CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
June 3, 2008 – 12:02 a.m.
CQ Politics’ Viewer’s Guide to Today’s Congressional Primaries
By Greg Giroux and Bob Benenson, CQ Staff
While today’s contests for U.S. Senate and House seats have been overshadowed by the fact that it is a milestone day in the 2008 presidential campaign, the day could also be seen as the “Super Tuesday” of 2008’s congressional primaries.
Seven states are holding House primaries — Alabama, California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota — with all but California also having Senate seats at stake.
That ties Tuesday with Sept. 9 for the date this year with the most states holding congressional primaries. The 83 districts in the seven states holding primaries Tuesday comprise nearly one-fifth of the entire House membership, with 53 of those districts in California alone.
With so much going on in so many different places, CQ Politics provides the following viewer’s guide to Tuesday’s congressional primary contests.
The races to watch are topped by a pair of Senate contests: in Democratic-leaning New Jersey, where four-term Democratic Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg is seeking to fend off an unexpected primary challenge from longtime Rep. Robert E. Andrews , and in the swing state of New Mexico, where the major parties are gearing up for a key battle to replace retiring six-term Republican Sen. Pete V. Domenici .
The New Mexico race will likely have more long-term bearing on the partisan balance of power in the Senate. The decision by the popular Domenici not to run for re-election has sparked a strong takeover bid by New Mexico Democrats, who quickly rallied around Rep. Tom Udall as their favored candidate. Republicans, on the other hand, have staged a bruising primary contest between the state’s two other House members, with GOP primary voters deciding Tuesday between Reps. Heather A. Wilson and Steve Pearce .
The New Jersey primary is more likely to set up a long-shot Republican bid to capture Lautenberg’s seat, as Democrats have dominated statewide politics there over several election cycles. But serious primary challenges to congressional incumbents — especially senators — are rare in any election cycle, and the fact that challenger Andrews has been a House member for almost 18 years has elevated the profile of this race.
Polls show that one of the qualms voters have about Lautenberg is his age, as he turned 84 in January and is seeking a new term that would end just short of his 91st birthday. Even so, a victory by the 50-year-old Andrews would rank as a big upset, as Lautenberg enjoys the typical advantages of incumbency, has rallied near-solid support from the state’s Democratic Party establishment and has a big fundraising edge over the challenger.
Among the House contests to watch on Tuesday are a serious Democratic primary challenge to incumbent Rep. Leonard L. Boswell in Iowa’s 3rd District, and open-seat races to succeed retiring incumbents in Alabama, California, New Jersey and New Mexico (where all three of the state’s House members left their seats open to compete for Domenici’s Senate seat).
Here’s a guide to Tuesday’s primaries, with states organized chronologically by their poll-closing times (noted in parenthesis). The poll closing times are staggered throughout the evening, with no more than two states ending its voting at the top of any one hour.
• Alabama (8 p.m. Eastern): There are two open House seats in Alabama that incumbents are not defending — the southeastern 2nd, where Republican Rep. Terry Everett is not seeking a ninth term, and the northern 5th, where nine-term Rep. Robert E. “Bud” Cramer is one of a small handful of House Democrats who are not running for re-election this year.
Both are typically conservative-leaning Southern districts. Had these open-seat races occurred as recently as 2004, when the GOP was still clearly ascendant in the region, the party likely would have been strongly favored to hold the 2nd and been given the edge to take over the 5th with the popular center-right Democrat Cramer stepping aside.
But the outlook for these races has been influenced by the overall national trend that helped Democrats to take over the House in the 2006 elections. Recent special election victories by Democrats in previously Republican-held districts in Louisiana and Mississippi have called into question the GOP’s degree of dominance in the South. Meanwhile, strong Democratic candidate recruiting has boosted the party’s chances of holding the 5th District seat and seriously competing in the 2nd for the first time in many years.
CQ Politics’ Viewer’s Guide to Today’s Congressional Primaries
Democrats’ hopes for the latter seat are staked on Bobby Bright, the mayor of the Alabama state capital of Montgomery, who is the clear favorite in their three-candidate primary. Republicans are likely to produce a solid and well-funded candidate from the six seeking their nomination, but the lack of a clear front-runner and the crowded nature of the field will make it hard for anyone to win a majority Tuesday — raising the likelihood of a July 15 runoff between the top two Republican finishers.
There also are six Republican candidates in the 5th District, with insurance executive Wayne Parker and businesswoman Cheryl Baswell Guthrie the best-funded contenders. The winner almost certainly will face state Sen. Parker Griffith, around whom Democratic officials rallied soon after Cramer made his surprise announcement in March that he planned to retire.
For the Senate, Republicans are expected to nominate incumbent Jeff Sessions , who is strongly favored in his bid for a third term. He will face the winner of a three-candidate Democratic primary that includes state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures.
• New Jersey (8 p.m. Eastern): The Democratic primary between Lautenberg and Andrews has upstaged the three-candidate Republican contest for the Senate nomination. The perceived front-runner is Dick Zimmer, a former U.S. House member (1991-97) who lost a Senate race in 1996 and a comeback House bid in 2000. His opponents are Murray Sabrin, a college finance professor with a libertarian agenda, and state Sen. Joseph Pennacchio.
Andrews’ decision to run for Senate created an opening in his southern 1st District, where his wife Camille, a lawyer, is favored in the primary over two lesser-known Democrats. Camille Andrews quickly stepped forward in April after her husband stunned the state’s political community by announcing his challenge to the incumbent senator, but she has stated publicly that she would step aside if party officials decided — as they are allowed to by law — to hand-pick a different candidate after the primary nomination is settled.
Whomever ends up with the nomination will be strongly favored to keep the longtime Democratic stronghold in party hands.
Much more up for grabs this fall are the state’s two seats that have been left open by retiring Republican House members. The Democrats are waging vigorous takeover campaigns in the south-central 3rd District, where Republican Rep. H. James Saxton is not seeking a 13th full term, and the north-central 7th, where Republican Rep. Mike Ferguson is not running for a fourth term. Both districts tend to lean slightly Republican but are politically competitive.
In the 3rd, state Sen. John Adler already has nailed down the Democratic nomination and will face the winner of a three-candidate Republican primary in which the major contestants are John Kelly, a county freeholder, and Chris Myers, a local township mayor.
In the 7th, Democratic state Rep. Linda Stender awaits the winner of a seven-candidate Republican primary that includes state Sen. Leonard Lance; Kate Whitman, a public relations consultant whose mother, Christine Todd Whitman, was New Jersey’s Republican governor from 1994 to 2001; and Martin Marks, a local mayor. Stender is making a second bid for the seat after a 2006 race in which she fell just 1 percentage point shy of unseating incumbent Ferguson.
• New Mexico (7 p.m. Local/Mountain, 9 p.m. Eastern): It is exceedingly rare to see such a near clean sweep of a state’s congressional delegation, with four open-seat races in one fell swoop. New Mexico will have a new senator to replace Domenici, and the bids by all three of the state’s House members for that Senate seat mean all of their districts also will have freshmen members next year.
The 1st, a swing district centered on Albuquerque, is the one most certain to produce a hotly contested race this fall. Republican incumbent Wilson survived one of the closest races held in 2006, and Democrats would have highly targeted the seat even had she run for re-election.
Leading contenders in the four-candidate Democratic primary field include former Albuquerque City Councilman Martin Heinrich, former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and former state Health Secretary Michelle Lujan Grisham. Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White is widely regarded as the favorite in his Republican primary race with state Sen. Joe Carraro.
Restaurant chain owner Ed Tinsley, retired banker Aubrey Dunn and real estate agent C. Earl Greer are the leading Republican primary contenders in the GOP-leaning 2nd, while Dona Ana County Commissioner Bill McCamley and former Lea County Commissioner Harry Teague both have shown some fundraising clout as they pursue the Democratic nomination.
CQ Politics’ Viewer’s Guide to Today’s Congressional Primaries
Meanwhile, six Democratic candidates are scrambling for the party’s nomination in the 3rd, with the winner emerging as the favorite to hold the seat in the Democratic-leaning district.
• South Dakota (7 p.m. Local/Mountain or Central, 9 p.m. Eastern): This state hosts one of the two presidential primaries that will wrap up the voting phase of the White House nominating campaign. The race between Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has dominated attention in this state — but it isn’t as though the presidential race has had much congressional competition.
Heading into the 2008 election cycle, Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson appeared likely to rank high on Republican strategists’ target list. South Dakota overall has a Republican-leaning profile, and Johnson in 2002 just barely edged Republican John Thune (who turned around two years later to oust Tom Daschle, the state’s other Democratic senator who was serving as minority leader at the time).
But Johnson’s courageous recovery from a near-fatal brain hemorrhage suffered in late 2006 spurred a groundswell of bipartisan support, which in turn undermined GOP efforts to recruit a strong challenger. He now is heavily favored to defeat the winner of the three-candidate Republican primary being held Tuesday.
South Dakota polls close at 7 p.m. local time. The state is divided between the Central and Mountain time zones, so all South Dakotans will have voted by 9 p.m. Eastern time.
• Iowa (9 p.m. Local/Central, 10 p.m. Eastern): The top primary contest is the 3rd District Democratic race between incumbent Boswell and former state Rep. Ed Fallon. Boswell has a profile as a Democratic centrist, which has given him general election appeal over six terms in a district divided closely between the parties. But some liberal activists, who say Boswell hasn’t taken strong enough stands against the Iraq war and some trade agreements, have promoted Fallon’s upset bid.
There is a three-candidate Republican primary field in the southeastern 2nd District, where Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack is seeking a second term after upsetting 15-term Republican Rep. Jim Leach in 2006.
Three little-known Republicans are seeking their party’s nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin, who is unopposed in his own primary and is a heavy favorite to win a fifth term this November.
• Montana (8 p.m. local/mountain time, 10 p.m. eastern) The Democratic presidential contest also has dominated attention in this state. And just as in South Dakota, congressional competition is sparse in Montana.
Six Republicans filed to oppose Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, but none is seen as a serious threat to the chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee in his heavily favored bid to win a sixth term.
Montana is alone among the seven primary states in staging a race for governor this year. Democratic incumbent Brian Schweitzer , who has solid job approval ratings, is favored to win a second term this November, but he is expected to get a fight from the Republican primary favorite, state Sen. Roy Brown.
• California (8 p.m. Local/Pacific, 11 p.m. Eastern) Californians are not electing either a senator or a governor this year, so House races will hold sway in the nation’s most populous state.
The most-watched contest is in the 4th District, which stretches from the suburbs of Sacramento to the state’s borders with Oregon and Nevada. Normally a Republican stronghold, the 4th nearly dumped veteran Republican Rep. John T. Doolittle in 2006 — though that race was strongly influenced by allegations about the incumbent’s past ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
CQ Politics’ Viewer’s Guide to Today’s Congressional Primaries
Doolittle’s decision not to run for a 10th term this year has boosted Republicans’ confidence that they will be able to hold the seat, though they will have to do some fence-mending after the primary. The leading Republican contenders are state Sen. Tom McClintock and former U.S. Rep. Doug Ose, who held a neighboring House seat from 1999 to 2005, and the two have engaged in an expensive and occasionally vitriolic campaign. Democrats argue that they again will seriously contend for the seat, with Charlie Brown — the retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who nearly defeated Doolittle in 2006 — as their presumed nominee.
The state’s other open seat is at the far southern end, in the 52nd District, which includes part of San Diego. There is less doubt about the November outcome there, with the Republicans strongly expected to hold the seat 14-term GOP incumbent Duncan Hunter left open to pursue a quixotic bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
Four Republicans are vying in the primary, with name identification alone boosting Duncan D. Hunter, the congressman’s son, who is a Marine Corps captain and Iraq War veteran. He is opposed by Brian Jones, a businessman and city councilman; Bob Watkins, president of the San Diego County Board of Education; and Rick L. Powell, a retired federal agent.
Every other California incumbent is seeking re-election, and nearly all of them should be re-elected overwhelmingly. Republicans are looking to reclaim the state’s 11th District, a district in the San Joaquin Valley in which Democrat Jerry McNerney unseated Republican Rep. Richard W. Pombo in 2006. Neither McNerney nor Republican challenger Dean Andal, a former state representative, faces intra-party opposition.
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