Thread: Lindsey Graham wins Republican primary

Lindsey Graham wins Republican primary
By Sean Sullivan June 10 at 9:28 pm

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) comfortably won his Republican primary Tuesday, defeating a field of six lesser-known challengers who failed to gain any traction against the backdrop of a tea party movement unhappy with the second-term senator.

Graham's win marked the latest round of good news for Republican senators facing reelection in 2014. Many drew conservative primary challengers; but those challengers have mostly fallen flat.

Viewed with skepticism by conservatives over his support for immigration reform, among other things, Graham waged an early and expensive effort to discourage strong challengers and prevent the ones who did run against him from making strides.

With nearly all precincts reporting, Graham had 57 percent of the vote, well ahead of second-place finisher Lee Bright, a state senator, who had 15 percent. The Associated Press called the race about two hours after polls closed. The five other candidates were in single-digits. Graham needed to win more than 50 percent to avoid a top-two runoff in a fortnight.

Like Graham, the two top-ranking Republican senators -- Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and John Cornyn (Tex.) -- each skated past their conservative opponents earlier this year. Republicans challenging Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)​ haven't picked up much momentum ahead of primaries set for later this summer.

The tea party's best hope to dislodge a Senate Republican will come in Mississippi on June 24. There, Sen. Thad Cochran (R) was forced into a runoff by state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R), who won more votes in last week's primary. National tea party groups have spent millions of dollars helping McDaniel.

But those groups, which eyed Graham at the outset of the election cycle, mostly steered clear of South Carolina, where none of Graham's opponents caught fire. Graham's early preparation, robust fundraising and heavy spending kept top opponents from challenging him and lower-tier challengers from moving up in the polls. Graham spent more than $7 million through late May, according to campaign finance records.

First elected to the Senate in 2002, Graham will be a substantial favorite to win a third term in November against state Sen. Brad Hutto, the Democratic nominee. South Carolina leans heavily to the right.

South Carolina was one of six states where voters went to the polls in runoffs and primaries Tuesday. Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, Virginia and Arkansas also held elections.

In the competitive district being vacated by Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), who is running for governor, state Sen. Emily Cain defeated fellow state Sen. Troy Jackson in the Democratic primary by a wide margin. Former state treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Bruce Poliquin won the Republican race and will face Cain.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...lican-primary/

6 challengers? Sounds like a coordinated effort to dilute the vote and create confusion, a very old political ploy. Also, Graham was begging Democrats to come to the polls to save him. I wonder how many showed up to insure a progressive victory?

http://www.alipac.us/f9/desperate-wi...te-him-304283/

This politico piece explains the scenario.

Democrats' game plan to hold the House: Divide and conquer

By KASIE HUNT |
10/27/10 4:56 AM EDT

With just six days left until Election Day, a key component of the Democratic strategy to hold the House is becoming clear: In more than a dozen close races, Democrats are encouraging and advancing little-known, conservative third-party candidates in an attempt to fracture the Republican vote enough to eke out narrow victories.

Behind-the-scenes collaboration between local Democratic officials and tea party activists in a handful of isolated races has already been reported — just last week, in suburban Pennsylvania’s open 7th District, Democratic nominee Bryan Lentz finally admitted his campaign’s role in helping a tea party candidate get on the November ballot after months of avoiding the question.

But the divide-and-conquer strategy has become more widespread — and coordinated — through television ads, robocalls and mailers in recent weeks as races have tightened and it’s become more apparent that just a few percentage points could end up swinging the outcome in many races.

“It wouldn’t be the first time that Democrats or Republicans have tried to manipulate votes on the other side. Clearly the goal there is to get Republicans to vote for the tea party person to move numbers off Republicans,” said John Anzalone, an Alabama-based Democratic pollster. “I think that it’s going to work in some places. It’s a case by case" thing.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and two state Democratic parties have paid for mailers sent to GOP households in at least five contested House districts in Colorado, Florida, Michigan and Texas — mail pieces that highlight the staunchly conservative positions of long-shot candidates who barely register in public and private polls.

The messaging in the mailers is designed to muddy the waters. In a DCCC piece sent to the San Antonio-area 23rd District, head shots of Democratic Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, Republican challenger Francisco Canseco and little-known independent candidate Craig Stephens are positioned side by side for comparative purposes.

Rodriguez is said to support “tax relief for the middle class.” Stephens “favors dramatically reducing taxes.” Canseco, on the other hand, “favors raising your taxes.”

Stephens’s other positions, as detailed by the mailer, are also designed for maximum appeal to the tea party constituency.
“Craig Stephens will fight to make drastic cuts to government spending, get tough on border security and stop illegal immigration,” his profile reads. “In Washington Stephens will make deep cuts to taxes and work to reduce the size of the IRS.”
The DCCC doesn’t admit there is a strategic design to the mailers and instead insists the party is simply engaged in identifying candidates who are outside of the mainstream.

“Voters need to know just how extreme these tea party candidates are,” said Ryan Rudominer, a DCCC spokesman.
While it’s true that some mailers dropped into congressional districts are ostensibly critical of the third-party candidates, the mere mention of the unknown candidates serves to elevate their name recognition.

More important, though, the language in the mailers appropriates tea party rhetoric and speaks to a conservative grass-roots audience. The background imagery — such as the silhouette of a musket-bearing Colonial-era patriot in a tricorn hat and an antiquated American flag — is the tea party’s own.
“Independent Glenn Wilson wants to represent us in Congress,” reads a piece in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula-based 1st District paid for by the Democratic State Central Committee, “but he would drastically reduce the role of Washington.”

The strategy of driving a wedge between the GOP establishment and grass-roots conservatives is reminiscent of one of the only bright spots of the 2010 election cycle for Democrats — a 2009 House special election upset win in upstate New York where the presence of a conservative third-party candidate ended up costing the GOP a historically Republican seat.

In Colorado’s Western Slope-based 3rd District, where Democratic Rep. John Salazar, one of Anzalone’s clients, is in a close race with GOP nominee Scott Tipton, a DCCC mailer features Libertarian Gregory Gilman on an American flag background and warns that Gilman’s “first act would be to drastically reduce the size of government.”

Like Stephens in Texas, according to the Federal Election Commission, Gilman has reported no financial activity this campaign.
Anzalone calls Gilman and another third-party candidate, Jake Segrest, “very helpful” to Salazar.

“A number of these tea party candidates and other independent candidates have filled a void that some Republicans have been looking for and felt have been lacking in their candidates,” said Achim Bergmann, a Democratic strategist who has worked for the DCCC.

“There are some places where a Democrat may be capped at what percentage they can achieve at 47, 48 percent — and when it comes to that, the independent candidates end up having a huge impact. Whether it could be 2 or 3 points, that makes a big difference,” Bergmann said.

Direct mail isn’t the only avenue Democrats have used to publicize the presence of third-party candidates. In Southern California’s 45th District, Democrat Steve Pougnet’s campaign recently paid for an automated call promoting American Independent candidate Bill Lussenheide as “the true conservative tea party candidate.”

In the Southside Virginia-based seat he won narrowly in 2008, Democratic Rep. Tom Perriello has run at least two television ads featuring images of conservative Jeff Clark, despite the fact that Clark barely registers in polling matchups with Republican nominee Robert Hurt and Perriello.
After Perriello also sent out a mailer that included quotes from unsuccessful 5th District GOP candidates praising Clark as “the true conservative,” one of those quoted responded by accusing the congressman of sabotage.

“I am quite frankly appalled at Tom Perriello’s recent desperate attempts to split the Republican Party, and his vain attempt to get conservatives in the 5th District not to vote for Robert Hurt,” said conservative Jim McKelvey in a statement. “Unlike what Tom Perriello would like us to believe in both his goofy mailers and ridiculous television ads, Jeff Clark is not the alternative, and Congressman Perriello is no conservative.”

Democratic strategist David Plouffe, the architect of President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, acknowledged the importance of third-party candidates in a briefing with reporters earlier this month and said it means many Democrats could win with as little as 47 percent of the vote, “which in this year is something we are happy about,” he said.

Republicans insist the strategy of propping up minor candidates is a classic political dirty trick aimed at tipping close races for Democrats.

“Democratic incumbents realize they won’t win reelection by their own merits alone, … [so] they’ve stooped so low and resorted to unscrupulous and desperate tactics like these to deceive, mislead and lie,” said Joanna Burgos, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories...#ixzz34L2n2XSx

Graham is a progressive and I do believe he was voted in by Democrats, when you super size with many candidates it gives the incumbent a better chance people end up selecting what they know. The uniformed voter is a danger to the country.