Why They Avoid Contested Primaries
Quiz time: When was the last time Vermont Democrats have had a seriously contested gubernatorial primary?
Answer: 1980 when Jerry Diamond, who was the attorney general, faced off against Tim O’Connor, who was the speaker of the House. Diamond won the primary - 50 percent to 48 percent - and went on to lose the general election to incumbent Governor Richard Snelling.
That was nearly 30 years ago, which is why I suspect that few people today understand how damaging primaries can be.
Democrats have had very few seriously contested primaries for top offices. Sure, there have been contests for some of the lower tier offices – for lieutenant governor in 2004 and 2006, and for state treasurer in 2002 – but you have to go all of the way back to 1988 to find a hot primary race for the US House. That was the year four Democrats (Peter Welch, Paul Poirier, Jim Guest and Dolores Sandoval) competed. Poirier barely beat Welch (34 percent for Poirier; 33 percent for Welch; 26 percent for Guest and 7 percent for Sandoval), but was so weakened by the primary battle that he came in third in the General Election, behind the winner, Republican Peter Smith, and independent Bernie Sanders. That second place showing is what set Sanders up to win the House seat in 1990.
In the US Senate Democrats had competitive primaries in 2000 (Ed Flanagan, 49 percent; Jan Backus, 46 percent) and 1994 (Backus, 54 percent; Doug Costle, 43 percent), but in both cases the Republican was Jim Jeffords, who had considerable Democratic support, so the primary fever was a bit lower than it might have otherwise been.
The dearth of recent Democratic primaries becomes important in looking at the 2010 gubernatorial race. Some analysts are touting the successes of Deb Markowitz and Doug Racine in raising money as evidence that Governor Jim Douglas is in trouble. But what’s missing there is an appreciation and understanding of how costly and possibly damaging hotly contested primaries can be.
Divisive primaries in the top tier offices can doom a candidate. It was true in the 1988 US House race; it was true in the 1980 gubernatorial contest, and it has been true in every other Vermont case I can think of in the past 40 years. In 1972 a bitter GOP gubernatorial contest featured then-Attorney General Jim Jeffords and Luther “Fred” Hackett, an insurance executive who was the preferred candidate of then-Governor Deane Davis. Hackett won the nomination but lost the election to Democrat Tom Salmon.
In some cases, though, the final results have been close. In 1980 there was a spirited six-way race for the Republican nomination for the US Senate. The winner of that contest, Stewart Ledbetter, went on to receive 48.59 percent of the vote against Patrick Leahy, who received 49.76 percent. If Ledbetter had not been consumed fighting off his fellow Republicans throughout the summer, he might have been able to defeat Leahy in the fall.
Competitive primaries sap the energy and money of the candidates; the candidates must focus huge amounts of their efforts on turning out Democratic votes for the primary. It isn’t just time and money: Criticisms raised in a primary can come back and haunt the nominee in the fall.
There is also little time to recover from a damaging primary. Vermont’s primary is the second Tuesday of September – and in 2010 that falls on September 14, the latest possible date. The 2010 general election is November 2, the earliest possible date under the federal law that sets election day for the Tuesday after the first Monday.
The Vermont Senate has passed legislation that would move the state primary up two weeks – to the fourth Tuesday in August – but that bill is pending in the House and it is not clear whether it will pass and be effective for 2010. As introduced in the Senate the bill would have moved the primary up a month – to the second Tuesday in August – but senators decided that was too deep into the summer.
That’s why you have seen few contested primaries: Party leaders and candidates have gone out of their way to try to avoid primaries – in some elections the potential candidates have sat down and negotiated who would run and who would not.
All of that said, though, a hotly contested Democratic race for governor next year does not mean the Democrats will lose. Barack Obama was battered and bruised by the presidential primaries but went on to raise the most money ever, pulled together his former opponents – and won.
That’s the model that Deb Markowitz, Doug Racine and whoever else might get into the race hope to follow in 2010.
Chris Graff, a former Vermont bureau chief of The Associated Press and host of VPT's Vermont This Week, is now vice president for communications at National Life Group. He is author of, Dateline Vermont: Covering and uncovering the newsworthy stories that shaped a state - and influenced a nation.
