In Three Turbulent Primaries, Measures of Voter Discontent By JEFF ZELENY FLORENCE, Ky. — Rand Paul grabbed a microphone, climbed onto a short brick wall and told a gathering crowd of supporters to brace for an Election Day uprising on Tuesday.
“There’s a Tea Party tidal wave coming. It’s already hit Utah and it’s coming to Kentucky,” Mr. Paul said, delivering a confident pep talk here in the closing hours of the Republican primary for a United States Senate seat. “The day of reckoning is coming. We cannot elect the same old politicians without getting the same old mess.” If his confidence is borne out by victory, it would mark one of the most important moments yet for the Tea Party, the anti-Washington, anti-big government movement that was partially inspired by the quixotic 2008 presidential race of his father, Representative Ron Paul of Texas. Establishment Republicans — including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, former Vice President Dick Cheney and the Chamber of Commerce — have united in opposition to Mr. Paul, but optimism was diminishing that their candidate, Trey Grayson, could prevail. The discontent among voters has not discriminated by party in this turbulent political year. In Pennsylvania and Arkansas on Sunday, Democratic Senators Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln waged last-minute fights ahead of potentially career-ending primaries for each of them on Tuesday, hoping the value of seniority would counter powerful anti-incumbent challenges. The outcome in these three states will provide lessons that will help frame the debate for the remaining six months of the midterm election season, with Democrats fighting to hold their control of the House and Senate. Both parties will study the results for evidence of the Tea Party movement’s ability to translate passion into votes. They will gauge the degree to which President Obama, who is backing Mr. Specter and Mrs. Lincoln, is a political liability or benefit to his party. And they will look to see what messages, if any, assuage voter anger and anxiety as politics hurtles toward the fall, the economy still in the shadow of the recession. Here in Kentucky, where the Republican Senate race has become a central front among Tea Party activists, Mr. Paul and Mr. Grayson are running to succeed Senator Jim Bunning, who is retiring. Mr. Grayson, the secretary of state, has never served in Washington, but his association with Mr. McConnell has made him a lightning rod in this anything-but-Washington year. “On my side, I’m viewed as this proxy for McConnell. If I win or lose, it’s a big victory or loss for him,” Mr. Grayson said in an interview on Saturday at a Republican breakfast. “I think that’s an exaggeration.” The candidates have been deeply critical of the president’s policies, particularly government bailouts of banks and auto companies and his willingness to tolerate a higher federal budget deficit. But in his final appeal to voters, Mr. Grayson returned the conversation to Kentucky issues, reprising criticism that Mr. Paul made several years ago about coal, a key industry here. Mr. Paul, in his final push, stressed dire warnings about the nation’s fiscal condition. For more than an hour, Mr. Grayson held a pair of tongs and handed out biscuits as people passed through the buffet line at a Masonic lodge in the southern Kentucky town of Nancy. He had about 10 seconds to ask people for their vote, the time it took to break apart a biscuit and ladle on a serving of sausage gravy. For all of the excitement generated outside Kentucky by this race — Mr. Paul proudly reminded audiences that they were part of a “national movement” — voter turnout here remains an uncertainty in a state with a closed primary. Election rules say that voters who did not register as Republican by Dec. 31, 2009, cannot vote in the Paul-Grayson primary on Tuesday. This is one of the few worries that are openly expressed by an otherwise confident Mr. Paul and his supporters, including libertarians and independents, whose ranks have grown considerably over the last five months as more voters have tuned in. “Some people are going to be disappointed when they go to vote and they won’t be able to vote for Rand,” said Bernie Kunkel, a friend of Mr. Paul’s who is coordinating campaign efforts in northern Kentucky. Democrats are also selecting their nominee on Tuesday, choosing either Jack Conway, the attorney general, or Daniel Mongiardo, the lieutenant governor. Republicans hold an advantage in the fall election, considering that Senator John McCain carried the state by 57 percent over Mr. Obama in the 2008 presidential vote. Yet some party leaders worry that the general election will be more difficult if Mr. Paul is on the ticket. “I think Trey Grayson would be a stronger candidate in November,” Mr. McConnell said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “But I expect Kentucky is going to be in a pretty Republican mood this fall.” Mr. Paul rejects the suggestion that voters would find any of his views outside the mainstream or that he could not handily defeat a Democrat. At a rally outside his headquarters here on Saturday, Mr. Paul told supporters that he would not “shove them aside and get rid of the Tea Party” if he wins on Tuesday. But in an interview he acknowledged, “Even my advisers sometimes will say, ‘Oh you have to drop this Tea Party thing a little bit.’ ” Mr. Paul, who often weaves quotations from Jefferson and other founding fathers into his speeches, said he would not intentionally be “a fly in the ointment” if he joined Republicans in the Senate. But he said his election would signal a new direction for the party. “It’s nothing new for a party to struggle for its identity,” Mr. Paul said. “Every generation has to renew and redefine what their political parties are. And we’re in the process of doing that.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/17/us/politics/17kentucky.html?hp=&pagewanted=print -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
