QUESTIONS:
1. Rep. Pat Toomey's almost-successful challenge to Republican Sen. Arlen Specter's re-nomination in Pennsylvania last week was a national political story. Who was the last Republican senator to be denied re-nomination by his own party?
2. Since the end of World War II, only eight times have Republicans defeated an incumbent senator in a GOP primary. Who was the first of these GOP incumbents to lose a primary?
3. Since the end of World War II, who was the only Republican in a Senate leadership position to be denied renomination in a GOP primary?
4. Who was the last Democratic senator to be denied renomination in a primary?
5. Of the 51 Republicans now in the Senate, only two were first elected by defeating senators of their own party? Can you name them?
ANSWERS:
1. Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire in '02, who was defeated by Rep. John Sununu.
2. Sen. Robert LaFollette, Jr. of Wisconsin, who was defeated in the 1946 GOP primary by Circuit Judge Joseph McCarthy.
3. Thomas Kuchel of California, Senate Republican whip, who was defeated for renomination in 1968 by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Max Rafferty.
4. Sen. Alan Dixon of Illinois, who was defeated in the 1992 primary by Carol Moseley Braun.
5. Sununu and Sam Brownback of Kansas, who was first elected after defeating in the 1996 primary then-Sen. Sheila Frahm, who had been appointed to the seat upon the resignation of Bob Dole in 1996.
