Midway through the 2002 primary season, it is already apparent that the Democratic and Republican parties are in danger of flunking "Civics 101."

Each party has already conceded a Senate seat – Massachusetts Republicans to Democratic incumbent John Kerry; Virginia Democrats to Republican incumbent John Warner. And looking at primary results through the end of June, each major party is conceding a host of House seats as well.

It is not a malady peculiar to just one part of the country. Either the Democrats or Republicans did not field a candidate in six of the 19 districts in the March primary in Illinois, seven of the 19 in the May primary in Pennsylvania, and five of the 11 in the June nominating season in Virginia. In some states, the parties are allowed to fill vacancies on the ballot after their primary.

But it is quite likely that most of these spots will go unfilled, making the 2002 elections more similar to the highly targeted congressional campaigns of 1998 and 2000 - when the number of House seats left uncontested by one of the major parties was in the vicinity of 15% to 20% - than the more broadly competitive congressional campaign of 1996. Then, the rate of uncontested House seats was less than 5%.

Yet one does not have to wait until November to see first hand the lack of competition. It has been evident throughout the first half of the primary season. Thus far, Senate primaries have been held in 17 states and gubernatorial primaries in 15, producing a total of 64 Democratic and Republican nominees. Of these, only nine have been nominated by a margin of less than 10 percentage points; only seven others by less than 20 percentage points

The rest of the nominees won by a wider margin, often much wider. Thus far, the closest that any primary challenger has gotten to toppling an incumbent senator has been 56 percentage points, Sen. Tim Hutchinson’s margin of victory over state Rep. Jim Bob Duggar in Arkansas’ Republican primary. The closest that any challenger has come to felling an incumbent governor has been 40 points, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s margin of victory over former state Rep. Milt Erhart in the Idaho GOP primary.

And 25 Senate and gubernatorial nominees – more than one-third of the entire total nominated thus far this year – had no primary opposition at all. It is a group comprised mainly of incumbents, but also includes nine non-incumbents.

The Scent of Money

Why have so many nominees this year not had to break a sweat?

Reason one is money, which bears about the same relationship to American politics as "Cherchez la femme" does to French crime solving. For every Vic Morales, the Texas schoolteacher who parlayed a populist image and a drivable pick up truck into a spot in this year’s Democratic Senate runoff, there are dozens of other candidates feeling the pressure to raise millions and millions of dollars to run a gubernatorial, Senate, or even a congressional campaign.

Early this year, California Gov. Gray Davis reportedly dumped nearly $10 million from his nearly bottomless campaign treasury into a primary-eve advertising blitz designed to undermine his erstwhile Republican foe, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. (Davis’ spending paid off. Riordan lost the Republican primary to the more conservative Bill Simon Jr.)

Wealthy Texas businessman Tony Sanchez reportedly spent $20 million in a bid to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. (Sanchez’s spending paid off as well. He defeated his cash-strapped opponent, former Texas Attorney General Dan Morales, by a margin of nearly 2-to-1.)

And in Pennsylvania, former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell and state Auditor General Bob Casey Jr. combined to spend more than $30 million in their battle for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in May. (Rendell won, as his hefty war chest helped overcome Casey’s support from the traditional kingpins of Pennsylvania Democratic politics, organized labor and the state party establishment.)

In short, only a few candidates can readily afford to compete for major offices these days. And they are usually established officeholders already well connected to lucrative fund-raising sources, or wealthy businessmen with ready cash in their pockets, such as Simon, Sanchez, or Alan Blinken, a former Wall Street investment banker who won the Democratic Senate primary in Idaho to challenge Republican incumbent Larry Craig.

"Throw the Bums In"

Reason two for the lack of competition may be the dearth of visceral issues visible so far this year. There is no "throw the bums out" mood that added color, passion and unpredictability to the elections of 1992 and 1994. There is no self-financed provocateur on the scene, such as Ross Perot, to prod the two major parties. The term limits movement is largely spent. And the long-running, seemingly entrenched Democratic majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill are now a part of history.

In the last post-redistricting election in 1992, 19 House incumbents were denied renomination by their party’s voters. Halfway through this primary season, the casualty count stands at five, two of which were "paired" incumbents (Republican Brian Kerns of Indiana and Democrat Frank Mascara of Pennsylvania) in states that lost House seats. Both of the losing "pairs" were thrown into new districts this year with another, more politically powerful, incumbent from their party – Republican Steve Buyer and Democrat John P. Murtha, respectively.

The three other congressmen denied renomination lost for totally different reasons. California’s Gary Condit was politically dead on his feet after months of unfavorable media coverage in the case of missing intern, Chandra Levy. Condit lost to a former aide, Dennis Cardoza, in his district’s Democratic primary.

Ohio’s Tom Sawyer saw his district, long anchored in his home base of Summit County (Akron), pulled northeastward into the economically struggling, blue-collar strongholds of the Mahoning River Valley. Sawyer carried the former but was slaughtered in the latter, and lost the Democratic primary to a state senator, Timothy Ryan, who harnessed the mood for trade protectionism that exists in much of the district.

Alabama’s Earl Hilliard had signaled his vulnerability two years earlier, when Artur Davis, a young, Harvard-educated lawyer, lost the Democratic primary to the veteran incumbent by a margin of just 7 percentage points. In their rematch, Davis was armed with money and an issue – Hilliard’s alleged sympathy to the Arab cause, which included a 1997 trip to Libya and a House vote this May against a pro-Israel resolution that passed with only 21 "no" votes.

Hilliard finished narrowly ahead in the first round of voting, 46%-to-43%. But Davis surged ahead in the runoff to win by a dozen percentage points. With no Republican opponent on the ballot in the majority-black district, Davis is virtually guaranteed a seat in the 108th Congress.

Not only is the casualty rate of House incumbents mounting slowly, but several other congressional primaries this spring that were expected to be close, were not. Republican Mark Souder of Indiana was thought by many political observers to be vulnerable. He had irritated party leaders in Washington over the years with demands for more conservative ideological purity, and angered many GOP voters back home by declining to support the impeachment of President Clinton on three of the four articles.

Souder had drawn strong primary opposition in 2000 from a chief deputy county prosecutor who had run second to Souder in the 1994 GOP primary. This time, a seemingly stronger challenger, former Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke, promised the district more open-minded representation. Yet as two years earlier, Souder triumphed easily, carrying every county in the district, including Allen (Fort Wayne), as he trounced Helmke, 60%-to-37%.

While Souder’s victory was highly personal, the win by Republican Jim DeMint in primary voting in the South Carolina Upcountry was widely interpreted as good news for others in the textile belt who have ventured off the reservation on the issue of trade protectionism. DeMint had voted to give the Bush administration fast-track trade authority and backed the permanent normalization of trade relations with China.

DeMint had drawn modest primary opposition in 2000. But this time he faced a more serious challenge from a former state legislator, Phil Bradley, who was backed by powerful textile interests. Bradley ran virtually even with DeMint outside the incumbent’s home base of Greenville, but DeMint won his home county by a margin of more than 2-to-1, giving him a comfortable victory district-wide, 62%-to-38%.

Parties Like Free Rides

A third factor in the dearth of primary competition is the basic sense that the parties do not want competition. With the close partisan balance in the House, the Senate and even the statehouses, many party officials do not want their more promising candidates to spend money and effort on a party primary that also could be potentially divisive.

The Bush administration has gone to unusual lengths to influence the Republican nominating process, in some states working to clear the field of candidates, in others to boost their personal favorite, or in some cases, a combination of both.

Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ill-starred effort in 1938 to purge some particularly irksome Democratic adversaries in the party primaries, most presidents have taken a hands-off, or at least a subterranean, approach to party primaries. But not the George W. Bush White House, which in a number of key states has been quite open in its desire to put forward what it believes would be the party’s strongest candidates.

Their success in this effort, though, has at best been mixed. Conspicuous successes were DeMint and Souder, who Bush praised in campaign ads. A conspicuous failure was Riordan, the pro-choice businessman and former big-city mayor who the Bush White House thought would make an ideal gubernatorial candidate in California’s electoral melting pot.

Somewhere in between has been the candidacy of Rep. Greg Ganske of Iowa, the White House’s choice to oppose veteran Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. Aided by Bush’s support, Ganske won the Republican Senate primary in June, but not as decisively as many expected. He defeated Bill Salier, a farmer best known for his conservative credentials, by a margin of less than 3-to-2. And the race was much closer than that outside Ganske’s old congressional district, which extended from Des Moines west to the Missouri River.

Some have viewed the sizable vote for Salier as a protest by many conservative Iowa Republicans to the accommodating aspects of the Bush administration. If so, it will be interesting to see if it has any lingering ramifications in national Republican politics, since the Iowa caucuses have been the traditional kickoff event on the presidential nominating calendar.

Competitive Primaries Can be Helpful… Case in Point: Pennsylvania

Yet while the parties tend to loath contested primaries, sometimes these spirited events can give a candidacy a shot of momentum. Case in point, Pennsylvania, where Rendell emerged from the hotly contested Democratic primary with a 12-point lead over his Republican opponent for governor, state Attorney General Mike Fisher. The non-partisan Keystone Poll (conducted by Millersville University) gave substance to the feeling that Rendell had successfully introduced himself to the diverse areas of the state in a way that Fisher, who was unopposed in the Republican primary, has yet to do.

The Rendell-Casey contest for the Democratic nomination was actually round two in the intergenerational battle between the former Philadelphia mayor and the first family of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party. Casey Sr. won round one in 1986, en route to his first of two terms as governor.

Rendell won this time over Casey Jr. in a primary battle that could have implications beyond the borders of the Keystone State. It pitted Rendell’s base in the affluent, socially liberal "Amtrak Corridor" (the state’s populous southeast corner) against Casey’s support in the more socially conservative, but economically liberal, "Deer Hunter" country that defines much of the rest of Pennsylvania.

Sixteen years ago, Casey Sr. swept all but eight of the state’s 67 counties in decisively defeating Rendell by nearly 165,000 votes. This time, Rendell carried only 10 counties but swamped the younger Casey by a margin of roughly 150,000.

What accounted for the huge turnaround? Some have pointed to a negative advertising blitz by Casey that seemed to backfire. Others have contended that his defeat underscores the declining ability of pro-life Democrats such as the Caseys to compete for major statewide nominations in the increasingly suburbanized megastates.

There is probably some validity to both arguments. A look at the election numbers shows that Rendell was able to win the primary because he not only solidified his base in the Philadelphia area from 1986, he dramatically enlarged it.

In that first race, Philadelphia and its suburbs cast less than one-third of the Democratic primary vote and gave Rendell a plurality of barely 100,000. This year, the Philadelphia area cast nearly 40% of the primary ballots and gave the former mayor a plurality of nearly 300,000. Rendell got thousands of suburban Republican voters to switch parties so they could vote for him in the primary. The addition of these "Rendellcrats" helped make the historically Republican suburbs, rather than Democratic Philadelphia, his most productive part of the state percentage-wise.

In his 1986 gubernatorial run, Rendell took 67% of the vote in Philadelphia, 63% in the suburbs and a meager 27% in the rest of the state. This time, he drew 78% in Philadelphia, 85% in the suburbs, and 41% elsewhere. In the end, the young Casey drew 15,000 votes less than his father did in the 1986 primary; Rendell polled 300,000 votes more.

Voting When There Is Something to Vote For

With the dramatic increase in the Rendell vote, the turnout of better than 1.2 million was the largest for a gubernatorial primary of either party in Pennsylvania since 1978. It lends further evidence to the argument that Americans will turn out to vote in goodly numbers when they feel there is something worth voting for. And that is only possible with competition.

To be sure, the universe of primary voters that decide gubernatorial and Senate nominations is significantly smaller than the number that participate in general elections. More than 105 million voters cast ballots in the 2000 presidential election. Roughly 70 million participated in the last midterm election in November 1998. So far this year, slightly more than 15 million voters have taken part in Senate or gubernatorial primaries.

In the end, nearly two-thirds of all registered voters cast a ballot for president in November 2000. So far this year, primary turnout has not exceeded 40% in any state. But a look at the turnout "leader board" through June shows that the primary states with the highest rate of voter participation have been those with either lively, competitive top of the ballot races, liberal voting procedures, or a combination of both.

In South Dakota, which has the highest turnout rate of any state this primary season, there were not only contests for governor and Senate on the ballot, but also a battle on the Republican side for the state’s at-large House seat that drew national attention. In it, outgoing Gov. William Janklow beat former Sen. Larry Pressler by a margin of more than 2-to-1.

Oregon, with the second-highest turnout rate thus far, was holding its first all-mail primary in a midterm election year. Balloting was open for a two-week period before the May 21 primary. Half of those that participated turned in their ballots by May 17, although nearly one-third waited until primary day. The process seemed to be a success. The number of ballots cast in the Oregon gubernatorial primary this year approached 700,000, almost one-third higher than the number that were cast in 1998.

The three states ranked next on the turnout list – Alabama, Illinois and Idaho – all had contests for governor and senator that were decided in "open" primaries, in which any registered voter could cast a Democratic or Republican ballot.

A generation or so ago the highest primary turnouts were in the Southern states, especially those of the Deep South, where victory in the Democratic contest was often tantamount to election. In 1982, 1 million Alabama voters participated in the Democratic primary and runoff that provided George Wallace with his "last hurrah" as governor. Not until 1990 did a Republican gubernatorial turnout in Alabama exceed even 100,000.

In the modern two-party South, Democrats still have a primary turnout advantage in most states, although the margin is much smaller than it once was. Over the last decade or so, the number of voters taking a Republican primary ballot has increased dramatically across the South, while those taking a Democratic ballot has decreased. In this June’s gubernatorial primary in Alabama, for instance, 435,000 voters took a Democratic ballot; nearly 360,000 voters took a Republican ballot.

A Lot Lies Ahead

There is now a month-long hiatus in the primary season. But when voting resumes in early August, the action will unfold quickly. Two dozen states are scheduled to hold their primaries from Aug. 1 to Sept. 21, and that number should grow to include North Carolina, whose primary date has been in limbo since a challenge to the state’s new legislative district lines was thrown into court.

Twenty-one states in this late summer-early fall period will have primaries for governor, two-thirds of them for open seats. And voters in 14 states, plus North Carolina, will settle Senate nominations.

It will be interesting to see if any hot button issues come to the fore in the second half of the primary season that would lead to a more contrarian, anti-incumbent mood in the electorate. In that regard, Idaho may be either an aberration or a trendsetter. The combination of state budget woes with the state Legislature’s repeal of voter-passed term limits created a critical mass of voter unrest that was directed in large part in the May primary at Gov. Kempthorne.

He was chastened by Republican primary voters, losing more than a third of their ballots to an unimposing group of challengers, while Kempthorne’s choice for lieutenant governor, as well as his lawyer, who was running for attorney general, were both beaten outright.

The day of the primary, an editorial in the Idaho State Journal encouraged anti-incumbent sentiment. "Incumbents have a distinct advantage," read the editorial, "but if you’re fed up with the status quo, give your primary vote to an alternative candidate. Many politicos say ‘statement’ votes aren’t terribly effective, but in primary elections, they can raise some eyebrows."

Whether voting in the remaining primaries will raise an eyebrow or two is an open question. But whatever happens, the second half of the primary season will set the table for November. And even with the amount of competition less keen this year than many would desire, the high stakes generated by the close partisan balance in the House, the Senate and many statehouses, could still make 2002 the most eventful midterm election in a generation.