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Politics

Primaries test parties' principles

By TIMES WIRES
Published September 14, 2006

WASHINGTON - All politics is national in the 2006 midterm elections, with both parties willing to put aside deeply held views over war, taxes and more in the struggle for control of the House and Senate.

Which explains why conservative Republicans rejoiced Wednesday at the primary victory of Rhode Island's Sen. Lincoln Chafee, the most liberal Republican in the Senate - and were worried by the defeat of the more moderate of two leading contenders for a House seat in Arizona.

It also explains why liberal Democrats, whose leaders call daily for a timetable for a troop withdrawal from Iraq, were less than thrilled to find vigorously antiwar contenders winning nominations for House seats in New Hampshire and New York.

Nowhere was the phenomenon more obvious than Rhode Island, where Republicans placed an abundance of money and manpower into an effort to save their most liberal senator from defeat at the hands of a conservative primary challenger.

"We appreciate him. We know that he fits Rhode Island and he's got a record that's effective for the concerns of the people of Rhode Island," Sen. Elizabeth Dole, head of the GOP senatorial campaign committee, said in praise of Chafee. The Rhode Islander opposes the war in Iraq and President Bush's tax cuts, while supporting abortion rights.

Dole said: "This race would've immediately fallen into the hands of the Democrats if, in fact, Linc Chafee had lost this race" to Stephen Laffey.

Nationally, Democrats are trying to gain six seats to capture control of the Senate.

Republican Party officials applied the same logic in Arizona, where Randy Graf ran on a tough-on-immigration platform for the GOP nomination in a district that runs to the Mexican border.

Strategists in Washington deemed him too conservative to hold the seat, and ran television commercials praising one of his rivals, Steven Huffman. Graf won anyway.

Democrats would have to gain 15 seats to win control of the House, and like Republicans, looked past their policy views - then conceded they had run afoul of some voters who preferred a nominee with a sharper position on the war.

Judith Aydelott was the early choice of the Democratic establishment to run in the Hudson Valley of New York.

The voters weren't as impressed, giving her little more than one-fourth of the votes cast.

In another race that drew national attention, Maryland voters picked a white Democrat to go up against a black Republican for an open Senate seat in a contest that could upset the usual political and racial alliances.

Rep. Ben Cardin edged out former NAACP chief Kweisi Mfume on Tuesday for the Democratic nomination for Senate. He will face Republican Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in the November election to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes.

If he won, Steele would become just the sixth black senator in U.S. history.

[Last modified September 14, 2006, 05:49:12]