Once upon a time, tea-party affiliated nonprofit FreedomWorks funneling $900,000 into the Utah Republican primary would have been enough to boot a long-time incumbent like Orrin Hatch from Congress.

On Tuesday, however, just such an efforts failed: Hatch defeated his opponent, Dan Liljenquist, by more than 34 percentage points. In a primary season where seasoned incumbents have been dropping like flies to tea party backed candidates, Hatch’s win might mean the decline of tea party influence.

Here’s the scoop: Hatch wasn’t the only incumbent to win last night. Democratic Congressmen Charlie Rangel of New York also pulled a win, despite being old, ill and facing redistricting.

These races mean very little for their parties: everybody expects Utah to elect a Republican to the Senate in the fall, and everyone expects New York's 13th House District to send a Democrat to Congress. But, as Lisa Mascaro of the Los Angeles Times writes, these primary victories "will provide other tests of this year’s restive electorate — and give shape to the new Congress."

That is, Hatch's win indicates that the tea party is losing its handle on Utah. Just two years ago, FreedomWorks was credited with Senator Bob Bennett’s defeat. Hatch, recognizing the threat that the tea-party affiliated Super PAC presented, began to organize his campaign well before his opponent had even entered the competition — two years before, to be exact. His strategy was simple: cast FreedomWorks as a shady foreign interest attempt to take over the party.

It worked: even though FreedomWorks pushed hard to guarantee Liljenquist’s nomination, Hatch managed to sideline the organization. "I do think we are re-directing our resources a bit toward Texas and Indiana through the end of May," Bendan Steinhauser, the director of federal campaigns for Freedomworks, told Politico.  "We will have a presence at the Utah convention, but we’ve decided to focus more on these other states."

Charlie Rangel's win represents something entirely (kinda) different. Turning 82-years-old this month, Rangel has faced intense redistricting as well as charges of ethics violations. Just like Hatch, however, he maintained a significant funding advantage over his primary challenger, Senator Adriano Espaillat.

Incumbents have had a difficult time this year. Case and point: Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar. So what do these two incumbents’ primary victories mean, if anything? Nothing grand — it's all about money. Incumbent status does not guarantee primary success. To win, candidates need time and money, plain and simple.

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2012 Election

David Barnett