We’ve yet to see how much of the anti-establishment talk is just talk and how much incumbents should be shaking in their power suits. Political report publisher Stu Rothenberg says the doomed-incumbent narrative has been overstated. “There’s evidence of Tea Party activism, of voters being suspicious of anointed candidates. But I wouldn’t say there’s a wildfire sweeping the country and destroying all incumbents,” he says.
Such a prognostication must be sweet, sweet music to the ears of Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who will certainly become the next chapter in that narrative if she doesn’t win her primary runoff election on Tuesday. Despite coming out ahead in the Arkansas primary three weeks ago, the two-term senator is facing a neck-and-neck race with Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who has been bashing Lincoln as an ineffective Washington insider.
But Halter may not be Lincoln’s greatest foe. Special interest groups have spent plenty of millions trying to make her pay for not voting their way, whether because of her vote on health care or opposition to labor-backed legislation that streamlined union organization. Take this ad from the League of Conservation Voters, for instance:
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Lincoln has retaliated with perhaps the greatest weapon an Arkansan hopeful can wield: William Jefferson Clinton. One of her latest ads features clips from a Clinton speech about how labor groups are attacking her unfairly. In essence, Lincoln is fighting union cash with Clinton’s clout.
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