Midterm Election Campaigns Heat-up After Tuesday Primaries

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• GWEN IFILL:

  The battle for control of the House and the Senate grew even more pitched yesterday, as voters went to the polls in nine states and the District of Columbia. Big names, like Hillary Clinton in New York, won easy re-nomination.

  But the outcomes of two races — one in Rhode Island, and one in Arizona — were emblematic of the fall general election battles to come. Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee, a liberal Republican, survived a vigorous challenge from Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, a conservative.

  Here is what Chafee had to say at his victory celebration last night.

  SEN. LINCOLN CHAFEE (R), Rhode Island: When I ran for the Senate in 2000, I promised you that I would always be honest, that I would always have the guts to take the hard votes, and that I would strive to work constructively with everyone in Washington. I believe I have kept these promises.

• GWEN IFILL:

  Here to analyze the primary results is John Mercurio, senior editor of Hotline, National Journal's daily briefing on politics.

  So, John, Lincoln Chafee didn't even vote for the president of his own party…

• JOHN MERCURIO, Senior Editor, The Hotline:

  Right.

• GWEN IFILL:

  … George W. Bush. He's voted against many of the things that the president wanted. Yet, Republicans were working very hard to make sure he got reelected. And it worked.

• JOHN MERCURIO:

  Well, some Republicans were.

  But, of course, Lincoln Chafee didn't do this all by himself. He had strong support yesterday from the Republican National Committee, from the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, which is extremely ironic, as you just said, because he's been campaigning, and he won, by running against the Republican Party, by — the national Republican Party, running against the Bush White House, voting against most of the Bush White House's top priorities, both domestic and international.

  I think the party, though — the national party — did a lot of things to help him win. Most importantly, I think people are looking at the dramatic increase in turnout that was generated by the Republican National Committee's — quote, unquote — "72-hour program." It's a highly respected get-out-the-vote program that — that Republicans used in 2004 for President Bush in states like Ohio, and they were using this year in Rhode Island.

• GWEN IFILL:

  But were there — but Rhode Island is a reliably blue state, as they say. Were there enough — obviously, there were enough — there were enough Republicans that they could turn out people who weren't going to show up. Was it because Laffey, Steve Laffey, was someone who they considered to be too conservative?

• JOHN MERCURIO:

  I think what they did, what the — what the national party did over the past couple of days, they saw internal polling showing that Laffey actually had inched ahead of Senator Chafee.

  They started running some particularly negative ads against Steve Laffey. And those appeared to have worked. Those were run against Senator Chafee's wishes. But the national party, I think, both during the primary and during this general election, are going to be coming in with a heavily negative influence.