Quotes of the Day
But there's another sign of good news in this race for the GOP. Laffey got more than a third of the money he raised in his campaign from a conservative, anti-tax group called the Club for Growth, which blasted Chafee for his liberal record and opposition to the Bush tax cuts. But Laffey ran less as the true conservative in the race and more as a populist, outsider candidate. In one of his ads, he declared “Washington is going in the wrong direction... and it's time for a change” and noted the high gas prices around the country in a spot that was very reminiscent of what Democratic congressional candidates are saying. If he had defeated Chafee, whose father held this Senate seat before he did, it would have been another sign that voters are in a very anti-incumbent mood, as polls have indicated, which would primarily hurt the G.O.P. as the party in power.
The Chafee win also guarantees an even tighter campaign in the fall, which won't help Democrats. Needing to win six seats to capture the Senate, Democrats were rooting for Laffey, which would have meant they could save and concentrate their campaign funds on key races in Tennessee, Virginia and Ohio. Now, Democrats will have to work aggressively and spend heavily to defeat Chafee, who has such a liberal record on issues like the environment that he’s almost assured of wooing some Democratic voters.
Perhaps most importantly, the Chafee victory shows that moderates, despite what many pundits are saying these days, aren't dead yet. When Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, and Michigan Representative Joe Schwarz, a Republican, were both defeated in primaries over the summer, there was much talk about how the center in American politics was failing, as both political parties were increasingly intolerant of moderates and activists came to wield more influence. This may still be true, as one of the key differences between Chafee's race and Lieberman’s is that independents could vote in the former's race. Independents in fact helped Chafee win on Tuesday and they're now helping Lieberman hold the lead in polls since he’s become an independent candidate.
Tuesday's other primary races provided a couple of other clear implications. First, Lieberman's loss last month didn't signal the death of the pro-war Democrat. In New York Hillary Clinton won overwhelmingly over her anti-war challenger, Jonathan Tasini, in a race that was never competitive. The anti-war left did little to oppose her in the race, suggesting Lieberman’s contest was a special case. Keith Ellison, who won in a crowded Democratic primary in a liberal district around the Twin Cities in Minnesota, is in position to become the first Muslim to be elected to the Congress.
And Barack Obama is now very likely to remain the Senate's only black member. Kwesi Mfume, the former head of the NAACP, lost a primary against House Democrat Ben Cardin for the Senate seat in Maryland. Cardin will now face Michael Steele, the African-American Republican who is the state's lieutenant governor. Polls showed that Steele had some chance of winning against Mfume, whose support was small outside of his base of black Democrats. But that limited base cost him against Cardin, and the veteran congressman is a heavy favorite in a Democratic state like Maryland. The other African-American Senate candidate is Harold Ford in Tennessee, a conservative state that hasn't elected a Democrat since Al Gore represented it. And Ford, facing a millionaire opponent named Bob Corker, couldn't have been happy seeing Chafee win; now the Democrats will have to spend money that could have gone to Ford's campaign trying to give Chafee the knockout blow that Laffey couldn’t deliver.
- PERRY BACON JR/WASHINGTON
- The Rhode Island senator's key victory may signal that moderates aren't all dead and that incumbents aren't necessarily doomed