NYT
McConnell Win Leads Night of Victories for G.O.P. Establishment
By _JONATHAN MARTIN_
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/jonathan_martin/index.html)
MAY 20, 2014
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky spoke after he fended off a Tea Party
challenger to set up an expensive November contest against the Democratic
nominee, Alison Lundergan Grimes.
WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky decisively turned back
the first well-financed Republican primary opponent he had faced since being
elected in 1984, defeating a Tea Party-backed conservative who claimed the
Senate minority leader had been too willing to compromise with Democrats.
Once thought to be vulnerable to such a challenge from the right, Mr.
McConnell won with ease over his opponent, the businessman Matt Bevin. Mr.
McConnell’s victory sets up what will be one of the most serious tests of his
political career, a general election matchup against the Democratic nominee,
Alison Lundergan Grimes. It is expected to be the costliest Senate race
this year.
Mr. McConnell’s victory came on a day when five other states — Arkansas,
Georgia, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Oregon — held primaries. And in many of
those high-profile contests, it was establishment Republicans coming out on
top over Tea Party challengers, as in the McConnell-Bevin race.
In Georgia, Republicans sent David Perdue, a former chief executive of
Dollar General, and Representative Jack Kingston, who has served 11 terms in
the House, to a July runoff to fill an open Senate seat. The winner will
face the Democratic nominee, Michelle Nunn, a former chief executive of the
Points of Light volunteer group and the daughter of former Senator Sam Nunn.
She faced nominal primary opposition.
Republican Primary
Oregon – U.S. Senate
candidate Votes Pct.% Monica C. Wehby 128,492 50.3% Jason
Conger 96,115 37.6% Mark A. Callahan 17,368 6.8% Jo Rae Perkins 7,241
2.8% Timothy I. Crawley 6,174 2.4%
93% reporting
Georgia Democrats had hoped that the Republicans’ nominee would be one of
two hard-line conservatives who finished behind Mr. Kingston and Mr. Perdue
on Tuesday. Tea Party-backed candidates have handed unexpected victories
to Democrats in Delaware, Missouri and Indiana in recent years, and it was
thought that a similarly conservative nominee would be just as vulnerable in
Georgia. Still, Ms. Nunn has raised $6.6 million so far in a state that
has not had a Democratic governor or senator in a decade but is undergoing
rapid demographic changes thought to favor the party.
The races in Kentucky and Georgia are important to Democrats’ chances of
keeping control of the Senate because they are the only two states where the
party hopes to pick up Republican-held seats.
Republican Primary
Georgia – U.S. Senate
candidate Votes Pct.% David A. Perdue 185,029 30.6% Jack
Kingston 155,833 25.8% Karen C. Handel 132,556 22.0% Phil Gingrey
60,557
10.0% Paul C. Broun 58,177 9.6% Derrick E. Grayson 6,029 1.0% Art
Gardner 5,699 0.9%
100% reporting
In Oregon’s Republican Senate primary, Monica Wehby, a pediatric
neurosurgeon, easily defeated a more conservative opponent, State
Representative
Jason Conger. The Senate race there will be competitive only if 2014 turns
into a wave year for Republicans, but party leaders think that Ms. Wehby
positions them to challenge Senator Jeff Merkley, a first-term Democrat, if
that
turns out to be the case.
The Republican primary for a House race in Idaho also represented
something of a proxy war between the center-right and hard-line conservatives,
with
the more conservative of the two candidates also losing. In that race,
Representative Mike Simpson, who has served eight terms, easily fended off a
primary challenger from Bryan Smith, who received substantial help from
conservative organizations. Washington-based interest groups lined up behind
Mr. Simpson, who is close to Speaker John A. Boehner, spending $2 million.
Republican Primary
Kentucky – U.S. Senate
candidate Votes Pct.% Mitch McConnell * Incumbent 213,608 60.2%
Matt Bevin 125,775 35.4% Shawna Sterling 7,233 2.0% Chris Payne
5,336 1.5% Brad Copas 3,039 0.9%
100% reporting
5:06 PM ET
_Full Results »_
(http://elections.nytimes.com/2014/results/primaries/kentucky)
* Incumbent
Pennsylvania has no Senate race this year, but the governor’s race is
being closely watched. Democrats nominated Tom Wolf, a wealthy businessman, as
their nominee to take on Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican whose job is
considered one of the most at risk in the country.
A Philadelphia-area House race has also drawn attention because one of the
Democratic candidates was Marjorie Margolies, a former congresswoman who
is the mother-in-law of Chelsea Clinton. She was soundly defeated by Brendan
Boyle, a state representative. Bill and Hillary Clinton had helped raise
money for Ms. Margolies, and Mr. Clinton had recorded a turnout phone call
One of the main lessons emerging from the young primary season is that
political fundamentals like candidate strength, fund-raising and incumbency
remain paramount, even in an era of deep dissatisfaction with Washington.
That Mr. McConnell, 72, so easily defeated Mr. Bevin in Kentucky underscored
that point.
Mr. McConnell spent over $11 million of the nearly $22 million he has
stockpiled to cast himself as an effective conservative and to attack Mr.
Bevin, who had never run for office before.
Kentucky’s secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, spoke after she
won the Democratic nomination to face Senator Mitch McConnell, the
Republican, for a United States Senate seat.
Mr. Bevin criticized Mr. McConnell for having been in Washington too long,
but Mr. McConnell emphasized what his 30 years in the Senate meant for
Kentucky and what benefits the state would receive if he became the Senate
majority leader after the election this fall.
Mr. McConnell’s wide margin of victory was no surprise; he had been
leading in the polls for months. But his aides were quick to note that the
threat
from Mr. Bevin had been real. He raised over $3.3 million, the most of any
candidate who has taken on an incumbent senator during the rise of the Tea
Party in the last two election cycles.Photo
With an eye on controlling the Senate in 2015, Mr. McConnell has made no
secret of his determination to send a message this year to hard-line
conservatives by defeating them in primaries. “I think we are going to crush
them
everywhere,” he predicted in a March interview.
But as he works to consolidate power in the Senate, Mr. McConnell must
first unify the Republican Party in Kentucky and ensure that Mr. Bevin’s
supporters do not stay home this November. Ms. Grimes, the secretary of state,
who has already raised over $8 million, faced no primary opposition and has
devoted months to hammering the incumbent as the personification of
Washington gridlock.
Mr. McConnell will do so while carrying dismal approval numbers in
Kentucky: A New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month found that
52
percent of Kentucky voters disapproved of his performance and just 40
percent approved of his performance.
Addressing supporters on Tuesday, Ms. Grimes touched on his vulnerability,
criticizing Mr. McConnell for not doing more for Kentucky’s economy and
saying he had lost touch with the state.
Yet Ms. Grimes, 35, has serious vulnerabilities of her own, most
significantly the increasingly Republican tilt of a state that last elected a
Democratic senator in 1992 and where President Obama is deeply unpopular. Mr.
McConnell and his allies have already begun linking Ms. Grimes to Mr. Obama,
who lost Kentucky twice. Just 32 percent of Kentucky voters approve of Mr.
Obama’s performance, according to the same New York Times/Kaiser Family
Foundation poll.
As he spoke at his victory celebration on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell seemed to
preview the two themes of his campaign. He argued that support for Ms.
Grimes was effectively a vote for Mr. Obama, and, in an appeal to women, he
talked about his wife, his mother and three other Kentucky women who are
unhappy with the Affordable Care Act.
Ms. Grimes is aggressively raising money from out-of-state Democrats, and
the senator seems to understand what he is up against. “My opponent is able
to raise a lot of money because she’s running against me,” he _said over
the weekend_
(http://www.kentucky.com/2014/05/18/3248259/as-primary-nears-mcconnell-talks.html)
, according to The Lexington Herald-Leader. “I’m able
to raise a lot of money because I am me. So in a sense, you get a picture
here, I’m raising money for both sides.”
Jason Horowitz contributed reporting.
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