Primaries Prove All Politics is Local, Nothing Else

The political media tried to make yesterday's primary elections into something interesting to help spruce up the 24-hour news cycle. After all, one can only watch a sea-bed oil leak for so long. Yet there was no grand nationwide theme out of yesterday's mildly amusing balloting. At best, one can say that the races proved all politics is local.

According to the political chattering class, the Arkansas Democratic Senate race between incumbent Blanche Lincoln and slightly-lefter challenger Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter was vital in understanding the anti-incumbent mood. Forces from outside Arkansas (labor, blogosphere lefties, etc.) poured money into Mr. Halter's campaign, allowing Ms. Lincoln to pretend to be defender of Arkansas fighting the good fight in DC. The truth is whoever won last night (and it was Ms. Lincoln by a couple percentage points) will get stomped by Republican candidate John Boozman.

Another amusing but irrelevant race occurred in South Carolina, which is making a bid to be America's politically craziest state. There, Republican state representative Nikki Haley won a 49% plurality for the GOP's gubernatorial nomination but needed an outright majority to avoid a runoff. What's interesting about this race was as Reuters put it, "Haley has denied allegations from two Republican operatives that she had engaged in adultery with both of them. This came in a state where voters were shocked last year by Republican Governor Mark Sanford's affair with an Argentine mistress that broke up his marriage." Also, she is from a family of Sikhs, so naturally South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts used the term "raghead" to describe her. One supposes he needed to burnish his good ol' boy credentials.

Meanwhile on the Democratic side, the Associated Press noted, "An unemployed military veteran who raised no funds and put up no campaign website shocked South Carolina's Democratic Party leadership by capturing the nomination Tuesday to face Republican U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint in November. With nearly all precincts reporting, Alvin Greene, 32, commanded 59 percent of the vote against 41 percent for former four-term state lawmaker Vic Rawl." Mr. Greene truly raised no money and appears to have held no events. God willing, he has discovered the most effective way to campaign in the 21st century.

Of course, the West doesn't want to let South Carolina walk off with the title of "The Nut-Job State" without a fight, and Nevada did its part. There, four Republicans vied for the right to take on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in November, but only two really had a shot at winning. Sue Lowden, a former state senator and Nevada Republican Party chairwoman, was the front-runner until she suggested (repeatedly) that bartering chickens with one's doctor would be a viable solution to the medical care problems of America. By the time the late night comedians got done with her, Sharron Angle, a former Reno assemblywoman and Tea Party favorite, could not be stopped. However, her desire to privatize Social Security may bother many, and her desire to ban not only marijuana but alcohol may not play well in Las Vegas a/k/a Sin City. Mr. Reid could not have written a better script.

Finally, one has the Senate and Governor's races in California. There, two well-compensated female ex-CEOs won. Carly Fiorina, who halved Hewlett-Packard's stock price as its boss, spent about $6.7 million at the end of May to win the right to face Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat. On the gubernatorial side, Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and a ex-director of Goldman Sachs who resigned over IPO shenanigans in 2002, spent $81 million of her $1.5 billion fortune for the right to take on Former Governor Jerry Brown, who wants his old job back. Both GOP women will get beaten badly because of California's Democratic majority and because corporations will be less popular this November than they have been in many years. And seriously, when has Jerry Brown ever lost an election in California?

© Copyright 2010 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.

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