RhodesCook.com -- Analysis

California Gov. Gray Davis easily dispatched token opposition in the state's Democratic primary, while Republican Govs. Rick Perry of Texas and Bob Taft of Ohio, as well as Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, had no primary opposition at all.

At the congressional level, the lone casualties through May 7 have been the ethically tarred Gary Condit, Democrat of California; Tom Sawyer, Democrat of Ohio, whose district was substantially redrawn; and Brian Kerns, a GOP House freshman, whose Indiana district was merged with that of fellow Republican Rep. Steve Buyer.

After the last round of redistricting 10 years ago, the carnage was much heavier at the beginning of the primary season. In Illinois alone, four House members and a senator (Alan J. Dixon) were beaten. That launched a historically volatile primary season in which 19 House incumbents were defeated.

Still, through May 7, only five states had held their primaries. The nature of this election year should come into sharper focus in the plethora of contests this spring, as nearly 20 more states are scheduled to settle their party nominations by the end of June.

Trouble for Governors?

Five states do not necessarily a pattern make. But coming out of the primary action, there are signs that a larger proportion of incumbent governors could have tough races this fall than incumbent senators.

On the Senate side, Illinois' Durbin is well positioned to win a second term this fall. His opponent, Republican Jim Durkin, is one of just 118 members of the Illinois House of Representatives and the contest has yet to make it onto the national radar screen.

But on the gubernatorial side, both California's Davis and Texas' Perry could face a significant challenge this fall.

Wealthy businessman Tony Sanchez reportedly spent more than $20 million to handily win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Texas. In a primary in which both of the major contenders were Hispanic, Sanchez trounced former state Attorney General Dan Morales by a margin of nearly 2-to-1. The historic nature and vigor of the race helped push the turnout for the Democratic gubernatorial primary to a level twice as high as in 1998, when Democrats essentially gave Republican incumbent George W. Bush a bye for reelection.

Meanwhile, Perry will be leading the GOP ticket for the first time, having moved up from lieutenant governor when Bush was elected president in 2000. And with veteran Phil Gramm retiring this year, Perry will not have a popular, incumbent senator anchoring the Republican ticket. The GOP Senate nominee this year is Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, who captured more than three out of every four votes cast in the Republican primary against minimal opposition.

In California, another wealthy businessman, Bill Simon Jr., won the Republican gubernatorial nomination by upsetting the early favorite and choice of the Bush administration, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. Like Sanchez, Simon won decisively. The son of the former Nixon treasury secretary, he captured nearly 50% of the vote against a field that included Riordan, California Secretary of State Bill Jones, and a quartet of minor candidates. In the process, the conservative Simon fashioned a victory that was both geographically and demographically broad-based.

He swept 51 of California's 58 counties, losing five in the Central Valley to Jones and two in Southern California (Los Angeles and Imperial) to Riordan. Simon trounced the more socially moderate Riordan by a margin of roughly 3-to-1 among the large cadre of California conservatives, close to 60% of the GOP primary electorate according to an exit poll by the Los Angeles Times. But Simon also swept all age groups, all income groups, and all education levels in the March 5 Republican primary.

The well-heeled Davis, who spent roughly $10 million on an effective anti-Riordan advertising campaign during the primary, has seen his political stock fluctuate over the last year since California's energy crisis reached crisis proportions. He polled 81% of the vote in the Democratic primary, a percentage that was conspicuously below the 90%-plus rolled up by Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein in winning renomination in 1998 and 2000, respectively.

Another possible warning sign for Davis was the Democratic primary turnout. Even though Democrats outnumber Republicans in California by 1.5 million, more votes were cast in the Republican gubernatorial primary for the first time in more than 40 years. No doubt, part of that turn of events was due to the absence of serious opposition to Davis on the Democratic side. Still, the low turnout could also reflect a level of apathy among California Democrats that could prove a problem for Davis and the Democratic ticket in the fall election.

Openings in Texas and Illinois

The most competitive statewide primaries thus far have been for open seats, most specifically the Illinois governorship being vacated by Republican George Ryan and the Texas Senate seat being vacated by Gramm.

Action for the latter was focused on the Democratic side, where the contest featured a Lone Star State version of the party's "Rainbow Coalition." The three leading candidates were former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, Victor Morales, a schoolteacher who drew a respectable 44% of the vote against Gramm in 1996, and Rep. Ken Bentsen, a nephew of the former Democratic senator. Kirk is black. Morales is Hispanic. Bentsen is "Anglo."

In the first round of voting March 12, Morales led Kirk by less than 1,000 votes out of more than 950,000 cast, with Bentsen finishing a respectable third barely 60,000 votes behind. Bentsen dominated voting in his home base, the Houston area, as well as much of rural east Texas and the windswept plains of the northern panhandle. Altogether, Bentsen carried nearly half of Texas' 254 counties.

But Kirk and Morales more than offset that in their bases of support - Kirk in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and the liberal capital city of Austin and its environs; Morales in the predominantly Hispanic counties of south Texas and the western panhandle. Statewide turnout for the Democratic primary was only 8% of Texas' registered voters, but it surpassed 30% in many of the counties of south and west Texas.

In the runoff April 10, the state Democratic establishment, including Sanchez and Bentsen, swung solidly behind Kirk, who easily defeated the populist-sounding, but poorly financed Morales by 120,000 votes. Kirk's victory gave Texas Democrats an historic "dream ticket" - with an Hispanic for governor and a black for Senate - which the party hopes will swell the fall turnout in a state where the population is nearly one-third Hispanic and 12% black.

In Illinois, the key primary contest in each party March 19 was for the open governor's chair. Democratic Rep. Rod Blagojevich and Republican state Attorney General Jim Ryan each won three-way primaries with less than a majority of the vote. But the similarities ended there. Each traversed Illinois' political geography in a vastly different manner en route to nomination.

In the Republican primary, Ryan swept the Chicago area but lost roughly two dozen counties in the southern half of the state to conservative state Sen. Patrick O'Malley, as well as a handful of others in the northwest corner to the pro-abortion rights lieutenant governor, Corinne Wood. Together, O'Malley and Wood amassed more than half the vote, but neither could finish within 15 percentage points of Ryan.

Meanwhile, in the Democratic balloting, Blagojevich, who holds the North Side Chicago seat once occupied by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, lost Cook County and the suburban "Collar Counties" to Paul Vallas, the former head of the Chicago public schools. But backed by labor, a phalanx of Democratic county chairmen and Rep. Jerry Costello (of Belleville), Blagojevich won virtually every downstate county to edge Vallas statewide by barely 25,000 votes out of 1.25 million cast. Roland Burris, a former state attorney general making his third run for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, carried the city of Chicago but lost all but one county in the rest of the state. He finished a respectable third.

Both contests captured a fair degree of voter interest. The number of votes cast was the highest in a Democratic gubernatorial primary since 1976, and the most in a GOP gubernatorial primary since 1964. Republicans have won seven straight gubernatorial elections in Illinois, although that has been due in part to their ability to avoid hard-fought primaries such as the one this year.

Meanwhile, in Illinois' featured congressional primary, former Clinton White House aide Rahm Emanuel won the Democratic nomination in Chicago's redrawn 5th District, the lineal descendant of the district represented by Blagojevich and Rostenkowski. Clinton came to Chicago both to raise money and lend his prestige to his former aide. And ultimately, the first "big name" Clinton alumnus to face Democratic primary voters this year won comfortably; Emanuel defeated former state Rep. Nancy Kaszak by a margin of a dozen percentage points. Given the heavily Democratic nature of the district, he is virtually assured a seat in the 108th Congress.