Gauging Anti-Incumbent Sentiment

This month’s first-in-the-nation primary provided some mixed clues as to the strength of anti-incumbent sentiment.

At the gubernatorial level, unelected incumbent Pat Quinn faced Democratic voters and barely survived. The successor to the disgraced Rod Blagojevich won the Democratic nomination by less than 10,000 votes out of more 900,000 cast – a close call that may serve as a warning to the remaining unelected governors and senators who must fight their way to nomination later this year.

On the other hand, no incumbent at the congressional level in Illinois had to break a sweat. Chicago-area Democratic Reps. Danny Davis, Daniel Lipinski and Bobby Rush were all renominated with at least 67% of the primary vote, as was GOP Rep. John Shimkus downstate. 

The next primary in Texas March 2 will spotlight the vote-getting appeal of Republican incumbents. Altogether, more than half of the state’s 20 GOP U.S. House members have drawn a primary challenge, with the “Tea Party” movement appearing to provide at least some of the competition. In the northeast Texas district represented by 86-year-old Ralph Hall, one of the Republican primary candidates has even taken “Tea” as a nickname.

Some of the best known Texas congressional Republicans have drawn a primary opponent or two, including Pete Sessions, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), and Ron Paul, whose libertarian campaign for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008 is credited in many quarters with laying the groundwork for the current Tea Party movement.  

But the main event in Texas a fortnight hence is the Republican gubernatorial primary that features two incumbents – Rick Perry, who has been governor the last nine years, and Kay Bailey Hutchison, a U.S. senator since 1993. In their case, the question is who will be tarred worse by the taint of incumbency – the Austin-based Perry or the Washington-based Hutchison. At this point, it looks like Hutchison, with her national connections, is getting the worse of it.

But closing on the outside in the Republican gubernatorial primary is a third candidate, Debra Medina, who runs as the grass-roots conservative in the race. If she could finish even second ahead of the better-known, better-funded Hutchison or Perry, it could point to a wild primary season ahead among Republicans alone.