Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky spoke after he fended off a Tea Party challenger to set up an expensive November contest against the Democratic nominee, Alison Lundergan Grimes.  Credit By AP on Publish Date May 21, 2014  WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky decisively turned back the first well-financed Republican primary opponent he had faced since being elected in 1984, defeating a Tea Party-backed conservative who claimed the Senate minority leader had been too willing to compromise with Democrats.  Once thought to be vulnerable to such a challenge from the right, Mr. McConnell won with ease over his opponent, the businessman Matt Bevin. Mr. McConnell’s victory sets up what will be one of the most serious tests of his political career, a general election matchup against the Democratic nominee, Alison Lundergan Grimes. It is expected to be the costliest Senate race this year.  Mr. McConnell’s victory came on a day when five other states — Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Pennsylvania and Oregon — held primaries. And in many of those high-profile contests, it was establishment Republicans coming out on top over Tea Party challengers, as in the McConnell-Bevin race.  In Georgia, Republicans sent David Perdue, a former chief executive of Dollar General, and Representative Jack Kingston, who has served 11 terms in the House, to a July runoff to fill an open Senate seat. The winner will face the Democratic nominee, Michelle Nunn, a former chief executive of the Points of Light volunteer group and the daughter of former Senator Sam Nunn. She faced nominal primary opposition.  Georgia Democrats had hoped that the Republicans’ nominee would be one of two hard-line conservatives who finished behind Mr. Kingston and Mr. Perdue on Tuesday. Tea Party-backed candidates have handed unexpected victories to Democrats in Delaware, Missouri and Indiana in recent years, and it was thought that a similarly conservative nominee would be just as vulnerable in Georgia. Still, Ms. Nunn has raised $6.6 million so far in a state that has not had a Democratic governor or senator in a decade but is undergoing rapid demographic changes thought to favor the party.  The races in Kentucky and Georgia are important to Democrats’ chances of keeping control of the Senate because they are the only two states where the party hopes to pick up Republican-held seats.  In Oregon’s Republican Senate primary, Monica Wehby, a pediatric neurosurgeon, easily defeated a more conservative opponent, State Representative Jason Conger. The Senate race there will be competitive only if 2014 turns into a wave year for Republicans, but party leaders think that Ms. Wehby positions them to challenge Senator Jeff Merkley, a first-term Democrat, if that turns out to be the case.  The Republican primary for a House race in Idaho also represented something of a proxy war between the center-right and hard-line conservatives, with the more conservative of the two candidates also losing. In that race, Representative Mike Simpson, who has served eight terms, easily fended off a primary challenger from Bryan Smith, who received substantial help from conservative organizations. Washington-based interest groups lined up behind Mr. Simpson, who is close to Speaker John A. Boehner, spending $2 million.  Pennsylvania has no Senate race this year, but the governor’s race is being closely watched. Democrats nominated Tom Wolf, a wealthy businessman, as their nominee to take on Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican whose job is considered one of the most at risk in the country.  A Philadelphia-area House race has also drawn attention because one of the Democratic candidates was Marjorie Margolies, a former congresswoman who is the mother-in-law of Chelsea Clinton. She was soundly defeated by Brendan Boyle, a state representative. Bill and Hillary Clinton had helped raise money for Ms. Margolies, and Mr. Clinton had recorded a turnout phone call.  One of the main lessons emerging from the young primary season is that political fundamentals like candidate strength, fund-raising and incumbency remain paramount, even in an era of deep dissatisfaction with Washington. That Mr. McConnell, 72, so easily defeated Mr. Bevin in Kentucky underscored that point.  Mr. McConnell spent over $11 million of the nearly $22 million he has stockpiled to cast himself as an effective conservative and to attack Mr. Bevin, who had never run for office before.  Kentucky’s secretary of state, Alison Lundergan Grimes, spoke after she won the Democratic nomination to face Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican, for a United States Senate seat.  Credit By AP on Publish Date May 21, 2014  Mr. Bevin criticized Mr. McConnell for having been in Washington too long, but Mr. McConnell emphasized what his 30 years in the Senate meant for Kentucky and what benefits the state would receive if he became the Senate majority leader after the election this fall.  Mr. McConnell’s wide margin of victory was no surprise; he had been leading in the polls for months. But his aides were quick to note that the threat from Mr. Bevin had been real. He raised over $3.3 million, the most of any candidate who has taken on an incumbent senator during the rise of the Tea Party in the last two election cycles.  With an eye on controlling the Senate in 2015, Mr. McConnell has made no secret of his determination to send a message this year to hard-line conservatives by defeating them in primaries. “I think we are going to crush them everywhere,” he predicted in a March interview.  But as he works to consolidate power in the Senate, Mr. McConnell must first unify the Republican Party in Kentucky and ensure that Mr. Bevin’s supporters do not stay home this November. Ms. Grimes, the secretary of state, who has already raised over $8 million, faced no primary opposition and has devoted months to hammering the incumbent as the personification of Washington gridlock.  Mr. McConnell will do so while carrying dismal approval numbers in Kentucky: A New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation poll last month found that 52 percent of Kentucky voters disapproved of his performance and just 40 percent approved of his performance.  Addressing supporters on Tuesday, Ms. Grimes touched on his vulnerability, criticizing Mr. McConnell for not doing more for Kentucky’s economy and saying he had lost touch with the state.  Yet Ms. Grimes, 35, has serious vulnerabilities of her own, most significantly the increasingly Republican tilt of a state that last elected a Democratic senator in 1992 and where President Obama is deeply unpopular. Mr. McConnell and his allies have already begun linking Ms. Grimes to Mr. Obama, who lost Kentucky twice. Just 32 percent of Kentucky voters approve of Mr. Obama’s performance, according to the same New York Times/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.  As he spoke at his victory celebration on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell seemed to preview the two themes of his campaign. He argued that support for Ms. Grimes was effectively a vote for Mr. Obama, and, in an appeal to women, he talked about his wife, his mother and three other Kentucky women who are unhappy with the Affordable Care Act.  Ms. Grimes is aggressively raising money from out-of-state Democrats, and the senator seems to understand what he is up against. “My opponent is able to raise a lot of money because she’s running against me,” he said over the weekend, according to The Lexington Herald-Leader. “I’m able to raise a lot of money because I am me. So in a sense, you get a picture here, I’m raising money for both sides.”  A version of this article appears in print on May 21, 2014, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: McConnell Easily Wins Senate Race in Kentucky, Setting Up Key Fall Contest. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
Senator Mitch McConnell’s defeat of Matt Bevin was only the first in a series of contests in which the Tea Party fell short in Republican primaries.