Disgruntled US voters take on the establishment

DISENCHANTED voters in both parties turned against the establishment, choosing a conservative “Tea Party” newcomer over a handpicked Republican favourite and dumping veteran Democratic Senator Arlen Specter ahead of November’s midterm elections.

On the biggest day of voting so far, two-term Senator Blanche Lincoln also struggled and was headed to a June 8 run-off election against Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter after failing to win the necessary majority of the Democratic Senate primary vote in Arkansas.

“This is what democracy looks like – a win for the people over the establishment, over the status quo, even over Washington DC,” an exuberant Representative Joe Sestak told supporters in Pennsylvania after beating the 80-year-old Specter.

Specter, a 30-year Senate veteran and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was the latest incumbent to go down in a wave of anti-establishment anger fuelled by distrust of Washington and worries neither party is doing enough to rescue the economy and restrain government spending.

In Kentucky, conservative Rand Paul easily won the Republican nomination over Secretary of State Trey Grayson – the handpicked choice of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell – for an open Senate seat in a race seen as an early test of the loosely organised Tea Party movement.

Paul, a doctor and son of libertarian Republican Representative Ron Paul, rode a wave of voter anger with the help of Tea Party activists who oppose runaway federal spending and favour more limited government.

“We have come to take our government back,” Paul told supporters in Bowling Green, Kentucky. “This Tea Party movement is a message to Washington that we are unhappy and we want things done differently.”

Paul will face state Attorney General Jack Conway, who won the Democratic primary, in November in the race for retiring Senator Jim Bunning’s seat.

The anti-Washington mood threatens to sweep away many well-known incumbents and put Democratic control of Congress at risk in November, when all 435 House of Representatives seats, 36 of 100 Senate seats and 37 of 50 state governorships are up for election.

A dramatic upheaval could hinder President Barack Obama’s legislative agenda and increase the polarisation in Congress.

But Democrats got good news in a special House election in Pennsylvania to replace Democrat John Murtha, who died in February. Democrat Mark Critz beat Republican Tim Burns in a blue-collar Democratic district won by Republican John McCain in 2008.

It was the seventh consecutive special House election won by the Democrats since 2008.

“This was the only race in the country today where a Democrat faced off against a Republican, and the results are clear,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen, head of the Democratic House campaign committee.