Wisconsin Interest
Volume 18, No. 2
July, 2009

Walker vs. Neumann?
A primary battle would likely strengthen—not weaken—the GOP’s chances.

By Kenneth R. Lamke

The prospect of a primary contest between Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker and former Congressman Mark Neumann for the Republican nomination for governor in 2010 greatly enhances the GOP’s chances of defeating Gov. Jim Doyle next year.

At least the historical record of the past 45 years of Wisconsin elections leads to that conclusion.

Each of the six times that incumbent governors or U.S. senators were defeated since 1962 occurred when the nominee of the out party emerged from a contested primary rather than having the nomination handed to him by running unopposed in the primary.

The incumbents who lost were Gov. John Reynolds in 1964, Acting Gov. Martin Schreiber in 1978, Sen. Gaylord Nelson in 1980, Gov. Anthony Earl in 1986, Sen. Robert Kasten Jr. in 1992 and Gov. Scott McCallum in 2002.

The winners were Warren P. Knowles, who beat businessman Milo Knutson in the 1964 GOP gubernatorial primary; Lee Dreyfus, who upset then-Congressman Kasten in the 1978 GOP primary for governor; Kasten, who beat businessmen Terry Kohler and Doug Coffrin in the GOP Senate primary in 1980; Tommy Thompson, who beat then-Dane County Executive Jonathan Barry and businessman George Watts in the 1986 Republican gubernatorial contest; then-State Sen. Russ Feingold, who destroyed then-Congressman Jim Moody and businessman Joe Checota in the 1992 Democratic Senate primary; and then-State Attorney General Jim Doyle, who beat then-Congressman Tom Barrett and Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk in the 2002 Democratic primary for governor.

You have to go back to 1962 to find an incumbent U.S. senator, Republican Alexander Wiley, losing to a challenger, Gaylord Nelson, who did not first have to face a primary. But Nelson was the incumbent governor and chose to seek a senate seat that year rather than run for re-election.

In 1958, Nelson, then a state senator, also ousted incumbent Republican Gov. Vernon Thomson without first winning a contested Democratic primary.So why does winning a contested primary seem to help the out-party candidate so much?
A contested primary focuses media and voter attention on those primary candidates for months, while the unopposed incumbent gets no such attention. The press rule is, no contest, no election coverage.

The incumbent can’t attack his opponent during the long primary season because he doesn’t know who his opponent is until after the September election. Meanwhile, the primary candidates are free to criticize the incumbent for months and months without any return fire.

The general election electorate, which is much bigger than the primary electorate, gives great credence to a primary victory. They know that it is a real win, not just a lead in an election-year poll.Winners of contested statewide primaries invariably see their poll numbers rise—the phenomenon variously described as a “boost” or a “bounce”—and usually find their fund-raising increases in the wake of the primary victory as well.

On the other hand, while winning a contested primary has proved to be a necessary condition for defeating an incumbent in Wisconsin during the past 45 years, it has not by itself been a sufficient condition.

There have been occasions when the out party held a hotly contested primary only to lose in November. To cite the most recent instance, businessman Tim Michels defeated then-State Sen. Bob Welch, businessman Russ Darrow and a fourth candidate for the GOP nomination for the senate in a hotly contested primary in 2004, but Michels went on to lose to Feingold in the general election.

So what’s the downside to having a contested primary?

Party leaders see three big ones. One is money, which they see as being wasted in a primary when it could be hoarded and directed against the incumbent in the general election. The second is that a rancorous primary could besmirch the ultimate winner. The third is that party activists can become alienated and won’t unite behind the primary winner.

The counter-argument is that the money isn’t wasted at all, because a primary builds name recognition for the winner and advances the case that the incumbent should be booted. Whatever negatives that attach to the primary winner are thought to be strongly outweighed by the aura of victory.One little-discussed reason that party leaders oppose contested primaries is that it diminishes their ability to influence the selection of the party nominee.

Sometimes these party leaders are not so much interested in having their party nominee knock off the incumbent as they are in having the specific candidate they support win the nomination.

They really don’t care if their party wins in November—that is, that the primary candidate whom they haven’t backed goes on to beat the incumbent. In fact, they sometimes strongly oppose that outcome, although they won’t say so.
Almost by definition, they are not really “party” leaders as much as they are supporters of a particular candidate.

That’s what happened in the last gubernatorial election, when the pro-business Milwaukee wing of the GOP leadership backed then-Congressman Mark Green of Appleton over the Milwaukeean Walker, forcing Walker to drop his candidacy before the primary campaign even began.

Those “party leaders” did not trust the populist conservative Walker. They did not want him elected. It is not at all apparent at this point that they have changed their minds.

 

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