV-14 to PG programming. In a McMahon ad that ran frequently, two well-dressed women, while acknowledging that wrestling isn’t ‘‘my cup of tea,’’ nevertheless dismissed it as ‘‘soap opera.’’

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Other portrayals of the WWE were less benign. On October 14, the front page of the Hartford Courant carried the following headline: ‘‘An Act Cleaned Up? Substance Abuse in WWE Dogs McMahon Run.’’ The article detailed addiction to pain medications and subsequent injuries and deaths of alreadyhurt wrestlers. The article noted WWE’s claim that steroid use had been eliminated but asserted that ‘‘muscle relaxants, alcohol, human growth hormone, and, especially prescription painkillers’’ were rampant (Altimari 2010). McMahon’s efforts to erase the stain of the WWE, particularly with women voters, were unavailing. At least two polls in mid-October showed women breaking for Blumenthal by a two-to-one margin. On October 24, the Hartford Courant endorsed Blumenthal, citing litigation he filed involving environmental and consumer protection, tobacco companies, and drug companies, and against HMO efforts to deny medical treatment (‘‘Blumenthal for Senate’’ 2010). Beginning in early October, Blumenthal’s poll numbers began to climb. By October 14, he led 54 percent to 43 percent according to a Quinnipiac poll, a lead he never lost (see figure 17.1). Rasmussen reported a seven-point lead for Blumenthal on November 1 (‘‘Connecticut Senate: McMahon [R]’’ 2010). In one respect, McMahon’s campaign was in a class by itself as the mostexpensive losing Senate campaign in history and the second-most-expensive of any Senate campaign. She spent $49.9 million, nearly six times Blumenthal’s $8,663,221 (Opensecrets.org). McMahon used much of that money to televise and mail a blizzard of negative ads on various subjects. Blumenthal also ran negative ads but had too little money to match McMahon’s volume until late in the race. He deployed his funds strategically, running most of his ads in the final three weeks of the campaign.1 Between the Republican primary and September 15, Blumenthal still ran only one ad for every three run for McMahon. Table 17.1 shows how Blumenthal used his funds between September 1 and the election. TABLE 17.1 Total Spending and Numbers of Ads, September 1–November 2

Total spending on ads Total number of ads Number of McMahon ads Number of Blumenthal ads

Sept. 1–Oct. 7

Oct. 8–Nov. 2

$7,390,870 5,548 3,770 1,728

$8,254,830 5,609 2,620 2,911

Source: Wesleyan Media Project (Kantar Media); Fowler and Ridout 2010.

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Many believed that McMahon’s heavy advertising, her negative ads, and the image of WWE hurt her with female voters. ‘‘ ‘She’s bothering people,’ said Ms. [Dolores] Meehan, a retired telephone company worker from Norwalk. ‘There are about 10 to 12 ads in an hour. If you’re watching a show, it’s too much.’ ’’ (Hernandez 2010b). That view was commonly expressed by Connecticut residents, as was the view that McMahon was trying to buy the election. On November 2, much to the delight of Connecticut citizens, the election was held and the advertising disappeared from television and mailboxes. Although Linda McMahon spent nearly $100 for each vote she won (Peoples 2010), Blumenthal was elected 55 percent to 43 percent.2

Conclusion As the New York Times said, the Tea Party ignored Connecticut. Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint had no visible role in the Senate election and only a minimal role in a few other races. An experienced Democratic politician, Bill Curry, argued, ‘‘Connecticut, for lots of reasons, has proved itself almost immune not just to the kind of extremism that’s overtaken the Republican Party nationally, but to extremism from both political parties. . . . Sarah Palin’s endorsement of almost anyone in Connecticut would end their campaign’’ (Applebome 2010a). Palin attempted to insert herself into the action when she referred to McMahon as a ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’ on Fox News. Her ‘‘shout-out’’ elicited a chilly response from the McMahon campaign (Pazniokas 2010f), an indication that Tea Party politics holds little appeal for most Connecticut voters. Blumenthal had no trouble defining himself as a fighter for Connecticut— the majority of voters knew him well and already saw him as such. A skillfully conducted if late-starting and relatively underfunded campaign helped overcome his misstatements on his military record and capitalize on his reputation as a fighter for Connecticut.

References Altimari, Daniela. 2010. ‘‘An Act Cleaned Up? Substance Abuse in the WWE Dogs McMahon Run.’’ Hartford Courant. (October 14). A1. Applebome, Peter. 2010a. ‘‘Amid a Tea Party Whirlwind, Connecticut Is an Island of Calm.’’ New York Times. (November 3). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/ nyregion/04towns.html?refric hardblumentha l. ———. 2010b. ‘‘In Connecticut’s G.O.P., a Vanquished Rival Lingers On.’’ New York

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Times. (June 13). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/nyregion/14towns.html? _r1&refrobsimmons. ‘‘Blumenthal for Senate.’’ 2010. Hartford Courant. (October 24) C1. ‘‘Connecticut Senate: Blumenthal Loses Ground, Leads McMahon by Just Three Points.’’ 2010. Rasmussen Reports. (May 19). http://www.rasmussenreports.com/ public_content/politics/electio ns/electione2010/election_2010_senate_elections/ connecticut/connecticut_senate_blumenthal_loses_ground_leads_mcmahon_by _just_three_pointsleads. ‘‘Connecticut Senate: McMahon (R) Still Runs Second to Blumenthal (D).’’ 2010. Rasmussen Reports. (November 1). http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public _content/politics/elections/electione2010/election_2010_senate_elections/connec ticut/electione2010_connecticut_senate. ‘‘Dodd Falls Way Behind as Approval Drops to Lowest Ever, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Voters Are Angry at AIG Bonuses and Blame Dodd.’’ 2009. (April 2). http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1284.xml?ReleaseID1283&What&strArea1;& strTime24. Fowler, Erika Franklin, and Travis N. Ridout. 2010. ‘‘Advertising Trends in 2010.’’ The Forum 8, no. 4, article 4. http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol8/iss4/art4. Hernandez, Raymond. 2010a. ‘‘Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ from History.’’ New York Times. (May 17). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/ny region/18blumenthal.html?_r 1&pagewantedprint. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Female Candidate Finds Tough Audience: Women.’’ New York Times. (October 13). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/14/nyregion/14mcmahon .html?refrichardblumenthal. Hernandez, Raymond, and Thomas Kaplan. 2009. ‘‘Connecticut Senator Draws Voters’ Ire for His Bonus Role.’’ New York Times. (March 19). http://www.nytimes .com/2009/03/20/nyregion/20dodd.html?_r1&scp1&sqConnecticut%20 Senator%20Draws%20Voters%E2%80%99%20Ire%20for%20His%20Bonus%20 Role&stcse. Kantar Media/CMAG with analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project. http://election -ad.research.wesleyan.edu/files/2010/10/WesMediaProject_Release2Tables_20101 013.pdf and http://election-ad.research.wesleyan.edu/files/2010/09/WesMediaProj ect_Release1Tables_20100927.pdf. ‘‘McMahon Wrestles to the Top in GOP Senate Race, Quinnipiac University Connecticut Poll Finds; Blumenthal Hammers Her 2–1.’’ 2010. Connecticut Mirror. (March 17). http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1284.xml?ReleaseID1433&What& strA rea1;&strTime24. Opensecrets.org. http://www.opensecrets.org/races/summary.php?cycle2010&id CT S2. Paletta, Damien. 2008. ‘‘Dodd Tied to Countrywide.’’ Wall Street Journal. (June 13). http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121332396326070639.html. Pazniokas, Mark. 2010a. ‘‘Schiff Qualifies for GOP Senate Race.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (June 21). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/6506/schiff-qualifies-republican-primary -us-senate. ———. 2010b. ‘‘Schiff ’s Struggling Campaign Looks to One Last Online ‘Money Bomb.’ ’’ Connecticut Mirror. (July 26). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/6968/dis inclined-open-his-checkbook-schiff-looks-one-last-money-bomb.

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———. 2010c. ‘‘McMahon Accepts Small Business Group’s Endorsement, Hedges on Its Agenda.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (September 20). http://www.ctmirror.org/ story/7881/mcmahon-accepts-nfib-endorseme nt-hedges-age nda. ———. 2010d . ‘‘Ripped from the Headlines, a Blumenthal Commercial.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (October 1). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/7892/new-ad. ———. 2010e. ‘‘McMahon Ad Revives Vietnam Issue.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (October 4). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/7900/mcmahon-revives-vietnam-issue-senate -race-n ew-ad-video. ———. 2010f. ‘‘Palin Says McMahon’s a ‘Mama Grizzly.’ ’’ Connecticut Mirror. (October 7). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/7984/palin-says-mcmahons-mama -grizzly. Pazniokas, Mark, and Robert A. Frahm. 2010. ‘‘After a Tough Week, Blumenthal Wins by Acclamation.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (May 21). http://www.ctmirror.org/ story/6071/alpert-quits-mid-roll-call-blumenthal-endorsed-acclamation. Peoples, Steve. 2010. ‘‘McMahon among Most Spendy Self-Funders.’’ Roll Call. (December 9). http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_57/-201313-1.html. Rabe, Jacqueline. 2010. ‘‘Third Wave of Good News for Blumenthal in Rasmussen Poll.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (June 3). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/6285/third -wave-good-news-blumenthal-rasmussen-poll 10.27.10. Shesgreen, Deirdre. 2010. ‘‘When It Comes to Social Issues, the Difference Is in the Details.’’ Connecticut Mirror. (October 14). http://www.ctmirror.org/story/8021/ senatesocialissues.

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18 Conclusion Evaluating Palin, the Tea Party, and DeMint Influences Charles S. Bullock, III

number of the candidates supported by Palin, Tea Party activists, and DeMint won, but do the victors owe their success to the endorsements from these conservative forces? The previous chapters provide valuable insights. In terms of their effects on individual contests, the three conservative forces concentrated on open-seat contests and positions held by Democrats, and it is on these contests that we will focus.

A

Successes of Conservative Forces in Senate Elections without GOP Incumbents The involvement of the three conservative forces can, with few exceptions, be explained by one of three motivations. The most frequent reason to get behind a candidate was to thwart a moderate Republican while promoting a more conservative alternative. As shown in table 18.1, a desire to nominate a conservative in the GOP primary prompted most Tea Party endorsements, including their opposition to incumbent Republicans in Arizona and Utah. As explained in many of the foregoing chapters, the Tea Party favorite usually began as an underdog. In most of the states, the early leader failed to close the deal and lost the nomination, withdrew from the fray (in Wisconsin) or withdrew from the GOP primary and mounted a third-party effort (in Florida). Senator DeMint often joined with the Tea Party to promote the fortunes — 211 —

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Charles S. Bullock, III TABLE 18.1 Motivations for Senate Endorsements Tea Party

Palin

DeMint

Support a More Conservative Republican in the Primary Alaska Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Illinois Indiana Kansas

Kentucky Nevada New Hampshire New York Utah

Washington Wisconsin

Defeat a Vulnerable Incumbent Democrat in the General Election Arkansas California Nevada Pennsylvania Washington Wisconsin Palin’s Mama Grizzlies California Delaware Nevada New Hampshire

of the conservative alternative; he also opposed Dan Coats (R-IN) in a contest the Tea Party ignored. The second motivation was to defeat a vulnerable Democrat. In Nevada and Washington, DeMint seemingly had this objective, and this prompted his support. In the Washington primary, DeMint backed Dino Rossi, a candidate considered too liberal to get Tea Party support or the endorsement of

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Conclusion

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the Tea Party in the general election. It would appear that DeMint found Rossi sufficiently conservative and, since Rossi had acquired name recognition in past unsuccessful statewide campaigns, considered him a better prospect to beat Senator Patty Murray. The support that DeMint and the Tea Party gave Pat Toomey (PA) came early when it still seemed possible that Arlen Specter, the one-time moderate Republican and recent convert to the Democratic Party, would win renomination. Palin and DeMint sat out the Nevada primary but got behind Sharron Angle in the general election in an effort to remove Majority Leader Harry Reid (vulnerable Democrat). Palin also endorsed John Boozman’s effort to retire Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas. Palin may have been thinking strategically when she backed the wealthy Carly Fiorina’s (CA) quest to unseat Barbara Boxer. A second reason for Palin’s Fiorina endorsement may have been motivation number three, the ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’ theme. Palin broke with her conservative comrades in arms to back Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire and offered to support Linda McMahon in Connecticut—an offer McMahon did not accept. The endorsements that do not fit one of the three motivation profiles are DeMint’s support of Jerry Moran in Kansas, the backing all three gave John Raese in West Virginia, and Palin’s last-minute endorsement of Pat Toomey (PA) long after Specter had lost his renomination bid. The most obvious explanation for Palin’s involvement in Pennsylvania and the threesome’s West Virginia endorsement is that these were thought to be highly competitive Democratically held seats without incumbents. In fact, West Virginia gave a higher percentage of its votes to John McCain (56 percent) in 2008 than any state with a vulnerable Democrat other than Arkansas. The three open Senate seats in which none of the three conservative forces got involved did not meet the first criteria since John Hoeven (ND) and Rob Portman (OH) faced no primary opponent, while Roy Blunt (MO)—the ultimate insider, having once been the House majority whip—took over 70 percent of the primary vote. Nor did any of these pit the Republican against a sitting Democrat. Table 18.2 shows activities by the three forces in Senate contests. Of the 112th Senate’s thirteen new Republicans, Marco Rubio (FL), Rand Paul (KY), and Toomey (PA) drew support from all three endorsers. DeMint and the Tea Party united behind Mike Lee (UT) and Ron Johnson (WI). Palin backed Ayotte (NH), while DeMint and the Tea Party helped her unsuccessful primary opponent. By naming Kelly Ayotte a ‘‘Mama Grizzly’’ and rejecting the overtures of Ovide Lamontagne, Palin helped allay concerns on the right. Only DeMint picked the winner in the Kansas primary. Palin jumped on the Boozman bandwagon just before it crushed Blanche Lincoln in

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N N N Y Y N N N Y

GOP Dem Dem Dem Dem Dem Dem Dem Dem

Dem GOP Dem Dem GOP GOP GOP GOP Dem GOP Dem GOP Dem

Incumbent

6/9 5/17 4/10 3

0 0 0 0 0 5/8

Tea Party

4/5 5/12 4/7 3

0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5/6

Palin

5/7 6/15 5/9 4

0 0

0 0 0 0 0 6/8

DeMint

Key: Endorsed; Endorsed a losing primary; 0 Made no endorsement in this contest *The Alaska contest is included because the GOP incumbent competed in the general election as a write-in candidate, not as the GOP nominee. **Palin and DeMint endorsed Angle only after she won the GOP nomination.

Nominees/Endorsements Winners/All Endorsements Open Seat: Winners/All Endorsements Wins in Seats Vacated by Republicans

Miller* Fiorina Buck McMahon O’Donnell Angle** DioGuardi Rossi Raese

N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N

Winners AR Boozman FL Rubio IL Kirk IN Coats KS Moran KY Paul MO Blunt NH Ayotte ND Hoeven OH Portman PA Toomey UT Lee WI Johnson Winners/Endorsements

Losers AK CA CO CT DE NV NY WA WV

Open

State

TABLE 18.2 Endorsements in Senate Contests without a Republican Incumbent Nominee

3 1 2 0 3 3 1 1 3

1 3 0 0 1 3 0 1 0 0 3 2 2

Total

Conclusion

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Arkansas. GOP establishment favorites won in Illinois and Indiana, in each case besting the preference of one of the conservative endorsers, and the three groups sat out the general election in these states. The three endorsers showed greater unity in backing general-election losers than winners, presenting united fronts in Alaska, Delaware, Nevada, and West Virginia. All three became involved in the California and Washington primaries, with only Palin picking the winner in the former, while DeMint alone supported Rossi in the latter. Palin and DeMint each had only one primary loser in these states won by Democrats, while three Tea Party favorites did not make it through the primary. Only the Tea Party got involved in the long-shot contests in Connecticut and New York. In contrast with the general-election winners, all but two of which involved open seats, five of the nine losses came at the hands of a sitting Democratic senator, with Alaska incumbent Lisa Murkowski’s (R) write-in campaign administering a sixth defeat. Only three of seven candidates with unified conservative support won. DeMint had one more success (six of fifteen) than did Palin (five of twelve) or the Tea Party (five of seventeen). In open seats, which present less of a challenge than does defeating an incumbent, DeMint had five successes along with two primary and two general-election losses. Palin had four winners, one primary loser, and two general-election defeats. The Tea Party saw four of its candidates elected, four primary losses, and two general-election defeats. Most conservative victories came in seats vacated by Republicans (Palin: three, Tea Party: three, and DeMint: four). To take control of the Senate, Republicans needed ten more seats. Of the six pickups, each of the three conservative endorsers became involved in only two. DeMint and the Tea Party activists each supported five unsuccessful attempts to take seats held by Democrats, while Palin had four losers. If any one of the three conservative endorsers had managed to help their other candidates win, their influence could have given Republicans a Senate majority. Several losing candidates were long shots. Recipients of conservative endorsements did not win any state in which McCain got less than 40 percent of the vote. On the other hand, Joe Miller (AK) and Raese (WV) lost despite running in states carried by McCain and despite having support from all three conservative forces. Three of four Palin candidates won in states where McCain got 40–49 percent, as did three of five Tea Party favorites and three of six DeMint preferences. DeMint and Tea Party groups boasted of challenging the GOP establishment (Armey and Kibbe 2010). However, only rarely did any of these conservative forces oppose sitting Republicans. As noted in table 18.1, clashes with the GOP establishment usually involved open seats or posts held by Democrats, but even then, some establishment candidates drew support. The Tea

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Party most consistently backed rebels, giving support to only one establishment candidate, while DeMint promoted establishment candidates in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and Washington. Palin, perhaps showing greater pragmatism, backed four establishment candidates, all of whom won primaries, and backed five establishment candidates in the general election, with four winning.1 Three of her five nonincumbent winners had establishment ties. The influence of the Tea Party Movement varied among states, and in some states, differed in the primary and the general election. In Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada, Tea Party support proved critical in securing the nomination but insufficient for success in November. Palin gave decisive help to Fiorina in California, and she and DeMint helped Christine O’Donnell in Delaware. DeMint’s support helped Ken Buck (CO) with fund-raising at a critical point. In some Senate contests, none of the three conservative forces played more than bit parts in the GOP triumphs, such as in Arkansas and Indiana. In Arizona, Indiana, New Hampshire, and Washington, the winner defeated the Tea Party favorite in the primary. However, in states where the GOP nominee did not bear the Tea Party label, the candidate nonetheless got support from Tea Partiers at about the same level as candidates with closer ties to the movement. Exit polls showed Dan Coats (IN) with 84 percent Tea Party support, the same as Tea Party favorite Ron Johnson (WI) and only four points less than Tea Party candidate Ken Buck (CO). In Washington, 92 percent of Tea Party supporters voted for Rossi against Murray. The Tea Party did not support Linda McMahon (CT), and she avoided an invitation to become one of Palin’s Mama Grizzlies. In Connecticut, as in California, ties to Palin would have been counterproductive in the general election, but Fiorina (CA) sought the Mama Grizzly designation in the primary to mobilize conservatives. While some candidates sought to downplay Palin support, other candidates courted the former Alaska governor. She responded positively and helped Raese but ignored a request in Colorado and picked a woman over the man who sought her approval in New Hampshire. Another dimension along which differences occurred involved level of activity. In Delaware, each of the three conservative forces assumed an active role in promoting O’Donnell’s doomed effort. In some states, the Tea Party or Palin made an endorsement but did little else. DeMint’s political action committee contributed to most but not all of the candidates he endorsed. The clearest examples of where conservative support led to the election of new senators come in Florida, Kentucky, and Utah. In each of these states, the Tea Party rallied to the cause of an early underdog who knocked off the

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front-runner—and preferred candidate of the GOP establishment. In several other states, the Tea Party activists, or one or more of their allies, contributed to successful campaigns, although it is harder to demonstrate a decisive role. A number of observers writing at the time of the election did not give the Tea Party Movement high grades for success. Is it possible that the press created a straw man by first presenting an unrealistic image of the movement’s potency? The press has a tendency to attach labels (names given to allegedly decisive factors) to elections. Recent election cycles have been identified with labels such as ‘‘Year of the Woman,’’ ‘‘NASCAR Dads,’’ and ‘‘Soccer Moms.’’ As with these other labels, the ‘‘Tea Party phenomenon’’ was new and seemed to offer an explanation for widely observed changes. But was it reasonable to expect that Tea Party activists could overcome existing forces and patterns and produce conservative victories? The unsuccessful attempts to take Senate seats held by Democrats (table 18.2) involved only one state (West Virginia) carried by McCain in 2008, and the average support for McCain was only 41.5 percent in those states where the unsuccessful attempts took place. Even in a wave election favoring Republicans, the odds of winning a state in which the opposition party won a landslide two years earlier in the presidential election are not good, especially when victory requires defeating an incumbent. Moreover, in Democratic states like California, New York, Washington, and Delaware, a GOP victory would require a Republican candidate with broad appeal or a seriously flawed Democrat. As demonstrated in Delaware, the kind of candidate able to attract enough votes outside the GOP core was judged unacceptable by the activists, who seemingly agreed with Senator DeMint that it was better to remain ideologically pure and in the minority than to drink from the cup of compromise in order to become the majority. By opposing mainstream Republican candidates, who might have attracted Independent voters, the Tea Party, often with the assistance of Palin and DeMint, probably kept the GOP from electing senators in Colorado, Delaware, and Nevada. However, even if the Tea Party cost the GOP three Senate seats, it did not deny Republicans control of the Senate, since they needed four more seats than they won to control the upper chamber.

Conservative Forces in Non-Senate Elections Table 18.3 shows that Palin and Tea Party favorites usually won primaries, with the success rate especially high for Tea Party House candidates. Their endorsements coincided more closely with the preferences of conservative voters who participate in GOP primaries than they did with the ideologically diverse general electorate. Most of Palin’s endorsees won in November, with

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Charles S. Bullock, III TABLE 18.3 Activities and Successes of Tea Party and Palin in the 2010 Elections Tea Party

Endorsements Palin*

Governors In Primary Primary Wins

11 8

9 6

In General General Wins

8 5

8 6

Success Rate**

45.5% 5/11

54.5 6/11

U.S. House In Primary Primary Wins

143 138

16 11

In General General Wins

140 53

47 32

Success Rate**

36.6% 53/145

58.1% 36/62

*Palin made a number of endorsements after the candidate had won the primary. Under each percentage are the figures on which it is calculated. **The denominator for success rates is all endorsements.

House candidates having a 58 percent success rate. House aspirants backed by Tea Party groups did not fare well, winning little more than a third of their contests. In assessing the influence of Palin and the Tea Party, we should consider political circumstances. Many Tea Party endorsements went to candidates running in solidly Democratic constituencies. Not surprisingly, in House districts where Obama held McCain below 40 percent, all Palin endorsees and sixty-three of sixty-four Tea Party candidates lost. Endorsees did better in districts that viewed McCain more favorably. In districts where McCain got 40–44 percent, three of nine Palin candidates and seven of twenty-four Tea Party candidates won. In districts that gave McCain at least 45 percent support, forty-five of fifty-three Tea Party favorites and thirty-three of thirtynine Palin favorites won. Palin made endorsements in twenty districts carried by John McCain but represented by Democrats, and her candidates won eighteen of those districts (Bryan 2010). Of forty-three House candidates supported by both Palin and Tea Party groups, twenty-five won. Palin backed forty-seven challengers to Democratic House incumbents and scored twenty-six successes; all seven who were seeking positions vacated

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by Democrats, and whom she endorsed, won. Because the Tea Party backed so many Republicans in heavily Democratic districts, their endorsees defeated only 33 of the 117 incumbents challenged. Viewed from a different perspective, of the fifty-two Republicans who knocked off Democratic incumbents, thirty-four had Tea Party ties and twenty-six had Palin’s support. Support of long shots in heavily Democratic states pulled down Tea Party success rates. For example, the Tea Party backed challengers to six Democratic incumbents in Massachusetts and seventeen in California, none of whom won. Zernike (2010) suggests that the Tea Party Movement managed to nominate candidates in very blue districts because of the weakness of the GOP. With so many endorsements going to candidates competing in solidly Democratic constituencies, it is not surprising that a multivariate analysis of House elections found no difference in the share of the vote won by Democrats facing Tea Party candidates compared with Democrats whose opponent had no connection to the Tea Party Movement (Carson and Pettigrew 2010). However, two actions criticized by Tea Partiers, roll-call votes for the stimulus and healthcare, did reduce the share of the vote received by Democratic candidates. Writing a couple of weeks before the election, a New York Times reporter dismissed Tea Party efforts, asserting, ‘‘There does not appear to be any case where a Tea Party Candidate has helped make a Democratic-leaning district more competitive for Republicans’’ (Zernike 2010). Districts in which Democrats had displaced Republicans in 2006 or 2008 offered good prospects for a GOP recovery in 2010. Tea Party nominees competed in eighteen districts where Democrats had beaten Republicans two years earlier, and reclaimed thirteen. Tea Party candidates also won seven of thirteen districts that shifted to the Democrats in 2006. Twelve of thirteen Palin endorsees in districts taken by Democrats in 2008 won, as did six of eight in districts lost by the GOP in 2006. Picking her spots, and often waiting until the closing days of the campaign, allowed Palin to back numerous candidates who took previously Democratic seats.2 Her endorsees won two gubernatorial and seven House seats vacated by Democrats and knocked off a sitting governor and twenty-six House Democrats. However, as noted in the Colorado chapter (10), some Palin endorsements came too late to have much impact and at times could be interpreted as climbing on a bandwagon that already had sufficient momentum to coast to victory. Other endorsements involved little follow-through (Newton-Small 2010). Some endorsees avoided appearing with her, fearing a backlash among decisive Independents. On the other hand, some of her Mama Grizzlies paid as much as $100,000 to bring Palin in for a rally (Sheinin 2010).

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Talk about ‘‘Mama Grizzlies’’ suggested that Palin had a special interest in electing women. Of the thirteen women she supported in House generalelection contests, eight won, as did all three female gubernatorial candidates. More than 60 percent of Palin-endorsed men in House contests won, as did three of five men Palin preferred for governorships. Kelly Ayotte was Palin’s only successful woman Senate candidate. The New York experience as detailed by Costas Panagopoulos (chapter 12) helps define the limits of Tea Party influence. Conservative forces determined primary outcomes in a number of contests. However, in the general election, Tea Party support failed in statewide contests but helped unseat several congressional Democrats. In New York and Colorado, but not California, conservatives could mobilize sufficient numbers of voters to reclaim marginal districts even though they remained outnumbered statewide. Susan MacManus shows (chapter 6) how even in Florida, a state that is more welcoming to conservatives than is New York, Republicans in tight races hesitated to embrace Sarah Palin unreservedly. Jean Kingston points out (chapter 10) that a new Colorado representative benefited by being opposed by the Tea Party in the primary but then received critical Tea Party help with voter mobilization in the general election. Some other candidates tried to reverse the relationship, emphasizing Palin’s support in the primary but, like Carly Fiorina (CA), disassociating themselves from her in the general election, where ties to Palin might turn off Independent voters (Wood 2010).

Other Factors A number of new Republicans elected in 2010 would have succeeded without Palin or the Tea Party. Conservatives’ stands on salient issues agreed with most of the public nationwide, although not on the West Coast. Republicans would have scored by emphasizing their opposition to healthcare reform, the stimulus act, cap and trade (environmental regulations), and ‘‘card check’’ (which would have facilitated labor union organizing efforts). The electorate divided evenly among those who believed that the stimulus package helped the economy, hurt the economy, or had no impact. Those who saw a positive or negative result voted overwhelmingly for Democrats or Republicans, respectively, but the third who perceived no difference broke 57 percent to 39 percent for the GOP. Almost half of exit-poll respondents wanted Obamacare repealed, and they gave 86 percent of their votes to Republicans. GOP candidates drew critical funding from outside sources such as Karl Rove’s Crossroads groups, which invested an average of almost $1 million in each of forty contests (Luo and Palmer 2010). The U.S. Chamber of Com-

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merce ran ads supporting more than fifty Republicans. Without the contributions from these and various 527 groups, the incumbent fund-raising advantage would have enabled Democratic candidates to outspend their GOP challengers. Moreover, midterm elections rarely turn out well for the president’s party. Since World War II, the president’s party has lost an average of 23.9 House and 3.8 Senate seats at the midterm. The president’s party has generally fared better in the first midterm, with average losses of 16.1 House and 0.9 Senate seats, than in the second. Obviously, losing 63 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate far exceeds the average. Home foreclosures and stubbornly high unemployment fueled anger at the president’s party above and beyond disagreements with the unpopular policy initiatives noted above. Widespread negative assessments of current conditions prompted voters to reject Democratic candidates. More than 60 percent of voters judged the country to be on the wrong track, and these voters supported Republicans by more than three to one. By a margin of 55 percent to 44 percent, voters responding to exit polls disapproved of President Obama’s performance, and 84 percent of those who disapproved voted for a Republican to represent them in the U.S. House.

Is It about More Than Winning Elections? A statement that needs less hedging than the proposition that the president’s party loses seats in midterm elections is the observation that fewer people vote in midterm than in presidential elections. By calling for lower taxes, smaller deficits, and restrictions on the reach of the federal government, the Tea Party and Palin, with her rock-star status among conservatives, contributed to the enthusiasm gap, which encouraged greater participation among Republicans than among Democrats. Republicans reported greater interest than did Democrats in the 2010 elections, and according to exit polls, Republicans cast 36 percent of the vote nationwide in 2010 compared with 32 percent in 2008, while the share of votes from Democrats dropped from 39 percent to 36 percent.3 Even more significant may be the share of the electorate identifying themselves as conservatives, which increased from 34 percent in 2008 to 41 percent in 2010. The Tea Party encouraged turnout among conservatives by counterbalancing the negative evaluations most voters had of the GOP and Congress. Exit polls showed favorable assessments of the Tea Party (41 percent) exceeding negative evaluations (32 percent). With a 32 percent unfavorable rating, the Tea Party brand did much better than the GOP, which 53 percent viewed

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negatively (Curry 2010). A poll done at the end of 2009 actually showed more voters prepared to vote for a generic Tea Party candidate than for a Republican (Rasmussen and Schoen 2010). Voters who had lost faith in the GOP might nonetheless go to the polls if they anticipated that electing a Tea Party affiliate would bring change. Most candidates backed by Sarah Palin won, although she suffered several high-profile defeats. But even where defeated, Palin scored points, according to GOP strategist Ed Rollins, who likened her efforts to those of Richard Nixon in 1966, ‘‘No one remembers who won or lost, only that he was out there’’ (Shiner 2010). If she runs for president in 2012, she has endorsees in office in key states, including first-caucus-state Governor Terry Branstadt (IA) and the first two primary states, with Senator Kelly Ayotte (NH) and Governor Nikki Haley (SC). Even if Palin passes on the 2012 presidential sweepstakes, she can remain a player in Republican politics. Despite losses by some candidates she backed in 2010, is there anyone in the GOP who supported a greater number of winners than did the former Alaska governor? Getting Palin to attend a rally generates media coverage, turns out conservative activists, facilitates fund-raising, and inspires get-out-the-vote efforts. Although I know of no evidence, perhaps more recipients listen to her robocalls than to those from any other political figure. Comments made by Palin in the wake of the assassination attempt on Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) caused the Alaskan’s national unpopularity to surge to its highest level (Swanson 2011). Nonetheless, she remains popular among conservatives, including some who question her qualifications to become president. It is commonly assumed that involvement in an election stems from a desire to win, but that may not be the only motivation. Certainly, conservative forces wanted to elect their choices, but even when their candidates lost, Tea Party groups may have achieved partial success. Defeating several highprofile establishment choices in GOP primaries may have pushed some Republican legislators to adopt more conservative policy stands. Longtime pork fanciers voted against earmark-laden legislation in the lame-duck session following the 2010 elections. Congressional Republicans now weigh the potential of a primary challenge from the right when considering roll-call votes that might earn the legislator the dreaded RINO label (Republican in name only). GOP strategist Dick Morris called for the defeat of six Republicans who voted to ratify the START treaty during the 2010 lame-duck session (Morris and McGann 2010; also see Blake 2010). Tea Party Patriots cofounder Jenny Beth Martin has a warning for Republicans: ‘‘If they don’t vote the way we expect them to vote, then we’re going to do to them the same thing we’ve done to many Democrats and a handful of Republicans. We’ll melt their phone lines’’ (Galloway 2010). Some incumbents, like Senator Orrin

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Hatch (UT), have begun courting Tea Party activists in hopes of heading off a possible challenge to renomination in 2012 (Rucker 2011).4 While the Tea Party and its supporters threaten to defeat those whom they consider RINOs, they beat only two senators in 2010, when they denied renomination to Senators Robert Bennett (UT) and Lisa Murkowski (AK). The latter rebounded to win a write-in campaign, and the former lost not in a primary but in a caucus, where zealots can play a larger role than in a primary, which attracts more participants. Two other examples of Tea Party power came in Florida and Pennsylvania, where Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter left the GOP rather than compete in primaries they seemed destined to lose. House members, with their smaller districts and shorter terms, work harder at building relationships with constituents, and none of them fell to a challenge from the right. The prospect of a primary challenge from the right may suffice to push incumbents further from the center, but the Tea Party has yet to prove that it can deliver on its threats in House districts. Except in Alaska, Tea Party Senate primary triumphs involved open seats or the selection of a challenger to a sitting Democrat. And while Tea Party favorites scored some notable successes, establishment candidates often secured nominations, sometimes despite Tea Party opposition, as on the West Coast (California and Washington) and in the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas), or with token or no opposition (Missouri, North Dakota, and Ohio). These tend to be swing states or ones that lean Democratic, and thus to succeed, Republicans need nominees who can appeal well beyond the confines of GOP identifiers. Tea Party sympathizers succeeded in nominating their preferred candidate in states that are, or recently were, red (Utah, Alaska, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada). In states shading from red to purple, Republican activists may not yet have noticed the transformation under way, promoted by an increasingly diverse population, and they may still not realize that to succeed in the future, the GOP must expand its appeal by nominating moderates.

Future Challenges While Senator DeMint wants to eliminate moderates from GOP ranks, Republicans’ ability to win a Senate majority becomes more tenuous without the two Maine senators (Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins), Scott Brown (MA), and/or Richard Lugar (IN); none of whom toes the Tea Party line. And while DeMint may consider these moderates unprincipled, their electoral successes suggest that they represent the views of their constituents better than would an unswerving conservative. The viable Senate option in ‘‘purple’’ states may be a moderate Republican or a Democrat—not a moder-

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ate Republican or a conservative Republican. Moving further to the right did not impede GOP prospects in Utah, Kentucky, or the South but proved an insurmountable handicap in Nevada and Delaware and did not improve GOP prospects in California or New York. Decades of research demonstrate that members of Congress who stake out extreme positions pay a price—they win smaller shares of the vote than do their more moderate colleagues (Erikson 1971; Kingdon 1973; Canes-Wrone et al. 2003). More recent research concludes that ‘‘many legislators face electoral penalties for voting too often with their parties on divisive issues that attract the attention of challengers and attentive constituents’’ (Carson, Koger, Lebo, and Young 2010). This caveat applies to representatives from marginal districts, who may experience cross pressures when constituent desires conflict with party leaders’ calls for loyalty. Legislators from fireengine-red or sky-blue districts can heed calls for party loyalty, with little fear of voter retribution. With Republicans controlling the House, Tea Party favorites will be called upon to help govern, which involves roll calls on increasing the debt limit, on funding the war in Afghanistan, and on funding Social Security and Medicare for the elderly. These demands will not mesh smoothly with campaign promises to cut the deficit while not increasing taxes. The excitement that brought Tea Partiers first to protest rallies and then to the polls will face challenges as candidates who ran with the movement’s blessings bend to the will of the GOP leadership and lose their ideological virginity. Or, to the extent that Tea Party favorites reject efforts by Republican whips to line up their votes, they will give Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) indigestion. How will the activists react to a divided government where their initiatives may pass the House only to die in the Senate? Well before the 2010 election, a local organizer observed that within a few months, 10 to 20 percent of new members of Tea Party groups dropped out (Rauch 2010). Will having a hand in governing encourage more commitment of the rank and file or, when their expectations for change are not quickly realized, will dropping out accelerate? Will the enthusiasm of 2010 prove to be a one-election wonder, like the National Conservative PAC of 1980 or Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential bid? Or will the Tea Party have staying power and dictate the choice of the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 in addition to shaping the outcome of the battle for the White House and control of the Senate in the next general election? References Armey, Dick, and Matt Kibbe. 2010. Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto. New York: HarperCollins.

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Blake, Aaron. 2010. ‘‘The Next Tea Party Targets.’’ The Fix (September 20). http:// voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/senate/the-next-tea-party-targets.html. Bryan, Steve. 2010. ‘‘Sarah Palin’s ‘Take Back the 20’ PAC Scores a Bull’s-eye.’’ Yahoo! News (November 4). http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20101104/us_ac/7122292_sarah _palins_take_back_the_20_pac_scores_a_bullseye.html. Canes-Wrone, Brandice, David W. Brady, and John F. Cogan. 2003. ‘‘Out of Step, Out of Office: Electoral Accountability and House Members’ Voting.’’ American Political Science Review 96 (March): 127–140. Carson, Jamie L., Gregory Koger, Matthew J. Lebo, and Everett Young. 2010. ‘‘The Electoral Costs of Party Loyalty in Congress.’’ American Journal of Political Science 54 (July): 598–616. Carson, Jamie L., and Stephen Pettigrew. 2010. ‘‘Strategic Politicians, the Great Recession, and the Tea Party Movement: Evaluating the 2010 Midterm Elections,’’ unpublished manuscript. Curry, Tom. 2010. ‘‘What Exit Polls Say about the Tea Party Movement.’’ MSNBC .com (November 3). http://www.msnbc.msn.com/clearprint/ClearPrintProxy.aspx ?1289100003286. Erikson, Robert S. 1971. ‘‘The Electoral Impact of Congressional Roll Call Voting.’’ American Political Science Review 65 (July): 1018–1032. Galloway, Jim. 2010. ‘‘Congratulations, GOP Class of 2010. Meet the Georgia Woman Who’ll Keep You in Line.’’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution (November 2). Kingdon, John W. 1973. Congressmen’s Voting Decisions. New York: Harper & Row. Luo, Michael, and Griff Palmer. 2010. ‘‘Outside Groups on the Right Flexed Muscles in House Contests.’’ New York Times (November 4). Morris, Dick, and Eileen McGann. 2010. ‘‘Which Republicans Sold Out?’’ DickMorris.com (December 22). Newton-Small, Jay. 2010. ‘‘What Does She Want?’’ Time (December 20): 37–47. Rasmussen, Scott, and Douglas Schoen. 2010. Mad as Hell. New York: HarperCollins. Rauch, Jonathan. 2010. ‘‘Group Think.’’ National Journal 42 (September 11): 12–17. Rucker, Philip. 2011. ‘‘In Utah, Sen. Hatch Courts Tea Partyers One by One in Quest for Survival.’’ Washington Post (March 9). Sheinin, Aaron Gould. 2010. ‘‘Handel’s Tab for Palin’s Visit: More than $100,000.’’ Atlanta Journal-Constitution (October 7). Shiner, Meredith. 2010. ‘‘ ‘Palin Effect’ Proves to Be Limited.’’ Politico (November 3), http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid12COEBB1-CAE2-3CB. Swanson, Emily. 2011. ‘‘National Favorable Ratings: Sarah Palin. http://huffington post.com/2009/07/13/fav-palin_n_725! (accessed March 5, 2011). Wood, Daniel B. 2010. ‘‘ ‘Toxic’ Touch? Why Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman Shy from Sarah Palin.’’ Christian Science Monitor (October 8). Zernike, Kate. 2010. ‘‘For Tea Party, Sway beyond Mere Numbers.’’ New York Times (October 15).

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Notes

Chapter 1

The 2010 Elections

I appreciate the suggestions and corrections offered by Susan MacManus and Jamie Carson on an earlier draft. 1. In 1948, Democrats lost seventy-five seats. Compared to previous midterm elections, 2010 had the largest losses by a president’s party since Democrats lost seventy-one seats in 1938. 2. While Palin’s preference in Colorado, outgoing representative Tom Tancredo, lost the GOP nomination, he ran as a third-party candidate in the general election, and although he lost, he did far better than the discredited GOP nominee. 3. Identification of establishment candidates comes from http://www.washing tonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/palin-tracker/. 4. The five open seats not covered were never considered competitive. The narrowest margin came in Missouri where Republicans retained the seat by 13 percentage points. The average victory margin was 31.6 percentage points.

Chapter 2 Mama Grizzly Nearly Trapped: New Hampshire’s Republican Senate Primary 1. During her tenure as attorney general, Ayotte defended before the Supreme Court a 2003 state law requiring parental notification before a minor could receive an abortion. 2. http://rlcnh.org/press-releases/republican-liberty-caucus-celebrates-re-birth -of-common-sense-in-new-hampshire/ Accessed January 12, 2011. As the caucus acknowledged, non-endorsed Republicans also were quite successful; all told, the GOP captured almost three hundred seats in the state house, and nineteen of twentyfour seats in the state senate. 3. Lamontagne also sent ‘‘a photograph of himself alongside the carcass of a deer he had just shot,’’ according to a recent New York Times profile of Palin. — 227 —

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Notes to Pages 21–66

4. The Planned Parenthood case had some negative reverberations for Ayotte late in the campaign, when it was learned that she had approved ‘‘spending $300,000 in taxpayer money to settle the case and pay the legal costs of the opposing party, after a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judge decided Planned Parenthood of Northern New England was the winner’’ (Landrigan 2010).

Chapter 3 Sacrificing Electoral Viability for Ideological Purity: Christine O’Donnell and the Delaware Senate Race 1. On July 16, O’Donnell, along with several other conservative Delaware politicians, attended a ‘‘Great Conservative Cookout’’ event in Houston, Delaware, promoted by the newly formed Delaware Conservative Coalition (DCC) as ‘‘a launchpad for the public to become involved in the 2010 election cycle’’ (Patriots 2010). While it was billed as a locally organized grassroots Tea Party event, publicly sponsored by local organizations such as the DCC, the 9-12 Delaware Patriots, and the Delaware Family Policy Council, it was also heavily promoted and sponsored by national conservative interest groups, such as the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks. The event appeared to launch an invigorated O’Donnell campaign. 2. At a town hall forum in Sussex County, an angry woman had confronted Castle by shouting, ‘‘I want my country back!’’ which became one of the pivotal moments for the new conservative movement (Malcolm 2010). 3. Election results are reported in Delaware by state representative districts, which are equally apportioned, as well as by the more-local voting districts (or precincts). O’Donnell won 169 out of 325 of these voting districts.

Chapter 4 Nevada: The Tea Party Takes On Harry Reid but from the Wrong Angle 1. The balance of votes was scattered among a number of minor party candidates, as well as ‘‘None of these candidates.’’ 2. The balance of the votes was scattered among a number of other contenders, the most popular of which was ‘‘None of these candidates.’’ Perhaps ironically, Lowden was subsequently appointed to the State Board of Medical Examiners by lameduck Governor Jim Gibbons. See Dickensheets 2010; Vogel 2010. 3. Asjian received just under 1 percent of the vote. 4. For the sake of full disclosure, Dina Titus is a colleague of mine in the Political Science Department at UNLV and is someone I consider a personal friend.

Chapter 6 Florida: A Plummeting Economy, Tea Parties, and Palin Give GOP a Clean Sweep 1. In this chapter, Tea Party (capitalized) refers to the official political party; tea party (noncapitalized) refers to the larger movement comprised of multiple grassroots-level groups.

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2. The actual application to the Florida Division of Elections in the office of the Florida secretary of state was dated July 29, 2009, but was rejected due to inconsistencies in the wording of the party’s constitution. The party was officially recognized as a minor political party on August 14, 2009. However, not until early November 2009 did the new party get much news coverage. 3. However, as Ben Smith (2009) noted, ‘‘Florida lacks the ‘fusion’ rule that allows third parties in New York to amass influence by offering their ballot line to acceptable major-party candidates.’’ 4. For an example of this line of thinking, see ‘‘Phony Registered Florida Tea Party?’’ posted on the Save America group’s website on January 9, (2009 sic) 2010; www.changefor2012.com/2010/01/phony-florida-tea-party-part-ii; accessed December 18, 2010. This article articulates a commonly held belief among conservative grassroots supporters of the tea party movement in central Florida that ultraliberal congressman Alan Grayson (D) had ties to the Tea Party: ‘‘Fred O’Neil (sic) was a registered Democrat when he registered the Florida Tea Party. According to Tim McCellan, a political consultant, ‘O’Neil is now trying to be passed off as a ‘‘Reagan Democrat,’’ although he supported both Barack Obama and Alan Grayson in 2008.’ ’’ The article asked whether ‘‘Grayson [was] creating a political opportunity to exploit the real Tea Party Movement.’’ Throughout the campaign, rumors persisted that Grayson was underwriting much of the Tea Party’s campaign activities. For a detailed discussion of the links between Grayson and the Tea Party, see Nathan L. Gonzales, ‘‘Link Between Grayson, Tea Party Questioned,’’ Roll Call, June 22, 2010. http:// www.rollcall.com/issues/55_151/-47556-1.html; accessed December 19, 2010. Also see Tony Pipitone, ‘‘Money Trail Links Grayson to Fla. Tea Party,’’ WKMG-TV 6 Orlando, June 25, 2010; Mark Schlueb, ‘‘Tea Partyers Clash, Accuse Each Other of Intimidation,’’ Orlando Sentinel, June 25, 2010. 5. Several grassroots tea party groups sued the political Tea Party. The suit claimed that ‘‘registration of the political party ‘Tea Party’ in Florida would give [the party chair] unfettered protection to stop any ‘person,’ ‘group’ or ‘organization’ that uses ‘tea party.’ ’’ The plaintiffs asked that the Tea Party ‘‘be required to amend their filings (and name) with the appropriate office of the State of Florida such that their registered political party currently registered as ‘Tea Party’ must include other terms in order to avoid public confusion that the Florida ‘Tea Party’ is somehow endorsed or approved by the [33] plaintiffs’’ (Ward 2010). Plaintiffs ultimately dropped the lawsuit right after the election. It was dismissed on November 4, 2010, some eleven months after its filing. 6. West was a favorite of tea party activists, especially with the South Florida Tea Party Patriots. He gained extensive notoriety via a YouTube video of a fiery, revolutionary-type address to a tea party gathering (Hunt 2010). 7. Rubio remained cautious toward Palin. He attended the Orlando rally highlighting Palin, but ‘‘left before she came on stage, denying opponents a photograph that could be used against him in the future’’ (Leary and Reinhard 2010). 8. A Sunshine State News poll of 1,003 likely Florida voters conducted by Voter Survey Service September 28–October 3, 2010 (margin of error of /3.09 percent) showed Palin with a 38/47 favorable/unfavorable rating among Independents. 9. On June 15, 2009, DeMint endorsed Rubio, and in doing so, bucked the

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National Republican Senatorial Committee’s endorsement of Charlie Crist, ‘‘a moderate who has periodically found himself at odds with right-wing elements of his party’’ (Raju 2009). 10. Others were unwilling to do so. Over fifty thousand fewer Floridians voted in the governor’s race than voted in the Senate contest.

Chapter 7 Randslide: Tea Party Success in the Establishment’s Backyard 1. Information on the Campaign for Liberty can be found at www.campaignfor liberty.com. 2. These statements were made in numerous campaign stops by Paul and in numerous interviews Paul conducted. The statements were also personally heard by the authors. 3. cn/2 poll, conducted August 16–18, 2010. 4. Information about this endorsement can be found at www.randpaul2010.com. 5. This endorsement is newsworthy because Dobson initially endorsed Grayson. However, after claiming he was misled about Paul’s positions by members of Grayson’s campaign staff, Dobson rescinded his endorsement and threw his support behind Paul. 6. Information about this endorsement can be found at www.randpaul2010.com.

Chapter 8 Ron Johnson: The Accidental Tea Partier 1. A second incumbent Democrat, Ron Kind, barely avoided defeat in the closest race during his entire fourteen-year career in the U.S. House.

Chapter 9

The Pennsylvania Senate Race: Toomey’s Time

1. Career profiles of Arlen Specter, Pat Toomey, and Joe Sestak rely heavily on the Almanac of American Politics (Barone 2004 and 2010). 2. Voter registration figures and election results are based on data obtained from Pennsylvania Department of State, Bureau of Commissions, Elections, and Legislation (http://electionreturns.state.pa.us). 3. A useful compilation of general election polls can be found on the RealClearPolitics website http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/senate/pa/pennsylvania _senateesestak_vs_toomey-1059.html. 4. Exit polling data are from the CNN website.

Chapter 10 Colorado: The Centennial State Bucks the National Trend 1. Among Coloradans, 34.6 percent hold college degrees and 12.3 percent hold graduate degrees compared to 27 percent and 9.9 percent respectively on the national

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level. While the median age is only one year below the national median, only 10 percent of Coloradans are over sixty-five compared to 12.5 percent nationally (Barone and Cohen 2009). This contrast would be greater were we to compare the Front Range population—the fastest growing region—to the nation at large. 2. Tea Party support percentages are as follows: in April, 33 percent of likely voters in Colorado compared to 24 percent of U.S. voters; in July, 30 percent in Colorado, 16 percent in the United States; in September, 23 percent in Colorado, with no result published for the United States, though citing Colorado as ‘‘higher than the national average’’ (Rasmussen Reports 2010). 3. A candidate must receive 30 percent at the state convention to get preferred ballot placement and forgo the petition process for ballot access. 4. The Constitution Party, formed in the 1990s, is a conservative Christian party that opposes the income tax and social welfare programs. The party takes strong positions against illegal immigration and supports further limits on legal immigration. It advocates repealing the Seventeenth Amendment and salaries for members of Congress. 5. Bennet beat Buck by 28,859 votes. This is less than the Green vote of 38,768 and close to the Libertarian total of 22,589.

Chapter 11


1. Palin tweeted: ‘‘Pennsylvania makes sense 2 send GOP 2 DC 2 avoid PA economic disaster that will occur under Obama/Pelosi Cap & Tax scheme; workers need Raese.’’ 2. Palin also appeared with Joe Miller (AK) and Marco Rubio (FL) (Draper 2010).

Chapter 17 Connecticut: Too Liberal to Be Palin’s Cup of Tea 1. The Wesleyan Media Project, which tracked advertising in the 2010 election, found that between the beginning of the nomination campaigns and September 15, 9,493 ads had been run in the Connecticut race. During that time, Republican candidates (mostly McMahon) ran 5.6 ads for every Democratic ad. 2. Independent candidate Warren Mosler received 1 percent and third-party candidate John Mertens won 0.6 percent of the vote.

Chapter 18 Conclusion: Evaluating Palin, the Tea Party, and DeMint Influences I appreciate the suggestions made on earlier drafts of this chapter by Jamie Carson and Susan MacManus.

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1. Among Palin’s winners was incumbent McCain. 2. Shiner (2010) reports that Republican activists believe ideology and not electability determined Palin’s endorsements. 3. The Tea Party Movement does not deserve all of the credit for the increased Republican share of the 2010 turnout. Midterm elections typically attract less participation from minorities, with larger shares of the vote coming from whites who tend to be more Republican. 4. The Hatch approach is not universal, as Richard Lugar (IN), another possible Tea Party target, has not extended the olive branch to Tea Party supporters in his state.

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Index

527 groups, 221 912 Project/organizations, 17, 19–20, 115, 117 abortion rights, 53–55, 57–58, 103, 194, 204 Adams, Sandra, 70–71 Afghanistan, 2, 168, 180, 200, 224 African Americans, 60–61, 183 Akers, Paul, 194–195 Alex Jones Show, 82 Allegretti, Michael, 143 Alpert, Merrick, 201 Altschuler, Randy, 142–143 Amanpour, Christianne, 205 American Civil Liberties Union, 168 American Crossroads, 181–182 Americans for Democratic Action, 168 Angle, Sharron, 39, 42–46, 48, 83, 213 antiabortion, 27, 57–58, 61, 95, 119, 171, 194 antiestablishment, 139, 182–183 anti-immigrant, 46, 54, 58, 61, 117–118 anti-incumbent mood, 2–3, 40, 45, 65, 77, 97–98, 132, 140, 144–145, 177, 183–184, 186 antitax, 17, 21, 51, 77, 122 anti-Washington, 66, 71, 77, 200–202 Aqua Buddha, 87–88 Arcuri, Michael, 145

Armey, Dick, 5–6 Aryan Nation, 157 Atwater, Jeff, 71 Ayotte, Kelly, 7, 13–23, 213, 220, 222 Ayres, McHenry and Associates, 146 Bachmann, Michele, 185 bailouts, 19, 41, 74, 82–85, 105, 108, 119, 180 Bailey, Cathy, 84 Ball, Greg, 143–144 ballot initiatives, 54–55, 122 bankruptcy, 2 Bass, Charlie, 17 Bates, Don, 168–169 Bayh, Evan, 165–166, 168, 171 Bean, Melissa, 184 Beck, Glenn, 6, 115 Beebe, Mike, 161 Behney, Richard, 168–169 Bender, Jim, 16, 20 Bennet, Michael, 113, 115, 117–120 Bennett, Robert, 223 Benson, Craig, 14 Bernanke, Ben, 84 Berntsen, Gary, 140–141 Berry, Marion, 159–160 Bertan, Paul, 146 Beshear, Steve, 81, 86 Biden, Beau, 26

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Index

Biden, Joe, 26–27, 171, 182, 195 Binnie, Bill, 16, 20–23 Bishop, Tim, 142–143 Bitz, Mark, 146 Blagojevich, Rod, 177–178, 186 Blakeman, Bruce, 141–142 Bledsoe, Cecile, 160 Bloomberg, Michael, 108 blue collar voters, 102 Blue Dog Democrat, 168 Blumenthal, Richard, 199–207 Blunt, Roy, 213 Boehner, John, 224 Bondi, Pam, 66, 71 Boozman, John, 7–8, 159–160, 213 Bork, Robert, 103 Boxer, Barbara, 8, 56–60, 213 Boyd, Allen, 72 BP oil spill, 72 Branstadt, Terry, 222 Broadway Bank, 179 Brown, Edward G. ‘‘Jerry,’’ 56, 58–60 Brown, Scott, 5, 18, 195, 223 Buchanan, Pat, 158 Buck, Ken, 113, 115–120, 216 budget deficit, 6, 74, 82–83, 95, 111, 156–158, 178, 202–203, 224 Buerkle, Ann Marie, 146 Bumpers, Dale, 154 Bunning, Jim, 81, 83–86 Burris, Roland, 178–179, 183 Buschon, Larry, 174 Bush, George H. W., 14 Bush, George W., 4, 40, 81, 103–105, 107, 125, 157–158, 166 Bush administration, 2 Buyer, Steve, 165 Byrd, Robert, 125–126, 128, 132 Cajun primary, 192; campaign finance, 220–221; Colorado, 119; Connecticut, 200, 202, 206; Delaware, 27–30, 32–34; Illinois, 180–182, 184–185; Indiana, 165, 171; Kentucky, 83, 85; Nevada, 46; New Hampshire, 23; New York, 139–140, 146; Washing-

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ton, 193, 195; West Virginia, 129; Wisconsin, 96 Campaign for Liberty, 82, 87 Campbell, Tom, 57–58 cap and trade legislation, 21, 108, 128– 129, 155–156, 180, 203, 220 Capito, Shelley Moore, 125–126 Carper, Tom, 26 Carville, James, 167 Casey, Robert P., 102 Castle, Michael, 4, 8, 25–30, 33–35, 109 Catholic Advocacy Network, 26 Catholic voters, 27, 102 Causey, Chad, 160 Chamber of Commerce, 119, 127, 168, 182, 220–221 Chandler, Ben, 80 Cheney, Dick, 56 Christian Coalition, 104 Christie, Chris, 111, 143 Citizens United v. FEC, 181–182 Civil Rights Act of 1964, 86 Clinton, Bill, 1, 4, 40, 85, 131, 154, 182, 195 Clinton, Hillary, 113, 128, 140–141 Club for Growth, 28, 104–105 CNN, 66, 68 Coats, Dan, 166, 168–175, 211, 216 Collins, Chris, 138 Collins, Susan, 223 Concerned Women for America, 27 Conservative Party, 68, 139, 145 Constitution Party, 111, 118 Conway, Jack, 86–88 Cook, Charles, 144 Cook, Marlow, 79 Cook Political Report, 185 Cook Report, 128, 131, 204 Coons, Chris, 25–28, 30, 32–35 Cooper, John Sherman, 79 Corbett, Tom, 108, 111 Cornerstone Action, 22 Cornym, John, 26, 83, 195 Cox, Chris, 142–143 Cox, Ed, 138 CQ Politics, 131

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Crane, Phil, 184 Crawford, Rick, 160 Crist, Charlie, 27, 35, 67, 71–72, 223 Crossroads GPS, 182, 220 Cuomo, Andrew, 138–140 Cuomo, Mario, 138

Dold, Bob, 185 Dohen, Matt, 145 Doyle, Jim, 85 DREAM Act, 46 Drudge Report, 22

Daley, Bill, 179 Daniels, Mitch, 166, 172–173 Daschle, Tom, 41 Davis, Geogg, 80 debt limit, 224 DeMint, James, 211–217, 223; activities, 7, 211–216; California, 57; Colorado, 113, 116, 120, 122; Connecticut, 207; Delaware, 29–30, 32–33, 35; Florida, 72; Illinois, 182; Indiana, 168–169, 211; Kansas, 213; Kentucky, 80, 85, 87; Nevada, 44–45, 47–48, 212–213; New Hampshire, 23; Pennsylvania, 106, 213; strategies, 4, 211; Washington, 207, 212; Wisconsin, 94, 97–98, 213 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, 144 Democratic Party, 1–4, 221; in Arkansas, 153–155, 160–161; in Colorado, 113– 115, 118–119, 121–122; in Florida, 65, 68–69, 74; in Illinois, 177–179, 182– 183, 186; in Indiana, 166, 173–174; in Kentucky, 81, 84; in New Hampshire, 14; in New York, 137–138, 141; in Pennsylvania, 101–102, 105–109; in Washington, 191, 196; in West Virginia, 125, 128, 130, 132; in Wisconsin, 97–98 Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, 33, 107, 168, 180–182 Demos, George, 142–143 DeVore, Chuck, 57 Di Carlo, Neil, 144 Dicker, Fred, 139 Didier, Clint, 191–195 DioGuardi, Joe, 141–142 Dodd, Christopher, 199–200 Dodson, James, 92

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earmarks, 79, 222 Edwards, Lori, 69 Eichenbaum, Steve, 95 Elliot, Joyce, 160 Ellsworth, Brad, 167–168, 170–172 energy legislation, 108 Ensign, John, 42 enthusiasm gap, 221 Environmental Protection Agency, 129 environment policies, 45, 53–55, 58, 128, 203, 206, 220 exit polls, 72–76, 109–110, 186, 195, 220–221 Facebook, 84, 130 Family Research Council, 27 Federal Election Commission, 29 Feingold, Russ, 2, 91–92, 95–96 field poll, 57 Fiorina, Carly, 7–8, 57–58, 213, 216, 220 Fitzpatrick, Mike, 111 flat tax, 104 Fletcher, Ernie, 80–81 Florida Tea Party, 68–70 Focus on the Family, 85 Ford, Harold, Jr., 141 Fossella, Vito, 143 Foster, Bill, 184–185 Fox News, 6, 26, 30, 32, 207 Fox News Poll, 126–127 Franklin and Marshall Poll, 106–107 Franks, Jack, 178 FreedomWorks, 5–6, 117, 184–185 Friends of the Constitution PAC, 185 gay rights, 15, 61, 158, 203 get out the vote, 46, 122, 132, 220, 222 Giannoulias, Alexi, 178–179, 181–183 Gibbons, Jim, 47 Gibson, Christopher, 144

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Index

Giffords, Gabrielle, 222 Gillibrand, Kristin, 8, 141–142, 144 Gingrich, Newt, 56, 142 Ginta, Frank, 17 Giuliani, Rudolph, 109, 138, 140, 142 global warming, 94 Gore, Al, 154 grassroots, 19 Grayson, Trey, 80–81, 84–87 Green Party, 161, 178, 182 Gregg, Judd, 14 Gregoire, Chris, 191 Gregory, David, 119 Griffin, Tim, 160 Grimm, Michael, 143 Gulf War, 41 gun control, 41, 53–55, 95 Hagel, Chuck, 106 Haley, Nikki, 222 Hall, John, 143 Halter, Bill, 159 Halvorson, Debbie, 184–185 Hanna, Richard, 145 Hannity, Sean, 6 Hare, Phil, 184–185 Hastert, Dennis, 185 Hatch, Orrin, 222–223 Hayworth, J. D., 5 Hayworth, Nan, 144 healthcare reform, 1–2, 15, 19–21, 41– 43, 74, 77, 94–95, 105, 108, 128–130, 144, 156, 159–160, 167, 172–173, 175, 185–186, 193–194, 203, 219–220 Hechler, Ken, 128 Heck, Joe, 47 Heller, Dean, 41–42 Hemingway, Andrew, 18 Hill, Baron, 167, 171, 174 Hispanics, 46, 48, 53, 56, 60–61, 118, 183 Hodes, Paul, 19, 21, 23 Hoeffel, Joseph, 104 Hoeven, John, 213 Hoffman, Doug, 5, 145 Holt, Jim, 158 home foreclosures, 2, 40, 65, 70, 72, 74, 178, 221

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Hoosier Survey, 166–167, 172, 174 Hostettler, John, 168–169 Huckabee, Mike, 158, 160 Hultgren, Randy, 185 immigration, 95, 158, 167 Independents, 6, 20–21, 29, 52, 58, 71– 72, 74, 101, 106, 155, 174, 183, 217, 219 Ingraham, Laura, 23 Iraq War, 107 jobs, 2, 22, 45, 56, 74, 108, 166–167, 172–173, 202–203 Johnson, Ron, 92–98, 213, 216 Johnston, Jesse, 131 Jones, LeAlan, 182 Judicial Crisis Network, 23 Kagen, Steve, 97 Kennedy, Ted, 5, 18, 131, 195 Kerry, John, 104, 131, 154 Kibbe, Matt, 5 Kimball, Jack, 17 Kinzinger, Adam, 184–185 Kirk, Mark, 178–183, 185 Kohl, Herb, 91 Kosmas, Suzanne, 71 Lalor, Kiernan, 143 Lamontagne, Ovide, 13, 15–16, 20–23, 213 Latinos. See Hispanics Lazio, Rick, 138–140 League of Conservation Voters, 168 Lee, Mike, 213 Leinenkugel, Richard, 92–93, 97 Levy, Steve, 138–139 Liberty Groups, 115–117, 120–122 Limbaugh, Rush, 130, 143 Lincoln, Blanche, 2, 159, 213 Lowden, Sue, 42–44, 48 Lugar, Richard, 175, 223 Luksik, Peg, 106 Lynch, John, 14

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Madigan, Lisa, 179 Maes, Dan, 116–118, 120 Maffei, Dan, 146 Maher, Bill, 32 Malpass, David, 141–142 Mama Grizzly; Mama Grizzlies, 6, 8, 21, 23, 30, 66, 146, 207, 212–213, 216, 219–220 Manchin, Joe, 125, 127–132 Martin, Jenny Beth, 222 McCain, John, 5, 7, 25, 44, 81, 109–110, 116, 118, 125, 142, 195, 213, 215, 217–218 McConnell, Bob, 121 McConnell, Mitch, 79–81, 83–85, 87 McHugh, John, 144–145 McInnis, Scott, 116–118, 120 McKinley, David, 125, 131 McMahon, Linda, 199–207, 213, 216 McMahon, Michael, 143 McMahon, Vince, 199 Medicare, 87–88, 202, 204, 224 Meet the Press, 87, 119 Meek, Kendrick, 67, 71–73 Mexican Americans. See Hispanics Michels, Tim, 96 Miller, Joe, 29, 215 minimum wage, 127, 130, 180, 195, 204 Mongiardo, Daniel, 81, 83, 86 Moore, Arch, 126 Moran, Jerry, 213 Mormon influence, 40–41 Morris, Dick, 7, 222 Mountain State Party, 131 MSNBC, 32 Muhlenberg College Poll, 107 Murkowski, Lisa, 2, 29, 215, 223 Murphy, Patrick, 111 Murphy, Scott, 144 Murray, Patty, 182, 189–196, 213, 216 National Alliance, 157 National Association of Secretaries of State, 84 National Conservative PAC, 224 national debt, 2, 70, 72, 74, 77

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National Federation of Independent Businesses, 204 National Republican Congressional Committee, 146 National Republican Senatorial Committee, 26, 33, 129–130, 132, 179– 180, 193 National Rifle Association, 33, 129 National Right to Life, 104 New Republic, 117 New York Times, 141, 199–201 Nixon, Richard, 142, 222 Northup, Anne, 81 Norton, James, 115–117, 119–120 Obama, Barack, 1–2, 14, 40–41, 44, 74, 84, 91, 103, 106–107, 109–110, 113, 115, 119, 128, 130, 138–139, 153–155, 165–166, 172, 177–179, 181–182, 195–196, 218, 221 Obama, Michelle, 195 Obama administration, 2, 43, 72, 95, 105, 108, 128–129, 132, 160, 167, 172 O’Donnell, Christine, 4, 8, 25–35, 83, 109, 216 O’Neal, Frederic, 68–69 Onorato, Dan, 108 O’Reilly Factor, 32 Our Country Deserves Better PAC, 29 Owens, Bill, 145 Paladino, Carl, 138–140, 142 Palin, Sarah, 47, 66, 118, 139, 211–222; activity, 6–7, 211–212; in Arkansas, 159–160; in Colorado, 113, 116, 121– 122; in Connecticut, 207, 213; endorses Angle, 44–45, 48, 213; endorses Ayotte, 13, 20–23, 213; endorses Fiorina, 57, 213; endorses O’Donnell, 29–30, 32–33, 35; in Florida, 70–72, 74; in Illinois, 180, 182, 184–186; in Indiana, 174; in Kentucky , 80, 85; in New York, 143, 146; in Pennsylvania, 108–109, 213; strategy, 4–5, 215–216, 219; in Washington, 191, 193; in West Virginia,

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125–126, 130–132, 213; in Wisconsin, 97–98 Paolini, Mario, 146 partial birth abortions, 40 Pataki, George, 29 Patriot Act, 94 Patterson, David, 137, 141 Paul, Rand, 32, 80, 82–88 Paul, Ron, 80, 82, 88, 191 Pelosi, Nancy, 44, 165 Pence, Mike, 165–166, 174 Pennsylvania Leadership Conference, 111 People for the American Way, 119 Perot, H. Ross, 40, 224 Pew Research Center, 30 Philadelphia, 102, 104–106, 109 photo identification, 165 Pittsburgh, 102 Poizner, Steve, 56–57 Politically Incorrect (talk show), 32 politico.com, 66, 130, 141 populism, 155 pork barrel projects, 45–46, 193, 196 Portman, Rob, 213 pro-choice, 54, 57–58, 102–103, 203–204 pro-environment, 167–168 pro-gun, 127 pro-labor, 103 pro-life, 17, 26, 102, 108, 122, 127 Pryor, David, 154, public opinion polls, 106–108, 114, 128– 129, 137–142, 144–145, 155–156, 166–167, 169–175, 181–182, 186, 193, 195–196, 199–201, 204, 206 Public Opinion Strategies poll, 144 Putnam, Adam, 69, 71 Quinnipiac Poll, 106, 139–141, 199–202, 204, 206 Rachel Maddow Show, 32, 84, 86–87 Raese, John, 126–132, 213, 215–216 Rankin, Beth Anne, 160 Rasmussen Poll, 106, 114, 129–130, 182, 201, 206

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Reagan, Ronald, 29 Reagan Revolution, 127, 130 Real Clear Politics, 128, 131 Reed, Sam, 192 Reed, Stephen, 109 Reid, Harry, 32, 39–48, 116, 182, 213 Reid, Rory, 47 Rell, Jodi, 200 Rendell, Edward, 102, 107 Republican Establishment, 5, 7, 13, 15, 27, 30, 85–87, 110, 115–116, 121, 143, 147, 202, 217, 223 Republican in name only, 28, 42, 92, 104, 116, 118, 180, 222 Republican Liberty Caucus, 18–19 Republican Party, 1–4, 221; in Arkansas, 153–154, 158, 161–162; in Colorado, 113–114, 118, 120–122; in Connecticut, 207; in Florida, 65–66, 68–71, 74; in Illinois, 177, 179, 183, 186; in Indiana, 174–175; in Kentucky, 79–81, 84, 87; in New Hampshire, 14; in New York, 137; in Pennsylvania, 102, 105; in Washington, 194, 196; in West Virginia, 125; in Wisconsin, 93, 97 ResistNet Tea Party, 157 Rezko, Tony, 179 Ridge, Tom, 109 Rockefeller, Jay, 126 Rockefeller, Win, 158 Rockefeller, Winthrop, 158 Roe v. Wade, 41 Rohrer, Sam, 111, 58 Rokita, Todd, 165–166 Roll Call, 95, 128, 132 Rollins, Ed, 222 Romanoff, Andrew, 115, 117, 119–120 Romney, Mitt, 16, 131, 142, 185 Roper, Billy Joe, 157 Ross, Dennis, 69, 117 Ross, Mike, 156 Rossi, Dino, 190–196, 212, 216 Rothenberg, Stuart, 144 Rothenberg Report, 131 Rove, Karl, 30, 71, 182, 220 Rubio, Marco, 32, 66–67, 70–77, 213 Russo, Sal, 29

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Sabato, Larry, 128, 131, 144 Salazar, John, 122 Salazar, Ken, 115 same-sex marriage, 55, 57, 171 Sandoval, Brian, 47 Santelli, Rick, 5 Santorum, Rick, 102, 104, 107–108 Saturday Night Live, 32 Schiff, Peter, 202 Schilling, Bobby, 185 Schumer, Charles, 140–141 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 56 Scott, Rick, 66–67, 70–77 Scozzafava, Donna, 5, 145 Scranton, 101 Seals, Dan, 185 Senate Conservative Fund, 32, 106 Sestak, Joseph, 101, 106–110 Shaheen, Jeanne, 14–15 Siena Poll, 145 Simmons, Rob, 199–202 Sink, Alex, 67, 72–73 Sink-Burris, Rebecca, 171–172, 174 Snowe, Olympia, 223 Snyder, Vic, 159 Social Security, 104, 119, 202, 204, 224 Sotomayor, Sonia, 15 Souder, Mark, 170 Southerland, Steve, 71 South Florida Tea Party, 69 Specter, Arlen, 27, 35, 101, 103–107, 213, 223 Spitzer, Eliot, 137 START Treaty, 222 Stimson, James, 52 stimulus package, 2, 15, 20, 74, 77, 95, 103, 105, 108, 156, 159, 196, 219–220 Stumbo, Greg, 88 Stutzman, Marlin, 168–170 Sununu, John, 14 Survey USA Poll, 142, 169 Susan B. Anthony List, 20, 23, 27

Tea Party; Tea Party Movement, 211– 224; activity, 5–6, 211–224; in Arkansas, 153–154, 156–161; assessments, 17, 57; in California, 51, 60; in Colorado, 113, 115–118, 120–121; in Connecticut, 199, 202, 207; in Delaware, 25, 27–29; endorsements, 6; in Florida, 65–66, 69–70, 77, 211; in Illinois, 180, 182–186; in Indiana, 168–169, 173–175, 211; in Kentucky, 80, 83, 85–88; in Nevada, 39, 41, 44–45; in New Hampshire, 16–20, 23; in New York, 137, 139, 141, 143–144, 146– 147; in Pennsylvania, 105, 109–111, 213; strategy, 5, 218–219; in Washington, 191, 193–195, 212; in West Virginia, 126–127, 130–132; in Wisconsin, 92, 94–95, 97–98, 211 Tea Party Coalition, 19–20 Tea Party Convention, 118 Tea Party Express, 6; Delaware, 25, 27– 29, 33, 35; Florida, 68; Nevada, 39, 42–43, 45, 47–48; New Hampshire, 22–23 Tea Party Network, 66 Tea Party of Nevada, 45 Tea Party Patriots, 6, 69, 94, 115, 126, 222 Tedisco, Jim, 144 term limits, 171 Thomas, Clarence, 103 Thompson, Tommy, 91–91 Thune, John, 195 Time, 121 Tipton, Scott, 121 Titus, Dina, 47 Toomey, Patrick, 32, 101, 103–111, 213 Townsend, Jay, 140–141 Troubled Assets Recovery Program, 6, 19, 41, 74, 82–83, 85 Tuesday Group, 26 Turner, William, 157

Tancredo, Tom, 117–118, 120–121 Tarkanian, Danny, 42–44, 48 taxes, 6, 74, 193, 202–203, 224

unemployment, 2, 65–6, 74, 155, 167, 178, 180, 202, 204 union reform, 156, 159, 220–221

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Index

Urquhart, Glen, 29 Vietnam, 199–201, 204 Walsh, James, 146 Walsh, Joe, 184 Warloski, Jackie, 174 Warner, Mac, 126 Washington Farm Bureau, 191 Washington State Labor Council, 195 Wathams, Dick, 120 Webster, Daniel, 70–71 Webster, Sandy, 71 Weld, William, 131 Weldon, Curt, 106 West, Allen, 66, 70

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Westlake, Dave, 91, 93 Whitman, Meg, 56–58 Wiens, Tom, 116 Wilkes-Barre, 102 Wilkinson, Randy, 69 Williams, David, 84 Wilson, Pete, 56 Winston-Terrell Group, 171–172 Womack, Steve, 160 women’s issues, 203–204 Young, Todd, 174 ‘‘Young Gun,’’ 146, 184–185 YouTube, 32, 94 Ziegler, Patrick, 144

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Edward Anegon is a doctoral student in political science at Washington State University. His research interests include state and local politics; the politics of morality policy, including gay rights; and voting behavior in ballot propositions. Stanley P. Berard, professor of political science at Lock Haven University, currently serves as president of the Pennsylvania Political Science Association. He has researched the role of southerners and moderates in the U.S. Congress and contributed to several volumes on congressional elections and southern politics. His book Southern Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives received the V. O. Key Award for 2001. David J. Bonanza was a National Merit scholar at the University of South Florida and graduated summa cum laude with a BS in business administration with a major in economics. He served as a postgraduate research assistant to Dr. MacManus on the Florida chapter (6). Charles S. Bullock, III, is the Richard Russell Professor of Political Science and Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Georgia. His most recent books are the fourth edition of The New Politics of the Old South (coedited with Mark Rozell), Georgia Politics in a State of Change (coauthored with Keith Gaddie), Redistricting: The Most Political Activity in America, and The Triumph of Voting Rights in the South (coauthored with Keith Gaddie), winner of the V. O. Key Award as the best book published on Southern Politics in 2009. Janna L. Deitz is an associate professor of political science at Western Illinois University. Her primary research interests are in congressional elections, — 241 —

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women and politics, and campaign finance. Her work on congressional elections and campaign finance, as well as the pedagogical applications of civic education, has appeared in Political Research Quarterly, Journal of Political Science Education, and other outlets. During 2011–2012, she is serving as an American Political Science Association congressional fellow. Christopher Dennis is a professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach. His primary research interest is the impact of political parties on the adoption of public policies and on their outcomes. Andrew Dowdle is an associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas and editor of The American Review of Politics. His work has appeared in journals such as American Politics Research, Political Research Quarterly, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. Diana Evans is professor of political science at Trinity College in Connecticut. Her research focuses on pork barrel politics in Congress. Her book Greasing the Wheels: Using Pork Barrel Projects to Build Majority Coalitions in Congress won the 2005 Richard F. Fenno Prize for best book on legislative studies. Her articles have appeared in such journals as the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and Political Research Quarterly. She served as chair of the Legislative Studies Section of the American Political Science Association and president of the New England Political Science Association. Joseph D. Giammo is an associate professor of political science at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He specializes in elections and public opinion. Ted G. Jelen is professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He has written extensively on public opinion, religion, and attitudes toward social issues. He is currently the coeditor of Politics and Religion. M. Jean Kingston has lived in Colorado since 1994. She is an instructor at Front Range Community College, teaching a variety of classes in political science and history. She has a PhD in American politics from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include American political history and electoral politics. Scott Lasley is an associate professor of political science at Western Kentucky University. Professor Lasley’s research interests include elections and political careers, sports and politics, and education policy. His work has appeared in

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Political Psychology, Social Science Journal, Journal of Student Financial Aid, and Politics & Policy. Susan A. MacManus is the distinguished professor of public administration and political science in the Department of Government and International Affairs, University of South Florida. For the last six election cycles, she has served as political analyst for WFLA-TV (Tampa NBC affiliate). WFLA TV’s weekly Road to the White House program, on which MacManus appeared as a panelist, was nominated for a Suncoast Emmy Award in 2008. MacManus is coeditor of the University Press of Florida’s new series on Florida history and politics and a featured columnist on sayfiereview.com—a widely read Florida-based political website. She is the author of numerous books and articles on Florida politics. Michael A. Maggiotto is professor of political science and dean of the College of Sciences and Humanities at Ball State University. His research interests include political parties, electoral politics, and representation. He is the coauthor (with Gary D. Wekkin) of Partisan Linkages in Southern Politics, which won the V. O. Key Award for the best book on southern politics in 2000. Mary L. Moss is a political science and economics major at the University of South Florida. She is a student in the Honors College who participates in the undergraduate research program. Dr. MacManus is her research mentor. David Nice is a professor of political science at Washington State University. He is the coauthor (with John Harrigan) of Politics and Policy in States and Communities, 10th ed., as well as several other books and numerous articles in professional journals. Costas Panagopoulos is assistant professor of political science and director of the Center for Electoral Politics and the master’s program in elections and campaign management at Fordham University. He is also editor of Campaigns & Elections. His scholarly research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, American Politics Research, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Political Behavior, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies, PS: Political Science and Politics, Women & Politics, and the Journal of Political Marketing. Dr. Panagopoulos is editor of Rewiring Politics: Presidential Nominating Conventions in the Media Age and Politicking Online: The Transformation of Election Campaign Communications and coauthor (with Joshua Schank) of All Roads Lead to Congress: The $300 Billion Fight over Highway Funding.

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Geoffrey Peterson is an associate professor of political science and American Indian studies at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire. His primary areas of research and teaching are electoral politics, voting behavior, and legislative behavior. Dr. Peterson has published articles in a variety of scholarly journals, including Political Behavior, American Indian Studies Quarterly, Congress & the Presidency, Homeland Security Review, Journal of Political Marketing, and Journal of Political Science Education. Dr. Peterson has been quoted in dozens of media outlets regarding U.S. elections, including the Washington Post, Investor’s Business Daily, Montreal’s La Presse, the St. Paul Pioneer-Press, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and the Associated Press News Service. Dr. Peterson serves as UW Eau Claire’s official representative to the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research and serves on the governing council for the Council on Undergraduate Research. Daniel C. Reed is an assistant professor in the Department of Government at American University in Washington D.C., where he teaches courses in introductory American government, interest group politics, American political parties, and electoral behavior, as well as research methods. His research focuses on parties and interest groups, campaigns and elections, and election and campaign finance law. Professor Reed is currently researching the votermobilization strategies of parties, interest groups, and candidate campaigns. Robert Rupp is a professor of history and political science at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he has taught since 1989. He received his undergraduate degree from Ohio Wesleyan University and his graduate degrees at Syracuse University. His areas of interest are American politics and the American presidency. He is a contributor to the Charleston Gazette and serves as an election analyst for West Virginia Public Radio. He has published several entries on state politics in the West Virginia Encyclopedia and is under contract to write a book on John Kennedy and the 1960 West Virginia presidential primary. Dante J. Scala is an associate professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. He is recognized nationally as an expert on New Hampshire politics and its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. He recently published chapters on campaigns and elections in The Change Election (2011), Cases in Congressional Campaigns (2010), and Pendulum Swing (2011). Raymond H. Scheele is professor of political science and codirector of the Bowen Center for Public Affairs at Ball State University. He specializes in political parties, state and local politics, and voting behavior.

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Joel Turner is an assistant professor of political science at Western Kentucky University. Professor Turner’s research interests include public opinion, media and politics, and political psychology. His work has appeared in Political Psychology, Political Behavior, Social Science Journal, and the American Journal of Media Psychology. Amy Widestrom received her PhD in political science from Syracuse University and is assistant professor of political science at California State University, Long Beach. Her main areas of interest are political mobilization and behavior, urban policy, and income inequality and economic segregation. She is a contributing author to a forthcoming edited volume on cities in American history. Amy has also been the recipient of numerous awards, including a Brookings Institution Research Fellowship. During the 2008– 2009 academic year, she was an American Political Science Association congressional fellow working for the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

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