Wynn Loses
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
When party hardliners challenge an incumbent in a primary for being too willing to cross party lines, usually it’s the Republicans, with a group like the Club for Growth that is focused on certain principles or a band of radicals running television commercials against someone they call a “Republican in Name Only,” like Senator Specter or Senator Chafee. Such tactics have had some spectacular losses of late. Neither Senator Specter’s challenger, Patrick Toomey, or Senator Chafee’s challenger, Stephen Laffey, is a senator today. But on Tuesday in Maryland, an eight-term Democratic incumbent, Rep. Albert Wynn, went down in a stunning defeat to an insurgent hard-left candidate, Donna Edwards. It was an event not seen since Ned Lamont defeated Senator Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic primary in Connecticut.
Our Josh Gerstein spotted the import of the race a month ago, and in a front-page dispatch headlined “Autophagy on the Left in Maryland,” reported that EMILY’s List, the League of Conservation Voters, MoveOn.org, the National Organization for Women, the national Service Employees International Union, the Sierra Club, and a local of the United Food & Commercial Workers were pouring hundreds of thousand of dollars into the race to defeat Mr. Wynn.
Mr. Wynn is no Senator Lieberman. He supports the impeachment of Vice President Cheney and is a member of the Out of Iraq Caucus. He has a voting record solidly in favor of abortion rights. In 2002, however, he voted to authorize American entry into the Battle of Iraq. He also backed an energy bill and an overhaul of the bankruptcy laws that were signed into law by President Bush. This, apparently, is enough to get one thrown out of office by today’s Democratic Party. Unlike the Republicans, who are a big tent, the Democrats seem increasingly a party in thrall to extremist, hard-left special interest groups.
It will be noted that the Club for Growth did succeed in knocking off Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a Republican of Maryland, in Tuesday’s primary, though his heresies — on taxes and the war — strike us as more significant than Mr. Wynn’s deviations. Maybe Mr. Wynn will take a page out of Mr. Lieberman’s book and run as an independent. It’s a sad day for the Democratic Party when it’s no longer big enough for a man like Albert Wynn.
