Congressional Primary Elections

Robert G. Boatright

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317806004
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Congressional primaries are increasingly being blamed for polarization and gridlock in Congress. Most American states adopted congressional primaries during the first decades of the 20th century as a means of breaking the hold of political "bosses" on the nomination of candidates. Yet now, many contend that primaries have become a means by which the most dedicated party activists choose candidates unrepresentative of the electorate, and so general election voters are forced to choose between two ideologically extreme candidates. Consequently, there have been recent instances in both parties where nominees were chosen who were clearly not preferred by party leaders, and who arguably lost elections that their parties should have won.

This book is the first to focus solely upon congressional primary elections, and to do so for a student readership. Boatright organizes his text around the contention that there are important differences between types of primaries, and these differences prevent us from making blanket statements about primary competition. He focuses on explanations of two sources of difference: differences in electoral structure and differences brought about by the presence or absence of an incumbent seeking reelection. The first three chapters introduce these differences, explore how they came to exist, and outline some of the strategic considerations for candidates, parties, interest groups, and voters in primary elections. The subsequent four chapters explore different types of primary elections, and the final chapter evaluates actual and proposed primary reforms.

Congressional Primary Elections is the first book to provide a history and analysis of congressional primary elections and will serve as a crucial part of courses on political parties and campaigns and elections. The book gives students the tools for understanding arguments for and against the reform of primary elections and for understanding the differences between types of primaries.

1

WHY STUDY CONGRESSIONAL PRIMARIES?

The state of Massachusetts endured four different Senate elections between 2006 and 2012. The first of these, in 2006, was not much of a contest. Democrat Edward Kennedy was seeking his eighth full term in office, and 2006 was widely expected to be a good year for Democrats. The seventy-four-year-old senator had no primary opponent and had little need to campaign aggressively in the general election. Kennedy had occasionally had serious Republican challengers in the past, but there were few indications that a well-known Republican in the state would step up to challenge him this time. Andrew Card, the former chief of staff for President Bush, considered running but ultimately decided against it. A competitive primary did, however, break out in the Republican Party. Businessman Ken Chase and a former selectman from the small town of Wakefield, Kevin Scott, fought nearly to a draw in the Republican primary, with Chase ultimately winning by 1,300 votes, a 51 to 49 percent victory. The Republican primary was a draw financially, as well; both Chase and Scott raised approximately $500,000. The Massachusetts voters, however, appear not to have been paying very much attention; the only poll conducted in February of 2006 of voter preferences in the Republican primary gave Chase 8 percent of the vote, Scott 3 percent, and “don’t know” 76 percent.¹ Things surely got better for both candidates as the September primary neared, but there were never very many indications that the nomination was a likely stepping stone to a seat in the Senate. Kennedy won the general election by a 69 to 31 percent margin.

In 2008, another veteran senator, John Kerry, was up for reelection. Republicans again saw little hope of winning the seat, in part because of Kerry’s popularity and in part because he had over $20 million dollars at his disposal, money left over from his 2004 presidential run. There was no Republican primary in 2008, and the party nominee, businessman and conservative activist Jeff Beatty, received the same vote percentage as the party’s 2006 nominee, 31 percent. Kerry did, however, face a spirited but underfunded challenge for the Democratic nomination from Gloucester City Councilman Ed O’Reilly. Kerry had not spent very much time in Massachusetts during his unsuccessful presidential bid, and he had taken some votes during his past term that angered Massachusetts progressives. O’Reilly was particularly incensed that Kerry, whose career had begun with his denunciation of the Vietnam War, had not spoken out more forcefully against the wars currently being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. O’Reilly sought to cultivate a following among progressive activists, particularly those who frequently read popular left-wing blogs. O’Reilly was seeking to catch the anti-incumbent wave that was to nearly topple Senator Joseph Lieberman in nearby Connecticut’s primary. O’Reilly was unsuccessful, but he arguably posed a more serious challenge to Kerry than did the senator’s general election foe.

Senator Kennedy became ill in 2008 and passed away in August of 2009. A Massachusetts law passed in 2004 allows the governor to appoint an interim senator when there is a vacancy, but requires that an election be held within six months to complete the term. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s appointee, Paul Kirk, made it clear that he had no interest in running to complete Senator Kennedy’s term. Massachusetts would have an open senate seat for the first time since 1984. The state’s all-Democratic House delegation clearly featured many representatives who had been waiting to run for the Senate, and the state government, also full of Democrats, featured many Democrats with experience running statewide races. The primary could well have become a free-for-all. Ultimately, all but one member of the state’s House delegation decided not to run, and the December 2009 primary wound up being a four-way affair. State Attorney General Martha Coakley secured the endorsements of many of the state’s Democratic leaders and of women’s groups. Representative Michael Capuano, among the more liberal members of the state’s House delegation and a candidate adept at courting minority voters, ran to Coakley’s left. Alan Khazei, the former director of City Year, a nonprofit organization encouraging students to do volunteer work in underprivileged neighborhoods, ran as an outsider candidate, with substantial support from some liberals and on college campuses. Finally, Steve Pagliuca, one of the owners of the Boston Celtics, mounted a campaign touting his business expertise, largely funded out of his own pockets. Coakley had to work hard to win the primary, but she did ultimately triumph by a comfortable margin. Coakley was clearly a formidable candidate, but much of the story of 2010 will likely never be told—there were many other Democrats who might have given Coakley a more spirited challenge, but these potential candidates never ran.

The story of the 2010 special election has been recounted in many books and articles documenting the travails of the Democratic Party during Barack Obama’s first term. Coakley, widely expected to cruise to victory in the 2010 general election, took the holidays off from campaigning and never gained her footing in the general election. Money surged in from out of state to support the Republican nominee, Scott Brown, and the 2010 special election became the first big victory for the Tea Party in its quest to fight back against the Obama administration. There was, however, little indication during the Republican primary that Scott Brown would be the candidate he turned out to be. Brown was a relatively obscure state senator, and his primary campaign was barely visible. Brown had a primary opponent, perennial candidate Jack Robinson, but the Republican primary attracted virtually no attention from a media focused on the Democratic race. The Republican primary attracted barely one-fourth as many voters as did the Democratic primary. Despite the fact that there would be no incumbent for the victor to face, the Republican primary looked little different from the primaries to select the opponents of Kennedy and Kerry in past years.

Finally, in 2012 Brown was up for reelection again, for a full six-year term. Brown had shown during his time in office that he was a likeable politician, and he stressed throughout his short time in office that he understood that Massachusetts was more liberal than the home states of his Republican colleagues. Brown frequently broke ranks with the Republican Party, often voting as a bloc with Maine’s two centrist Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. This earned Brown some enmity on the right—Tea Party activists, who took credit for Brown’s victory, grumbled about fielding a primary challenger to run against him in 2012. No such challenger ever did emerge.

Meanwhile, however, many Democrats realized Brown would be tough to beat yet still contended that his election was a fluke and that in a presidential year he could be beaten by the appropriate candidate. Once again, the names of many House members and state elected officials were floated as potential nominees. Members of the Obama administration, in the meantime, had found a candidate to their liking, Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren. Warren had been one of the main proponents of the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government agency created following the 2008 market crash to police the financial services industry. When it became clear that Senate Republicans would block Warren’s nomination to head the bureau, she became somewhat of a star on the left. Warren would, in the eyes of many Democrats, be the perfect Senate nominee for Massachusetts—she would come into office with star power and political expertise, yet she was not a politician. Massachusetts politicians grumbled about the Obama administration’s meddling in their politics, but the governor was an early supporter of Warren and no one else of stature emerged to run for the seat. On her way to a November victory, however, Warren did receive an important assist from the state’s peculiar primary process. The two major parties in Massachusetts hold conventions before the primary, and state law allows the parties to limit ballot access. Democratic Party rules require that candidates for statewide office receive the votes of at least 15 percent of convention delegates. During 2011 a number of Democrats—mayors of small cities, party activists, and so forth—announced their candidacy, and in the fall of 2011 there was a six-candidate debate among the primary candidates. Ultimately, however, most of these candidates stepped aside for Warren. One candidate, however, did not. Immigration lawyer Marisa DeFranco took her candidacy to the convention, arguing simply that the primary voters should have a choice. De Franco appeared up until the convention to have the backing of enough delegates to make it into the primary ballot. News reports, however, indicate that Governor Patrick and his allies worked hard at the convention to deny DeFranco a place on the ballot, arguing that Warren would inevitably win the nomination, and that the distraction of a primary opponent would impede the party’s attempts to unseat Brown.² Patrick was apparently successful; Warren received over 95 percent of the delegates’ votes, and there was no Senate primary.

Four elections, four very different sets of primaries. What can one conclude from these races? To start with, let us consider how exhausting these primaries were—for candidates, for political elites, and for the media. Yet it is not at all clear that the voters of Massachusetts were particularly swept up in any of these.³ Turnout, as we saw, was very low in each year’s Republican primaries. Massachusetts holds its primaries in September, so even in years like 2008 when the state’s presidential primary is consequential, congressional candidates do not appear on the presidential ballot. Turnout was low in John Kerry’s 2008 primary, and given the fact that no one really thought Kerry was likely to lose, it is quite plausible that many of the people who showed up to vote in that primary were enticed by more competitive races further down the ballot. The 2009 special primary election included a total of approximately 800,000 votes cast—slightly over one-third as many as were cast in the special general election, less than one-fifth of the votes cast in the 2012 general election, and approximately 13 percent of the state’s registered voters. In 2012 Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin told reporters that turnout in state primaries fluctuates between 15 and 50 percent (Valencia 2012), depending on how exciting the primary matchups are, but the Senate primary results above make this estimate appear somewhat optimistic. So yes, these are a lot of races, but the stories to many of them are known to few of the people represented by the victors of these races.

Let us, however, put these Senate races in a broader context. Are these races representative? Can we speak meaningfully of patterns in congressional primary elections based on these cases? These Massachusetts races are all Senate primaries. Are Senate primaries different from House primaries? Obviously, they involve a larger number of voters, and Senate seats are arguably more desirable than House seats. There are, however, many equivalent stories one can tell about House primaries. During this same time period, Massachusetts saw a large number of uncontested primaries, races for the Republican nomination in safe Democratic seats—a nomination whose value was questionable. There were also some spirited primaries like the Chase-Scott affair, even if in doomed causes. In 2010, a three-way Republican primary broke out in the state’s third district, a relatively safe Democratic seat. The three Republicans—a state legislator, a Tea Party activist, and a businessman—clearly saw themselves as representatives of different factions in their party and their primary was quite exciting, even though it yielded a nominee who lost by quite a few votes. There were competitive primaries for open seats, as took place in one of the state’s more conservative districts, the district where Cape Cod is located, in 2010. And there were challenges to incumbents, as well; in 2012, for instance, longtime Democrat Richard Neal faced a spirited challenge from a state legislator who felt that Neal’s political interests, buttressed by support for organized labor and the politics of one of the state’s poorer industrial cities did not match the views of progressive, wealthier liberals in the Berkshires. In short, the Senate races discussed above seem all to have clear analogues among House races.

But, one might add, the races summarized here all took place in the liberal bastion of Massachusetts, during a period of time where Massachusetts Democrats were (mostly) in control of things. These case studies were listed in part because of the fluke that they all took place one after the other. A senate race every election year—how exhausting! And yes, these Massachusetts races also start the book because your author teaches there. There is, however, little in this summary to indicate that Massachusetts primaries ought to be that different from primaries elsewhere. The jockeying for position among Democrats in 2010 and the lack of interest among Republicans in seeking the 2006 and 2008 nominations is arguably paralleled by, for instances, the competition among Republicans for the 2012 Senate nomination in Texas, and the lack of interest in the seat among Democrats. The concern among Democrats about securing the strongest candidate in 2012 is similar to the concerns of party activists in purple states as well. And the challenge to Kerry and the threats of a challenge to Scott Brown look much like challenges to incumbents in both parties in recent years—and, as we shall see, they are not that different from challenges to incumbents decades ago. In short, there is nothing about the partisanship of a state that indicates that its primaries should be that unique. What arguably matters, instead, are the peculiar rules that Massachusetts has to limit primary competition. Many states, as we shall see, have unusual primary election procedures, and these are a legitimate subject for study precisely because variations among states have consequential effects on primary competition.

If we are to take this collection of Senate primaries as being somewhat representative of congressional primaries overall, then, what do they tell us? First, they suggest that congressional primary elections are undeniably messier than congressional general elections.⁴ Primaries tend to feature multiple candidates, and they often can be completely upended by the entry of new candidates. They are thus shaped in unpredictable ways by the number of candidates who run and by the decisions of potential candidates about whether or not to run. Second, primaries take place before a small, and, again, unpredictable audience. Turnout tends to fluctuate wildly, and it is difficult for candidates to gain a clear understanding of what is going on simply because the measurement tools available in general elections—polling data, previous voting patterns, and so forth—do not necessarily apply. And third, just as in congressional general elections, the presence or absence of an incumbent largely shapes primary elections. Open seat primaries tend to follow a very different logic than do primaries featuring an incumbent or primaries for the nomination to run against the incumbent in a general election. In the case of these Massachusetts races, we saw a mix of political superstars and relative unknowns, we saw campaigns that energized large numbers of voters, and campaigns that voters largely ignored, and we saw, in 2012, the consequences of the state’s political culture and its own history in developing its primary system shape the election.

We can simplify our discussion here and say, in the end, that these primaries were fundamentally about Edward Kennedy, John Kerry, and Scott Brown. This serves, perhaps, as a good starting point, but only that. Ultimately, congressional primaries give us a unique, and uniquely American, view of representative democracy. Congressional primaries are messy and they often have serious flaws. However, in a political system where there is often little change from one election to the next in the party holding power, in the outcomes of general elections, or in the policies produced by government, primaries have since their inception represented, at least in theory, an opportunity for citizens, rather than politicians or party leaders, to have their say in the machinations of government.

Why Congressional Primaries Matter, and What Matters in Congressional Primaries

The twin aims of this book are to make sense of congressional primaries and to provide a comprehensive overview of patterns in congressional primaries over the past several decades. There is a vast literature on congressional elections, and there are several well-established textbooks on congressional elections. While some attention has been paid by scholars to the questions that touch upon primary elections, questions such as who runs for Congress or what role political parties play in shaping congressional elections, studies of congressional primaries are few and far between. In fact, by my count there have been only two books published over the past eighty years—excluding my own book on the subject, Getting Primaried (Boatright 2013)—to have nonpresidential primary elections as their main subject; one of these books was a historical inquiry into the development of primary elections (Ware 2002) and the other was an edited volume covering various aspects of congressional primaries (Galderisi, Ezra, and Lyons 2001). Congressional primaries have clearly not been at the top of scholars’ minds for a long time.

This is, however, a problem that needs correcting. Primary elections have come to play a large part in the way we talk about national politics. Let us consider three illustrations of this:

First, consider the plight of the Republican Party following the 2012 election. Despite uncertainty within the party about whether President Obama would prevail in the presidential election, there was near-universal agreement that the Republicans would pick up the four (or three, depending on who held the presidency) seats necessary to become the majority party in the Senate. Democrats had more Senate seats to defend in the election, and many of the seats they did have to defend were in states that were not particularly friendly to the party. Yet when all of the votes had been counted, all of the Democratic incumbents up for reelection had won, and the Democratic Party had actually gained two seats. Part of the reason that Republicans did so poorly in this election, according to many political pundits, was that Republican primaries produced candidates who could not win general elections. In Missouri, for instance, the victor in the three-way Republican primary, Todd Akin, was not particularly well-liked by party leaders and had a history of intemperate comments. Akin effectively ended his hopes for winning the general election shortly after the primary when he told a television interviewer that “legitimate rape” could not result in pregnancy. Akin’s gaffe may have cost him the election, but many Democrats and Republicans saw it coming. The Missouri race was, according to some Republicans, one of as many as five races that the party lost in 2010 and 2012 because it was unable to nominate the strongest candidates (see LaTourette 2012). Republicans, however, are not unique in this regard, although they do appear to have had a run of bad luck; Democrats also have lost House and Senate races they should have won in states such as California and Illinois because their primaries have not produced strong candidates. All of these elections bring into question the role of political parties in the nominating process. Should parties be able to control nominations? Have they lost control of nominations, or did they ever even have control? What are the consequences of party control for American democracy?

Second, there is a growing perception among the political class that incumbent members of the House and Senate have reason to fear primary challenges if they stray from the party line. There are many recent examples of politicians who appeared to have great appeal to the general electorate of their state who failed to make it through the primary. Among the misfortunes that befell the Republican Party in 2012 was the loss of Senate seats in Indiana and Maine. In Indiana, veteran Senator Richard Lugar, first elected to the Senate in 1976, had rarely had difficulty winning reelection and had never, until 2012, been seen as a particularly liberal Republican. Nonetheless, Lugar lost his 2012 primary to a challenger who claimed he would never seek to compromise with Democrats. Lugar’s opponent went on to lose in the general election. Lugar was, however, not alone. Many Democrats, including senators Joseph Lieberman and Blanche Lambert Lincoln and representatives Albert Wynn and Silvestre Reyes, either lost or nearly lost primaries to challengers who claimed they were too moderate. These instances of “primarying,” according to many, make Congress more partisan and extreme. Furthermore, it has been claimed, the threat of a primary causes many incumbents either to flee the political center or to decide to get out of the business altogether. Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, for instance, abruptly retired from Congress in 2012, in part because she was about to face a primary opponent. Snowe’s retirement handed yet another Republican seat that was not expected to be competitive to the Democratic Party. Events such as these are not as much a reflection on the parties as on the primary electorate; they prompt us to ask whether incumbent members of Congress are, indeed, more at risk of losing primaries today than in years past. They also lead to a variety of normative questions. The most obvious such que...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Why Study Congressional Primaries?
• 2. Primary Elections and the “Democratic Experiment”
• 3. The Strategic Context of Congressional Primaries
• 4. Open Seat Primaries
• 5. Challenger Primaries
• 6. Incumbent Primaries
• 7. Race, Redistricting, and Primary Elections
• 8. Primary Reform
• References
• Index