National parties intervene in primary races

PROVIDENCE -- Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been using their national campaign funds to help incumbents and other favored candidates in competitive primaries, angering grass-roots activists in a year when incumbents are facing strong challenges from inside their own parties.

Some of the anger bubbled over in Rhode Island, where the national Republican Party went to unusual lengths to help Senator Lincoln D. Chafee beat back a more conservative challenger Tuesday. The National Republican Senatorial Committee boosted Chafee with a $1 million advertising blitz and the experienced voter-mobilization team of the Republican National Committee, despite the fact that Chafee is often an outcast in his own party in Washington, D.C.

On the same day in New Hampshire, Democratic primary voters rejected a candidate funded in part by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, selecting Carol Shea-Porter over Jim Craig in the race to take on Representative Jeb Bradley. Shea-Porter won with a strong antiwar message, overcoming the huge financial and institutional advantage enjoyed by Craig, the state House minority leader.

``The grass-roots won't have someone shoved down their throats," said Gene Porter, the candidate's husband, who was manning the busy phones at his wife's campaign headquarters yesterday. ``The DCCC's criteria has been, `Can they raise money?' That no longer should be the criteria. It should be, `Who has the message?' And the money will follow the message."

Stephen Laffey, whom Chafee edged out in Tuesday's primary, blasted national party leaders for blowing through cash in an intramural fight when any Republican faces long odds in a general election in Democratic Rhode Island.

``It's not trying to help America; it's a political calculation," said Laffey, the mayor of Cranston. ``I'd rather help America. Shouldn't we all be trying to help America?"

In a year where incumbents of all stripes are being targeted, establishment-backed Democrats are facing primary challenges fueled by liberal anger over the Iraq war. Republicans, meanwhile, are confronting challengers from the political right, with the antitax Club for Growth funding challenges such as Laffey's and anger over illegal immigration also fueling upstart candidacies.

Against that backdrop, the Republican and Democratic campaign committees, which raise and spend tens of millions of dollars each, have not been content to let the states' primary voters settle on candidates on their own. Governed by a general philosophy that protecting incumbents is paramount, they have used their vast financial and organizational resources to intervene in primary elections. The moves hand incumbents, who already have significant fund-raising advantages over most challengers, even more reasons to prevail in primaries or to scare off potential challengers.

``It makes it so much harder for an outsider to get into the game," said Mary Boyle, a spokeswoman for the government watchdog group Common Cause.

The parties' attempts to help incumbents haven't always succeeded. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee supported Senator Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut in last month's primary, a decision that shut out his challenger, Ned Lamont, from key fund-raising sources and policy playbooks.

But Lieberman was upset by Lamont, and the DSCC is now backing Lamont while Lieberman runs as an independent.

``I had an awful lot of people who really didn't want to talk to me on Tuesday afternoon, and they were pretty happy to talk with me on Tuesday evening," Lamont told reporters last week, referring to the day of the primary. ``I like all my new friends."

At times, the focus on preserving incumbents means supporting a candidate who -- like Chafee -- strays from party's mainstream. Also Tuesday, in Vermont, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee helped secure the Democratic Senate nomination for independent Representative Bernard Sanders, even though Sanders is refusing the endorsement so he can appear on the ballot as an independent. The national party was fearful that allowing an actual Democrat to win the nomination would split the liberal vote.

Earlier this year, in Montana, the NRSC rallied behind incumbent Senator Conrad Burns in the GOP primary -- a decision the committee may come to regret, with Burns's ill-advised comments and ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff leaving him vulnerable.

In Ohio, the DSCC chairman, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, pressured Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett to drop his Senate candidacy to give Representative Sherrod Brown an unimpeded path as he seeks to unseat Republican Senator Mike DeWine.

Hackett, an Iraq war veteran whom some Democratic leaders had urged to enter the race before Brown got in, left the campaign in February with an angry denunciation of Schumer and other party officials. He called it a ``betrayal" and accused them of ``behind-the-scenes machinations."

Said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate campaigns for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, ``Party committees aren't about ideology; they're about winning."

The NRSC was particularly aggressive in Rhode Island, bankrolling a harsh ad campaign aimed at portraying Laffey as a tax-raiser who lacks the temperament to serve in the Senate. The NRSC chairman, Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, went as far as to say publicly that the committee would not support his candidacy financially if he beat Chafee.

Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, called it a ``bad call" by the NRSC and said such personal attacks on a conservative Republican may be alienating the party's top donors. The NRSC has $20.6 million on hand for the stretch run, compared with the DSCC's $35.1 million.

``The national party ought to be about expanding the majority, not fighting between Republicans," Toomey said.