Strike Everything

For every Tom Horne, Felecia Rotellini and Jesse Kelly of the election cycle, there’s an Andrew Thomas, David Lujan and Jonathan Paton.

Although the primary winners (Horne, Rotellini and Kelly) move on to face another foe, the losers (Thomas, Lujan and Paton) still have the ability to affect the general election race, depending on how – or even if – they concede.

And there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to do it.

“If you look at Jonathan Paton, and the way that he behaved when he conceded, it was brilliant,” said Kyler Moyer, a GOP political consultant and owner of Kyle Moyer & Company. “He did it with heartfelt thanks to his supporters, and encouraged all of them to get behind Jesse Kelly.”

Moyer, whose candidates went two-for-two this primary season, said concession speeches need to be sincere to bring the party back together. “We call it ‘coming home,’” he said. “After the primary, Republicans need to come home and support the nominee, whether they like the guy or not.”

This ‘coming home’ has definitely not happened in the primary for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, which Moyer said will be a problem for GOP primary winner Ben Quayle.

“Look at the CD3 race. That has not happened and that is going to hurt Quayle considerably. You don’t have Vernon (Parker) saying ‘Hey I’m out, everybody be excited about Ben.’ Same thing with (Jim) Waring and with Paulina Morris,” Moyer said. “It’s just the nature of campaigns. There’s a right way and a wrong way to concede.”

Moyer said he advises any candidates whose campaigns he runs to “concede with honor and integrity and when the time is right.”

Sometimes candidates aren’t sure what constitutes the right time to concede, or they will concede and then un-concede. Ultimately, whether a candidate concedes has no bearing on the actual results.

“It has no practical legal effect from our perspective. If a candidate like David Lujan concedes the race for attorney general, and then we complete the vote count and find that in fact, he had more votes than Felecia Rotellini, guess what, he wins the race, his concession notwithstanding,” said Matt Benson, director of communications for the Secretary of State’s Office.

Concession speeches may hold even more weight in primary elections because the speech tells a candidate’s supporters what to do next.

“When a candidate concedes, although not a legal concession, it is a personal concession,” Moyer said. “They’ve given up the fight. It clears a path for their supporters, who may be hanging on to hope, to move on.”

This year’s primary concession speeches featured a bit of everything.

J.D. Hayworth conceded his race, which was a blowout, to John McCain around 9:30 p.m. on primary night with a speech urging his supporters to “continue the fight for conservative principles,” but he stopped far short of throwing his support behind Arizona’s senior senator.

David Lujan conceded the Democratic primary for attorney general to Felecia Rotellini with a phone call and a pledge of support, as did Jim Ward to David Schweikert in the Republican primary for Arizona’s 5th Congressional District.

In Arizona’s most heated and closely contested primary – the Republican nomination for attorney general – concessions are like an Arizona monsoon. It could look like one is coming all day, but then when the time comes, nothing.

However, it seems Tom Horne and Andrew Thomas, the two seasoned politicians who spent a large part of their campaigns attacking each other in “he’s-worse-than-I-am-mode,” still observe the golden rule of primaries.

Early in the primary evening, Horne was down and said he’d support Thomas. Later in the evening, Thomas was trailing and said he’d support Horne. Thomas’ chief campaign adviser Jason Rose even tweeted that the race was over. But it wasn’t – at least not to Thomas.

As the night wore on and the race stayed close, neither conceded. Then as Wednesday and Thursday and most of Friday passed with Horne holding steady margins of 400 to 1,000 votes, a concession was expected Friday evening, but it never came. Then Monday rolls around, and Horne was told to expect a concession call from Thomas.

It would take another day for Thomas to realize the race was over. His concession today (Aug. 31) and an accompanying endorsement of Horne was clearly an attempt at gracefulness by a politician who exemplifies anything but that.

The tardiness reveals Thomas’ stubbornness, and the endorsement is likely to ring hollow in the ears of anyone who heard Thomas trash-talk Horne on the campaign trail.

But the whole situation is probably most awkward for Thomas, who is now supposedly supporting a candidate whom he had accused of being a con artist and a fraud.

-Josh Coddington

If any theme emerged from the Aug. 24 primary, it’s that there wasn’t a single overarching theme.

Instead, there was a little bit of everything.

Some tea party candidates and “outsiders” won, which confirms that the anti-establishment sentiment directed at Washington, D.C. extends to Arizona.

But the sentiment’s reach wasn’t very deep – or it didn’t go deep enough.

Indeed, big names and well-oiled political machineries delivered in several races.

John McCain, the clear establishment candidate, trounced J.D. Hayworth in the Republican primary for the US Senate.

But it was also one of the most expensive U.S. Senate races in the country; McCain spent almost $25 million, according to OpenSecrets.org, which tracks campaign spending.

Ben Quayle’s familiar name and flush war chest proved unbeatable in the 10-way Republican primary in Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District.

Rep. Adam Driggs, aided by about $57,000 in independent spending, defeated Rich Davis as the two vied for their party’s Senate nomination in Legislative District 11.

“All in all, it was a low turn out and I think voters went with who they know,” said political consultant Chad Willems.

But Willems said if you looked closely at the flavor of each race, it appears that the more conservative candidates won, with some exemptions.

Constantin Querard, the conservative Republican consultant, came to a similar conclusion.

“The tea party values had a great night. Candidates who espoused tea party values had a great night,” Querard said.

Outsider Jesse Kelly defeated the better- known Jonathan Paton, a former legislator, in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District.

Republican Congressional primaries other than in CD3 were won by the “most tea party candidate,” Querard said, referring to Kelly in CD8, Paul Gosar in CD1 and David Schweikert in CD5.

At the legislative level, Michelle Ugenti, who ran on a tea party platform, won in Legislative District 8′s House primary.

Sen. Frank Antenori, a very conservative lawmaker from Tucson, also easily trounced former lawmaker Marian McClure. The gap was significant between Sen. Sylvia Allen, who won the primary in Legislative District 5, and Rep. Bill Konopnicki, who is considered the more mainstream of the two.

True, Gov. Jan Brewer is the incumbent and a long-time policymaker, and while tea party folks might not like her sales-tax increase, she made many other decisions that appealed to them, such as standing for state rights and signing SB1070, according to Querard.

The business community, which supported pro-business, more mainstream Republicans, had a “very good” night, too, according to the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The chamber said initial results showed that about 80 percent of the candidates it backed won, including Corporation Commission candidates Gary Pierce and Brenda Burns.

For the chamber, that race’s results also indicated that the public has drawn a line on the issue of immigration, rejecting wilder ideas.

“You’ll recall that (Barry) Wong floated a proposal in his campaign that utility providers should deny service to illegal immigrants,” said the chamber’s Allison Bell. “Voters clearly want improved border security, but Wong’s defeat hopefully shows that there is a threshold for what’s considered a serious policy idea and what is simply beyond the pale.”

So what can be drawn from these primary results?

Well, you can’t really paint them with a broad brush.

But that’s Arizona. This is, after all, the state that elected a Democrat for governor and a Republican Legislature a few years back. It’s also the red state that initially rejected a more encompassing ban on same-sex marriage before approving a narrower version two years ago.

It looks like you can still draw a better picture by looking at each race, rather than find a common theme to explain the primary results.