Contested primaries again will be critical harbingers of the 2014 mid-term election results. They’ll be watched especially closely on the Republican side, where unexpected nominees have been blamed, at least in part, for Republicans’ failure to take control of the Senate in recent elections.

Surprise GOP primary winners in Nevada (Sharron Angle), Delaware (Christine O’Donnell), Indiana (Richard Mourdock), Missouri (Todd Akin) and Colorado (Ken Buck) over the last two cycles may have cost the party seats critical to gaining a majority. Other non-establishment winners who went on to victory in Texas (Ted Cruz), Kentucky (Rand Paul) and Utah (Mike Lee) have affected the ideological makeup of the Republican caucus.

On the Democratic side, 2010 primary challenges to Senate candidates in Arkansas (incumbent Blanche Lincoln) and Pennsylvania (Joe Sestak) were beaten back, but signaled weakness — both Lincoln and Sestak lost their general election fights.

In the House, increased polarization among lawmakers and the electorate, paired with the creation of homogenous districts across the country, have led to nearly all districts being “safe” for one party. Most of the potential for ousting incumbents comes in primaries or those few competitive districts that remain.

The number of primary contests since 2004 in which the incumbent received less than 70 percent of the vote has grown substantially for House candidates, from 15 in that cycle to 34 in 2012 (a slight drop from 40 in 2010). The increase has been more pronounced among Republicans, where different elements of the party are competing for control, though the numbers grew for Democrats, too, before falling dramatically in the 2012 cycle. In the Senate, the number bumped up for a few cycles but fell back down to two in 2012.

Here’s a breakdown:

Incumbents Who Received Less Than 70 Percent of the Vote



What’s behind this? One factor widely noted is the growth of outside spending groups. The numbers show a somewhat greater likelihood that a member would be challenged from within her own party after a series of court decisions, beginning in 2008, freed outside groups to spend much more aggressively in electoral efforts.

So is this all about outside groups pulling the parties apart from within? Should we expect these groups to participate more, and in a more sophisticated way, in 2014 primaries?

It isn’t as though primary challenges never happened in the days before Citizens United and the other court and regulatory actions that have reshaped national politics in the last few years. Two races from 2006 are good examples. In Connecticut, Sen. Joe Lieberman sought reelection to the Senate after his high-profile support of President Bush’s efforts in Iraq. He was challenged in the Democratic primary by Ned Lamont, whose stated policies were much more in line with national party goals.

The Lamont campaign was driven financially by two forces: a new grassroots effort to encourage small contributions from a national network of donors (ActBlue), and the candidate’s own resources. Lamont was able to start his campaign late, by current standards, with his first campaign finance report covering the first quarter of 2006, only four months prior to the first “voting” in the party convention in Connecticut. About half of his early fundraising (roughly $370,000 in that first quarterly report) came from his own bank account. Nearly half of the remaining money came in contributions from individuals, and more than half of that (about $161,000) was in the form of small donations of $200 or less. That was unusual: Most candidates in statewide races begin by seeking contributions at the upper end of the limit from people they know through business or political experience.

Much of the small dollar fundraising was attributed to ActBlue, at that time a relatively new organization designed to inform and mobilize such donors throughout the country. ActBlue provides progressive voters and activists with information about candidates and an easy way to offer “earmarked” contributions to those it favors. Its off-year fundraising and earmarking has grown steadily from about $1.5 million in 2005 to more than $66 million in 2013 alone. The Lamont campaign – an anti-war challenge to an incumbent who was perceived by many Democrats as a traitor to the party – was a perfect fit for the organization and its liberal supporters. During the first three months of 2006, ActBlue was responsible for funneling $118,000 in small donations to Lamont. Over the course of the race, ActBlue sent about $400,000 altogether to Lamont, or a little more than 10 percent of all his contributions from individuals.

Still, that total would not be nearly enough to conduct a competitive campaign, especially in an expensive media state like Connecticut. The most important financial force in the Lamont effort was his own checkbook. Lamont himself funded about $17 million of the $20.6 million total he spent during the primary and general election campaigns.

In the end, while Lamont defeated Lieberman in the Democratic primary contest, the incumbent was able to build a successful independent campaign in the general election.

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Republicans had a nearly mirror image intra-party Senate battle in neighboring Rhode Island the same year. Liberal Republican incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee was challenged from the right by Steve Laffey, a conservative former investment banker.

As with Lamont, Laffey’s finances were buttressed by his own resources plus a national network of contributions organized by an outside group. In the third quarter of 2005 Laffey looked like a typical challenger, with about half his funds coming from individuals, many of them from the financial industry, and the other half coming from his personal funds in the form of a loan. In the last three months of 2005, though, things shifted. Nearly half of his contributions from individuals (about $140,000) were earmarked through the Club for Growth, a conservative organization with both an active PAC and an earmarking program similar to ActBlue.

In all, Club for Growth would provide more than $500,000 in earmarked donations, or about one-third of the money Laffey raised from individuals.

Chafee defeated Laffey in the primary, 54 to 46 percent, but he was beaten by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in the general election.

Shifting Terrain

The first of the major court decisions that have changed the way campaigns are funded and conducted came in 2007. The ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC allowed nonprofit groups to spend money more directly in elections, making reference to candidates in broadcast ads just before elections so long as the ads were about legislative issues. This flexibility in direct spending advanced with the 2010 decisions in Citizens United v. FEC and SpeechNow v. FEC, which allowed corporations (including nonprofits) and unions to spend unlimited amounts directly supporting or opposing candidates, and confirmed that political committees that exclusively made these independent expenditures could also use unlimited and unrestricted contributions for these purposes.

In primaries since then, challengers showed some of the same fundraising patterns as Lamont and Laffey, but there were differences as well: The candidates themselves in the later races (e.g. Joe Miller in Alaska, Bill Halter in Arkansas, Sestak in Pennslyvania, and Lee in Utah in 2010 or Mourdock in 2012) often raised significant amounts in small donations from individuals, grew national fundraising bases and were helped by outside organizations. ActBlue was an important factor for the successful Democratic challengers, for example, with Sestak receiving more than $3 million (about one-third of his contributions from individuals) through the group, and Halter collected more than $450,000 (more than 11 percent of his total) through the earmarking effort.

But direct spending by outside groups brought greater national attention to the races and energized activists, who are more likely to vote in low turnout primaries. Club for Growth, for example, moved from bundling contributions to its favored candidates to spending directly on ads. The group spent more than $200,000 opposing Sen. Robert Bennett in Utah in his convention contest against Lee. The Club also spent more than $200,000 opposing party favorite Sue Lowden in Nevada, where Sharon Angle ultimately won the primary.

Besides Club for Growth, Americans for Job Security spent more than $600,000 supporting Ken Buck and opposing Jane Norton in the Republican race in Colorado. Tea Party Express spent more than $200,000 in the Delaware primary and more than $500,000 in Nevada, while the Senate Conservatives Fund spent $140,000 independently to help Buck in Colorado and $72,000 supporting Lee in Utah.

Stay tuned for another post soon looking at the fundraising reports candidates filed on Jan. 31; they’ll give hints about the most viable challengers, such as how much they pulled in from small donors and how much outside groups earmarked for them. The money for primary challenges can come from many directions, and while it doesn’t guarantee success it plays an important role in shaping the Congress. We’ll be watching closely and reporting regularly on the flow of funds in this year’s primaries.

Images: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas); former Sen. Joe Lieberman (R-Conn.)



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