Incumbents Get a Scare in Illinois

The big news out of the Illinois primaries Tuesday came from two almost-defeated incumbents: the Republican governor and a Democratic member of the House. Both were excellent examples of how much parties care about policy. But the Democratic case was exactly what a healthy challenge looks like, while the Republican one was more iffy but probably not a particularly bad case, either.

For the Republicans, Governor Bruce Rauner held off state Representative Jeanne Ives by a bit more than 3 percentage points. This was mostly a policy challenge, with Ives running against a governor who had strayed from party orthodoxy on abortion. Rauner is also quite unpopular in Illinois -- he's considered the most vulnerable incumbent running this November -- so no doubt Ives was helped by general dissatisfaction with Rauner. That's a recipe for a reasonable primary challenge, although it's also true that in this very Democratic state, it's probably healthy for Republicans to show some ideological or policy flexibility. Indeed, Democrats ran "attack" ads against Ives designed to boost her fortunes with conservative Republicans, the kind of meddling in the other party's business that paid off for Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill six years ago.