House Majority Leader Eric Cantor Was Defeated in Republican Primary

choi

(1) David A Fahrenthold, Rosalind S Helderman and Jenna Portnoy, What Went Wrong for Eric Cantor?  Washington Post, June 12, 2014
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... 0614e2d4_story.html

My comment:
(a) The first six paragraphs talks about a meeting, which paragraph 9 identifies as a "convention: ("the heckling of Cantor in that convention speech"). That was the Republican convention held on May 10, 2014 among Republicans in Seventh Congressional District of Virginia. See Virginia's congressional districts
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia%27s_congressional_districts
(7th district pop[ulation]. 738,355)
, where the Republicans elected a delegation who in turn voted for chairman of the seventh district.

Much later the report states, "One of his allies lost a race for the position of district Republican chairman, despite an expensive blitz from Cantor’s campaign. * *  * Cantor’s candidate got beaten. And Cantor got heckled, on the same day."  All that happened on May 10.
(b) "Ben Jones, who played Cooter the mechanic on 'The Dukes of Hazzard.' (Jones had served as a Democrat from Georgia" in US House of Representatives 1989-1993.

The Dukes of Hazzard
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dukes_of_Hazzard
(a CBS television series 1979-1985 (inclusive); section 3.1 Main characters: "Cooter Davenport ([played by] Ben Jones) is the Hazzard County mechanic, nicknamed 'Crazy Cooter'")

(c) "When Virginia’s districts were redrawn in 2010, the state’s legislature altered Cantor’s district and removed some heavily Democratic precincts in the Richmond area. They swapped in heavily Republican New Kent County, east of the state capital. Cantor supported the move, which was supposed to make his safe seat even safer from Democrats. But that was a miscalculation: Cantor had misjudged where his real threat would come from. A threat to Cantor was already growing within his own party, in which some tea party members had begun to conclude that he was not conservative enough for them."
(i) Redistricting among the states are done by different government bodies.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redistricting
(ii) The current redistricting state law came into effect and a Republican governor created an independent bipartisan advisory commission with eleven members, none of whom were politicians. The commission received imputs from various groups, not least the politicians. the state senate and house had to pass the map and reconcized the difference, if any. The governor had to sign it into law.
(iii) For the 2014 redistricting, it was done on Jan 22, 2013 when senate (equally split between Republicans and Democrats at 20 seats each) took an unexpected vote when a Democratic senator was absent. Virginia house was/is dominated by Republicans.

(d) "In Tuesday’s primary [June 9, 2014] * * * the more Republicans who showed up, the worse off it was. Those new voters from New Kent County turned sharply on Cantor, and he performed worse there than in all but one of the counties he represents. 'Ironically, New Kent was given to Cantor in redistricting to help him out. Instead, it backfired,' said Michael McDonald, a political science professor at George Mason University. * * * Unlike in much of the rest of the country, the top issue for voters was not the economy * * * Life in Virginia was pretty good for most 7th District residents"

(e) "But, in the incumbent’s camp, they dismissed what turned out to be a major warning sign. 'There were 600 people there to raise Cain,' Cantor strategist Ray Allen told The Washington Post afterward. 'We had 48,000 voters in the primary two years ago. It’s just a very quantum-leap different thing.'
(i) What Mr Allen says is the the turnout in the May 10, 2014 Republican convention was a mere 600, whereas in the 2012 Republican primary, 48,000 turned out--implying 600 is not enough to worry his camp.
(ii) Raise Cain. The Phrase Finder, undated.
www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/raising-cain.html

(f) "To Cantor’s people, it seemed this was working. In late May, an internal poll showed Cantor ahead of Brat by 34 points, according to Cantor aides. On Wednesday [Juen 10], pollster John McLaughlin said the poll was flawed — but in a way that he could not have known then. In an interview, McLaughlin said the people polled were those who had voted in past Republican primaries. The poll did not anticipate that, on Tuesday, so many more people would show up. He suggested that many Democrats and others who haven’t voted in previous primaries came out on Tuesday. 'Polls don’t predict turnout."

Virginia has open primary (“Virginia does not have party registration in its voter registration process”), whereas that in Massachusetts is "semi-closed" where a voter registers affiliation with any party can not vote in the primary of any other party BUT an “independent” (no affiliation) can vote in the primary of ANY party. See primary election.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election
(section 1 Types: Closed, Semi-closed, Open)
(g) “At some point in the late afternoon [of the election date], Cantor headed down Interstate 95 to Richmond for his victory party. Already, the first hints of real trouble were filtering in to his campaign headquarters. Turnout was much higher than usual, his pollster said.”
(h) Eric Cantor (1963- ; US House of Representatives 2001-2015)

choi

(2) Trip Gabriel, Cantor Forgot Virginia Roots, Voters Contend. New York Times, June 12 (front page).
(few voters [in the 7th District] seemed to recognize him as one of their own. * * * they described Mr Cantor as a man who had succombed to Washington and forgotten where he came from”)

My comment:
(a) There is no need to read the rest.
(b) In Taiwan and here (in US), often an incumbent is defeated for lac of constituency service, rather than for ideological differences.