Indiana’s Lugar defeated
Senator loses GOP primary to tea Party-backed rival
WASHINGTON — Sixterm Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana was routed by the right flank of his own Republican Party on Tuesday, and North Carolina voters decided overwhelmingly to strengthen their state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, meanwhile, swept three Republican primaries, moving ever closer to sealing the nomination.
“We are experiencing deep political divisions in our society right now. These divisions have stalemated progress in critical areas,” Lugar, a Capitol Hill diplomat and a deal maker, said as he conceded to the Tea Party-backed Republican opponent who ended his long career in the Senate. Lugar’s vanquisher, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, had painted the Republican senator as too moderate for the conservative state.
North Carolinians voted to amend their state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, effectively outlawing same-sex marriages, partnerships and civil unions.
The state is the 30th in the country and the last in the South to include a prohibition on same-sex marriage in
the state constitution.
Also Tuesday, Wisconsin Democrats overwhelmingly picked Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to challenge Republican Gov. Scott Walker in a June recall election. The primary outcome set up a rematch — Barrett lost to Walker in 2010.
The highly charged and hard-fought contests overshadowed Romney’s continued progress toward the Republican presidential nomination. He won the Republican presidential primaries Tuesday in Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia, drawing close to the 1,144 delegates he needs to clinch the nomination. He won at least 60 delegates. He had 916 delegates, 228 shy the delegates necessary to claim the GOP mantle.
Romney spent the day campaigning in Michigan, where he castigated President Barack Obama as an “old-school liberal” whose policies will take the country backward. Romney didn’t weigh in on the primary outcomes or Lugar’s defeat.
The results of Tuesday’s far-flung voting gave clues about the state of the electorate — and illustrated the political minefields Republican and Democratic candidates face — with the presidential contest well under way.
Also, there was an indication of just how unpopular Obama is in some parts of the country.
A man in prison in Texas was garnering nearly 4 out of 10 votes in West Virginia’s Democratic presidential primary against Obama, who faces no serious primary challenger. The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. Within minutes of Lugar’s loss, Democrats were already painting Mourdock as too extreme for the state.
As Te a Party groups celebrated the win, Mourdock urged supporters to donate to his general election campaign, saying: “We left everything on the table to win the primary.” He will face Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly in November.
Tea Party organizers and conservative leaders held the outcome as evidence of a broader, national demand for Republicans with unshakable stances on fiscal policy and conservative values, as well as a proof of the continuing power of the Tea Party movement.
“Richard Mourdock’s victory truly sends a message to the liberals in the Republican Party,” said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth. “Voters are rejecting the policies that led to record debt and diminished economic freedom, and they will continue to be rejected in elections throughout America.”
Republicans need to gain four seats to take control of the U.S. Senate, and a Lugar loss “gives Democrats a pickup opportunity,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said.
Earlier in the day, Lugar, 80, made clear he would stand by Tuesday’s outcome, ruling out running as an independent. “This is it,” he said. With 99 percent of precincts reporting, Mourdock received 397,165 votes, or 61 percent, to Lugar’s 258,336, or 39 percent.
Playing out in a conservative state, the race illustrated the electorate’s animosity toward many incumbents and anyone with deep ties to Washington. Lugar, who hasn’t faced questions about his residency in decades, found himself on the defensive over whether he lived in Indiana or northern Virginia. Lugar was cast as too moderate for the conservative Republicans in Indiana, and he took heat for his work with Democrats on issues such as nuclear nonproliferation, underscoring deep polarization in the country as well as a split in the Republican Party between the establishment wing and the insurgent Tea Party.
In a statement, Obama praised his former Senate colleague as someone “who was often willing to reach across the aisle and get things done.”
Vice President Joe Biden, one of Lugar’s longtime counterparts on the Foreign Relations Committee, fondly recalled their partnership in a statement given Tuesday to The Washington Post. “We never had a cross word. In matters of foreign policy, we seldom disagreed,” said Biden, who was the ranking Democrat on the panel for 12 years.
Conservatives have long questioned how committed Lugar was to their causes, dating to 1986 when thenSen. Jesse Helms ousted Lugar as the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee after the midterm elections that year. Helms portrayed Lugar as an internationalist who sided with the United Nations. In 1995, Lugar used his foreign relations expertise to seek the Republican presidential nomination, but the bid never got off the ground. He announced his candidacy on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing.
In a statement Tuesday night, Lugar said: “If Mr. Mourdock is elected, I want him to be a good senator. But that will require him to revise his stated goal of bringing more partisanship to Washington. He and I share many positions, but his embrace of an unrelenting partisan mind-set is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance and my experience of what brings results for Hoosiers in the Senate.”
Before the returns were in, Republicans said Lugar’s race holds lessons. “The moral of the story is: Don’t play defense, play offense, one of the fundamental rules of elections,” said Sen. John Mccain of Arizona, who endorsed Lugar.
Elsewhere, North Carolina voters moved in the direction of 29 other states, opposite the movement of Democratic-leaning places such as New York and Vermont as well as conservative Iowa —where same-sex marriage is now legal. Six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex couples to wed.
The North Carolina measure strengthens a ban on same-sex marriage already on the books in the state, which until Tuesday had been the only state in the Southeast that had not incorporated the ban into its constitution.
With 98 percent of precincts reporting, 1,303,000 people, or 61 percent, had voted to strengthen the ban, while 821,625, or 39 percent, had opposed it.
The vote came after weeks of heated debate in church pews and over the airwaves. More than $3 million was spent on the rival campaigns. Ministers formed coalitions for and against the measure, and former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Billy Graham weighed in on opposite sides. Law professors skirmished over the consequences.
In the days before the North Carolina vote, two top administration officials, Vice President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, expressed support for same-sex marriage. Obama supports most gay rights but has stopped short of backing same-sex marriage.
The Biden and Duncan comments sent the White House into damage-control mode as gay-rights advocates pressed for Obama to publicly support same-sex marriage before November. Aides also tried to use the focus on the issue to criticize Romney’s equivocations on gay rights over the years.
Obama’s campaign said Tuesday that the president was “disappointed” with the state’s amendment. Cameron French, Obama’s spokesman for North Carolina, called the measure “divisive and discriminatory.”
Romney, in turn, emphasized his position that marriage should be solely between one man and one woman. He has said he supports a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
In Wisconsin, voters chose Barrett, one of four Democrats on the ballot, to challenge Walker in the June 5 recall election.
Union rights are dominating the recall.
Walker effectively ended collective-bargaining rights for most state workers and since then has emerged as a national conservative hero. The recall effort, mounted by opponents of his actions, has dominated the state political landscape, even overshadowing Romney’s primary victory there that essentially ended the nomination fight.
Now the presumptive nominee, Romney had no serious opposition in Indiana, West Virginia and North Carolina.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, who gave Romney a tepid endorsement Monday night via e-mail, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have dropped out of the race.
Rep. Ron Paul of Texas is still contesting the nomination, but he lags far behind in the delegate count.