FYI Mr. Bennett

I respect Mr. Bennett’s opinion. Unfortunately, it’s an opinion based on false premises of which Mr. Bennett was most likely unaware, so I do not completely hold it against him. In his letter, he claimed that he could not recollect a time in modern history where an incumbent was challenged. Well, to make a long story short:

* Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt
* Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee
* Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCollum
* Colorado Gov. Bill Owens
* Florida Gov. Jeb Bush
* Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthome
* Nebraska Gov. Kenny Guinn
* New York Gov. George F. Pataki
* Ohio Gov. Bob Taft
* Texas Gov. Rick Perry
* Wisconsin Gov. Scott McCallum

And for modern presidents in major primaries (Primary Opponents):

* 1976 Gerald Ford (Ronald Reagan)
* 1980 Jimmy Carter (Teddy Kennedy)
* 1992 George H.W. Bush (Pat Buchanan)

This is just a list of incumbent Republican governors who in the last five years were re-nominated by a primary. The list does not include any incumbent Democrats but nearly all of them also deal with primaries. In nearly all cases, the governors participated in a primary even though they clearly enjoyed high approval rating within their party and their state.

On the presidential level, you could see that incumbents also faced primary opponents. Who would have thought that Ronald Reagan, who lost in a primary to Gerald Ford in 1976, would come back 4 years later to become one of the greatest presidents in the United States? At least he was given a shot four years before becoming President.

I do not blame Mr. Bennett’s false assessment about the existence of primaries. In almost all cases, the incumbents faced minimal competition in their primaries, which, in turn, produced zero media coverage. But let’s not forget that Pat Buchanan and Ronald Reagan defeated their incumbent Republican opponents in a number of states before eventually losing the primaries.

Mr. Bennett’s commentary also implicitly advised Heinz Hofschneider and Dave Apatang that they should wait their turn and to “be a bigger man” so they do not destroy the Republican Party. I actually would have had said the same thing if they were given an opportunity to face the incumbents in a primary and lost, but I believe they have every right to oppose the party that shut them out. Indeed, this is a very different Republican Party than we have seen in the past and in the present. Incumbents here and in the mainland have always been challenged in primaries. I guess this is the ‘obsolete political thinking’ that the executive director of the Local GOP talked about.

Roman T. Palacios Jr.
George Washington University
Washington DC

PS. A note to the Democrats: If your party ever wants to align itself with the national party, I should advise you adopt more Democratic values. Luis Crisostomo also deserves his day with the electorate.