A bad night for incumbents and establishments

The headline from tonight’s primaries ought to be a variation on the one I wrote several days ago, “For Incumbent Senators, More Danger Ahead.”
In Pennsylvania, incumbent Arlen Specter, leading in the polls until recently, was turned out. In Arkansans, incumbent Blanche Lincoln is nowhere close to the 50 percent she needed to avoid a runoff. In fact, as I write this post, she is only a few thousand votes ahead of Bill Halter, over whom she held a double-digit lead in the polls not long ago.
Not that Halter, the darling of the left-wing establishment, is knocking them dead. Arkansas Democrats were sufficiently unhappy with the duo of Lincoln and Halter to award approximately 14 percent of the vote to folksy yarn-spinner D.C. Morrison.
In Kentucky, Trey Grayson, who was routed by Rand Paul, wasn’t the incumbent Senator. However, he was Kentucky’s Secretary of State and the candidate of incumbent Senator (and Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell.
In Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district, Mark Critz wasn’t the incumbent either, but he was the district director for the late incumbent, Jack Murtha. Critz won his race, but collected only about 52 percent of the vote in a heavily Democratic district.
As always, I issue the standard disclaimer — much can change between now and November. If you’re an incumbent, you should hope that it does.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses