Jun.26

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Lots of Drama in Tuesday's Primaries

Voters in four states cast ballots yesterday, and they managed to produce enough storylines for a whole month's worth of primaries. Let's get to them:

• Trump's Batting Average Takes a Hit: Prior to this week, Donald Trump-endorsed candidates were undefeated in their primaries, in significant part because he limited himself almost entirely to high-percentage picks. Yesterday, however, the former president finally added some misses to his ledger. His pick in the runoff in the very red SC-03, pastor Mark Burns (R), lost a close one to nurse practitioner Sheri Biggs (R). Trump also backed Colorado GOP Chair Dave Williams, who lost his primary in the R+9 CO-05 to a Crank, specifically Jeff Crank (R). And for Trump's biggest miss, keep reading. We've written this before: Trump's endorsement matters most in a three-way (or more-than-three-way) Republican primary. Otherwise, he's not a kingmaker.
  
  
• Governor, Utah: The Utah GOP, which is controlled by Trumpers, wanted to get rid of Gov. Spencer Cox (R-UT) because he's "too moderate." However, the Republican voter base in the Beehive State is predominantly non-Trumpy. So Cox survived the challenge, taking 56.7% of the vote to 43.3% for challenger Phil Lyman. The Democrat is going to be Brian King, who will be checkmated in November by Cox.
  
  
• U.S. Senate, Utah: Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) is retiring, and he backed the relatively moderate Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) as his replacement. Donald Trump hates Romney and he hates moderates, and so he backed the much Trumpier Mayor Trent Staggs (R-Riverton). Curtis laid waste to Staggs, 50.7% to 30%, and in November he will do the same to Democratic candidate Caroline Gleich.
  
  
• NY-16: This was one of the three marquee House matchups of the night, and it went as expected, with the more moderate Westchester County Executive George Latimer (D) successfully primarying Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D), 58% to 42%.
  
  The central issue in this race was Israel, with Latimer a firm supporter of that nation's campaign in Gaza and Bowman an outspoken critic. That said, don't read too much into the result. Bowman's rhetoric was quite extreme, which made him a poor match for a district that is essentially New York City suburbs (plus a little piece of the Bronx). The Representative also tried to paint Latimer as a closet Trumper, which might work with an unknown, but is not likely to be persuasive when an opponent has had a long career in local politics. Also, Bowman had other liabilities besides political views that were out of step with his district. For example, reader S.E. in Westchester, NY, is a resident of the district, and points out that some Democratic voters have not forgotten or forgiven Bowman's fire alarm incident.
  
  
• CO-03: So much for ratfu**ing. The Democrats tried to boost Ron Hanks (R), who is hard-right, but it didn't work, as the more moderate Jeff Hurd (R) got the Republican nomination with 41.5% of the vote in a three-way race. The unchallenged Adam Frisch (D), who was really hoping to face Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) before she fled to CO-04, has a vast pile of cash and has experience running for this seat, whereas Hurd is a newbie. That said, the district is still R+7, so Hurd is the slight-to-moderate favorite.
  
  
• CO-04: Lauren Boebert was responsible for two of the three big House primaries of the night, thanks to leaving C0-03 and moving to C0-04. Thus far, her gambit is working, as she swamped the numerous challengers with 43.4% of the vote (the runner-up had only 14.4%). Given that the district is ruby red, Boebert has her job in hand for at least 2 more years.
  
  What happens next time she runs? That is a very good question. On one hand, she'll have incumbency the next time and she'll presumably have a better handle on the district's issues, which are very different from those of the district she's departing. Also, Boebert's brand of performative politics might play better in a very red district than in a sorta red district. On the other hand, the non-Boebert vote yesterday was split among five candidates, all of them with liabilities. And in combination, they took a solid majority of the vote (56.6%) So, if Boebert draws a single, less encumbered, challenger in 2026, she might be in trouble, just as she was in CO-03 this year.
  
  
• NY-01: Beyond the three high-profile House races, there was a gaggle of primaries for competitive House seats that will be hotly contested between now and November. First up is the R+3 NY-01, where Rep. Nick LaLota (R) will face off against John Avlon, who was working as a CNN anchor when he threw his hat into the ring. Avlon is a centrism fetishist, to the point of having multiple books on the subject, most notably Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics. However, he also used to edit the very lefty Daily Beast and he used to write speeches for the very righty Rudy Giuliani. Those don't exactly burnish Avlon's centrist credentials, unless you argue they cancel each other out. Association with the now-toxic Giuliani could be particularly problematic for the would-be representative.
  
  
• NY-17: In addition to NY-01, there were three other competitive House districts where there was an actual primary yesterday. That said, the D+3 NY-17 comes with an asterisk. Rep. Mike Lawler (R) was unchallenged, and he already knew he'd be facing Mondaire Jones (D), who was unchallenged for the Democratic nomination. Jones, as many readers will remember, is a progressive who held this seat before the district was redrawn in 2022.
  
  The asterisk is due to the fact that New York is the only state left that allows full-on fusion ballots. And while Jones did not face any Democratic opposition, he did face an opponent in his attempt to be the candidate of the Working Families Party, which reader P.S. in Gloucester, MA, brought to our attention. Jones lost that primary, 244 votes to 183, to Anthony Frascone. The thing is, Frascone is not actually a member of the Working Families Party, nor do his politics align with theirs in any way. He's actually a MAGA ratfu**er. If he attracts a couple hundred, or a couple thousand, votes from lefty voters who aren't paying attention, that could swing a close race to the Republican Lawler.
  
  
• NY-22: This D+1 district also had a contested primary. Rep. Brandon Williams (R) wasn't facing anyone, but the Democratic side of the contest pitted state Sen. John Mannion (D) against DeWitt Town Councilor Sarah Klee Hood (D). Mannion took the prize, 61.9% to 38.1%. He's got some baggage, having been thrice accused of fostering a hostile workplace earlier this year, so it will be an uphill battle.
  
  
• CO-08: Rep. Yadira Caraveo (D) had no opponent in this EVEN district, but on the Republican side, state Rep. Gabe Evans trounced Janak Joshi, 77.6% to 22.4%. Evans is a military veteran, a former police officer and he is part-Mexican, so he checks a lot of boxes that Republicans like to check. That said, the latter probably won't swing any votes, up against an incumbent who is 100% Mexican. Note that Evans was one of two Trump endorsees (Lauren Boebert was the other) who actually won last night. Generally speaking, a Trump endorsement is not a plus in an EVEN district.
  
  
• NY-02: The next six races will be barnburners in November, but were uncontested last night, so we'll just run down each race a little bit. In the R+3 NY-02, Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R) will be challenged by businessman Rob Lubin (D), who is going to run a centrist, kitchen-table-issues campaign.
  
  
• NY-03: In the D+2 NY-03, Rep, Tom Suozzi (D), who held the seat, vacated it, then won it back when "George Santos" was kicked out of the House, will try to hold off former state assemblyman Michael LiPetri (R). LiPetri tried for a seat in the House once before, in 2020, and got trounced. He's running on a Trumpy platform, except that he's slightly more liberal than Trump on abortion. LiPetri also emphasizes his opposition to antisemitism, but rather than use that term, he calls it "Jew hate." Maybe there is a reason for that, but if there is, we don't know it.
  
  
• NY-04: In the D+5 NY-04, Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R) will try to hold on for dear life as he faces former Hempstead town supervisor Laura Gillen. She's fairly lefty, and is getting big money from EMILY's List, so expect abortion access to come up once or twice during the campaign. D'Esposito has a jumbled record on that issue; he cheered the Dobbs decision, but he booed the mifepristone ban.
  
  
• NY-18: This one's a top priority for both parties, as Rep. Pat Ryan (D) will defend his D+1 district against Alison Esposito, a former cop who is best known for her failed run for Lieutenant Governor of New York back in 2022. She's pro-cop, pro-choice, pro-military and pro-senior-citizen, which is par for the course for someone running in a swing district in New York. Whoever designed her website chose Eurostile Bold Extended as the default font:
  
  
  
  That's a popular one in sci-fi movies, so it makes a visit to her site feels like you're reviewing the schematics on CANDIDATE ESPOSITO provided by The Terminator.
  
  
• NY-19: This one's an even bigger priority for both parties, since it's EVEN. Rep. Marc Molinaro (R) will be challenged by Josh Riley. Riley graduated from William & Mary and from Harvard Law, where 90% of every graduating class seems to end up in politics. He's worked primarily in staff positions in Congress, and he challenged Molinaro for this seat 2 years ago, losing 50.8% to 49.2%. Much mud was slung back then, and much more will undoubtedly be slung this time. Riley's website has lots and lots of policies and zero focus (his policy positions are presented in alphabetical order). So, we have no idea what his platform really is.
  
  
• CO-07: Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D) will try to keep her D+4 seat from being won by businessman Sergei Matveyuk (R), whose pitch is that he saw the ills of socialism/communism while growing up in Poland and he wants to stop that from happening in the United States. His website doesn't point this out, but he has also said he would like to eliminate the separation of church and state. We suspect Pettersen might bring that up once or twice. There is also possibility of a "George Santos"-like scandal; Matveyuk says he is a college diplomate, but nowhere does he reveal what school he attended, only describing his alma mater as a "respectable university."
  
  
• VA-05: This race wasn't on the ballot yesterday; it's actually a follow-up from last week. Nearly all the votes are in, and Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), the Freedom Caucus chair who made enemies out of both Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy, is trailing ultra-Trumpy GOP challenger John McGuire by 370 votes. Good has spent much time kvetching about how the voting was rigged, though even his fellow Republicans aren't buying it. And yesterday, the Representative announced that he would ask for a recount. Since the margin is greater than 0.5%, his campaign will have to pay for it.
  
  A 370-vote margin isn't much, but at this point, Good is an extreme longshot. There were about 63,000 votes cast in this race. Is it possible that 370 ballots out of 63,000 (about 0.58%) were screwy? Sure. But it's not enough for them to be screwy; they have to be screwy in a way that causes them to go from being a McGuire vote or, more commonly, a non-vote to being a Good vote. Barring some sort of systematic failing (like, say, a confusing ballot design), the screwy ballots tend to be distributed in roughly equal proportions as the non-screwy ones. Randomness being what it is, a candidate can plausibly net between 0.01% of the vote and 0.1% of the vote in a recount, which would mean a gain of 6-60 votes for Good if things break his way. But overcoming a margin of 0.58% in a recount basically does not happen.

That's all the primaries for a while; the next big event on the calendar is the rapture that is the Republican National Convention, from July 15-18. (Z)