Republicans in Delaware faced a very simple choice in Tuesday's primary: Did they want to win Joe Biden's old Senate seat in November, or did they want to lose it?
They went with the latter option, and if that really surprises you, then you haven't been paying close enough attention to Republican Party politics in the age of Obama.
The 2008 election, the second straight election in which it suffered a crippling national defeat, left the Republican Party drained of its hangers-on -- less ideological voters who had, in the past, broadly agreed with the party's philosophy, even if they dissented on individual issues. What was left was an angry, restive base that resented (and even feared) Barack Obama and that believed the GOP had lost power because it hadn't been conservative enough. This base quickly found a catchy name -- the Tea Party movement -- and dedicated itself to cleansing from the GOP's ranks politicians who reminded them of the party's pre-2008 spirit.
It was the Tea Party movement that compelled Arlen Specter, a 30-year Republican senator, to switch parties in 2009. It was the Tea Party movement that sent Charlie Crist, Florida's Republican governor and a man who was considered a potential V.P. nominee in 2008, fleeing. It was this movement that knocked off Robert Bennett, a three-term senator from Utah, at a party convention in May; that lifted the son of Ron Paul to the Republican nomination for the Senate from Kentucky; that elevated a shady former healthcare executive to the gubernatorial nomination in Florida; and that replaced Lisa Murkowski, an incumbent senator and the daughter of one of Alaska's most prominent politicians, with little-known Joe Miller.
And it was the Tea Party that tonight engineered its crowning feat (so far) of 2010: The utterly improbably victory of Christine O'Donnell, a right-wing gadfly and serial debtor who has equated lust with adultery and claimed that her political opponents follow her home at night and hide in the bushes, over Mike Castle in Delaware's Republican Senate primary.
All the way until the very end, few believed the Tea Party crowd would or could actually pull this one off. The race only became one of their targets a few weeks ago, when Murkowski went down in Alaska. That unforeseen success prompted the GOP consultant-run Tea Party Express, which had dumped more than $600,000 into the Miller effort, to turn its eyes to Delaware, where Castle possessed many of the same establishment credentials as Murkowski.
But Delaware was supposed to be different for two reasons: (1) Castle and his establishment allies, unlike Murkowski and hers, would see their enemies coming and be able to fight back; and (2) Delaware, unlike Alaska, is a blue-tinted state -- sure enough Republicans would recognize how suicidal it would be to field a candidate as ideologically extreme, and personally flaky, as O'Donnell. Indeed, Castle unloaded on O'Donnell with a negative ad while the GOP establishment -- and even some national conservatives, who recognized the damage that her nomination would do to the GOP's chances of winning back the Senate -- played up her liabilities.
But it didn't matter at all. In fact, if anything, the anti-O'Donnell campaign seems to have hurt Castle and the establishment. A poll on Sunday showed her climbing ahead, 47 to 44 percent, and her final margin of victory looks like it will be six points.
Now, national Republicans will have to decide whether to support O'Donnell financially. On paper, she is doomed. PPP, the polling outfit that picked up on O'Donnell's rise on Sunday, has measured her favorable rating among general election voters at 29-50 percent. Just 31 percent of voters believe she's qualified to hold office. She was also running 26 points worse than Castle in trial heats against Chris Coons, the Democratic nominee. It is rare, if not unheard of, for such a gaping general election viability disparity to exist between two candidates in a competitive primary.
Tea Partiers, of course, will argue that O'Donnell will catch us all by surprise in November just as she did in this primary campaign. But her image with the general public seems to mirror that of the Tea Party: rabid enthusiasm among the GOP base, hostility from most others. Running in a GOP primary that was closed to independent and Democrats presented her with a voting universe just narrow enough for her to post a win. The November electorate will be much broader, and even though the casual November voters of 2010 will be strongly inclined to vote against Democrats, it's hard to imagine someone with her image problems -- which will probably only get worse with the media shining even more light on her -- garnering a majority.
Just like Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed GOP Senate candidate in Nevada, O'Donnell calls to mind the example of Oliver North -- a Republican who was so tarnished that he lost what should have been an unlosable election in the last big Republican year, 1994.
To win back the Senate, Republicans will need to pick up ten Democratic-held seats this falls (nine if they can then convince Joe Lieberman to caucus with them). All year they've been counting Delaware as one of those nine. But that was when Mike Castle was going to be their nominee. Now, Christine O'Donnell is, and the prospect of a Republican Senate majority in 2011 looks as slim as ever.
Political novice and tea party ally Carl Paladino has beaten the Republican designee in the race for the party's nomination for New York governor.
Paladino rode a wave of voter anger on his way to defeating former Congressman Rick Lazio. It's another blow to the GOP in a heavily Democratic state.
Paladino, a millionaire Buffalo developer, will now take on the popular and well-financed Democratic attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, in November.
Paladino lost to Lazio at the state GOP convention but then petitioned his way to the primary by securing 30,000 Republican signatures statewide.
It's hard not to feel good for Chris Coons right now. With the Delaware Republican Party's suicidal decision to nominate Christine O'Donnell, the little-known New Castle county executive is now the clear favorite to become the state's next U.S. senator. And the only reason Coons is in position to receive such a lucky break is because he wasn't scared to enter a race that was supposed to be unwinnable for a Democrat.
The Senate contest, which is technically a special election to fill the final four years of the term Biden was elected to in 2008, was triggered by Biden's elevation to the vice presidency. Biden, who had held the seat since 1972, badly wanted his son, state Attorney General Beau Biden, to inherit it. But he couldn't hand it off right away (via a gubernatorial appointment): that might have looked unseemly. So instead, Delaware's then-Democratic governor, Ruth Ann Minner, appointed an old Biden aide with no political ambitions of his own, Ted Kaufman, to the seat. Kaufman would be a caretaker, someone to sit in the Senate and vote the right way in 2009 and 2010 without standing in Beau Biden's way in the '10 special election.
It all looked so simple and tidy back then, in late 2008. But slowly, things got complicated. First, President Obama's popularity began dropping -- hardly a shocking development, given the brutal economy, but one that steadily changed each party's midterm election prospects. Then, Mike Castle, Delaware's nine-term Republican congressman (and a former two-term governor) got interested in the race himself. He'd always aspired to the Senate, and at the age of 70, it was now or never. So last October, he jumped into the race.
The presence of Castle, with his broad popularity, and the increasingly toxic political climate for Democrats started to give Beau Biden cold feet. He was 40 years old and ambitious, but he had to be careful: The prospect of losing to Castle in a '10 election was real. How badly would that damage his image and his long-term prospects? Plus, it's not like Castle would stick around for decades, right? He'd probably win the seat in '10, treat the next four years as a well-earned career-capper, then ride off into the sunset in 2014. Then Beau could run for the seat himself (probably in a much better climate) and take his rightful place on the national stage. And so it was that Beau Biden announced in January that he wouldn't be a candidate for the Senate in 2010 after all.
Nor was John Carney, the popular lieutenant governor who had been edged out in the 2008 gubernatorial primary, interested in taking on Castle. Why mount a longshot Senate race when Castle's at-large House seat was suddenly open and there for the taking?
Only then did Coons, then 46 years and with ten years of low-profile service in county government under his belt, enter the picture. The nomination was his because no one else wanted it; no sane Democrat believed Castle could be beaten. Heck, maybe Coons didn't even believe it. But if nothing else, the race would offer him a chance to gain exposure and name recognition. That's how Democrats nationally looked at Coons: a sacrificial lamb who might get something out of the deal down the line.
And that's how they -- and everyone else -- viewed him all spring and summer, all the way until August 24, when little-known Joe Miller stunned Lisa Murkowski in Alaska's GOP Senate primary. The upset was fueled by the Tea Party Express, which had poured $600,000 into Miller's efforts -- and which immediately announced that it would seek to roll its success over into Delaware in an effort to knock off Castle in the September 14 Senate primary. The spotlight was suddenly on O'Donnell; the Tea Party base rallied behind her and Sarah Palin provided an endorsement. Suddenly, Castle was in grave danger of losing the primary. Coons only had to watch from the sidelines while licking his chops. The value of the Democratic nomination was increasing in direct relation to O'Donnell's momentum, and Coons had it locked down. When the results finally came in Tuesday night, it's likely that the cheers were just as loud in Coons' headquarters as they were in O'Donnell's.
Now, it will be a shocker if Chris Coons doesn't win in November. He just turned 47 a few weeks ago, meaning that he could be in the Senate for decades to come, sitting in the Senate seat that Joe Biden held for 38 years -- and that his son was too apprehensive to seek on his own.
9:08 P.M.: The Associated Press is calling Delaware's GOP Senate primary for Christine O'Donnell. We'll have extensive commentary and analysis throughout the night and tomorrow morning.
7:00 P.M. The primary season pretty much comes to an end tonight as polls close on contests in seven states, including Delaware, New Hampshire and New York. We'll be providing updates on the most important races as the results come in tonight and we'll have plenty of analysis of their implications.
The two races that carry the most national significance are the Republican Senate primaries in Delaware and New Hampshire. Once considered foregone conclusions, both races are now tossups, thanks to the late mobilization of Tea Party support behind underdog candidates. The big question is: If Tea Party candidates win in Delaware and New Hampshire tonight, will they be able to beat their Democratic opponents in November?
In Delaware, where Vice President Joe Biden’s former Senate seat is up for grabs, Christine O’Donnell, a previously obscure marketing consultant and right-wing gadfly, is seeking to complete what would be one of the year's biggest upsets in her primary with long-serving Rep. Mike Castle.
Victory for O’Donnell, who has been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint and the Tea Party Express, would represent another notch in the bedpost of the Tea Party movement, following close on the heels of similar upsets in Alaska, Nevada and Kentucky. But it would not guarantee a Republican victory in November by any means; the same polls that show Castle and O’Donnell in a dead heat for the primary also have Castle outperforming O'Donnell by 26 points against presumptive Democratic nominee Chris Coons.
Polls in Delaware close at 8 p.m. EDT; shortly after 8, unofficial results should be available on the website of the state election commissioner.
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