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New polls: GA NV RI
Dem pickups: (None)
GOP pickups: AZ GA ME MI NV PA WI

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Sorry, today's post is on the short side (and on the late side). One of us is still traveling, and the other is recovering from a double root canal. We still have two pretty substantial items; we're just missing the shorter items that would otherwise round out the posting.

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 feel 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)

It's Debate Week! (Part III)

This week's presidential debate continues to be a subject of much interest. Here's the news from yesterday:

• Whither CNN?: The AP's David Bauder has an interesting piece pointing out that the debate is not only very important to the candidates, it's also very important to CNN. They've had a bunch of inner turmoil in the past couple of years, and have slipped well behind Fox and MSNBC in the ratings. This, writes Bauder, might be the last chance to right the ship.
  
  We pass this piece along in case it is of interest but, truth be told, we think that ship has sailed, and CNN will never again be close to what it was during its glory days of the 1980s and 1990s. The success of the two alternatives makes clear that viewers mostly want to watch opinion-driven material that agrees with their perspective. What they do not want is bothsidesism, which is basically CNN's mantra. If the network wants to reboot, and fire all the Van Joneses and Scott Jenningses, and go with all journalists, all the time, then maybe they might reclaim some turf. But otherwise, they're stuck in permanent third-banana status.
  
  
• Trump Debate Prep: Apparently, the people around Trump are not allowed to call it "prep," because that implies that he's not 100% ready at all times. Since he is the greatest, most skillful, most prepared debater the world has ever seen, we can't have that, obviously.
  
  That said, the former president has had six sessions with his key campaign advisers, and with special guests who have specific expertise (e.g., Sen. J.D. Vance, R-OH, and "heartland issues"; Kellyanne Conway and... abortion, etc.). Normally, debate prep involves having the candidate absorb a lot of information (briefing papers and the like) and then seeing how well they can think on their feet by pitting them against someone playing the role of their opponent. For example, Joe Biden's faux Trump is Bob Bauer, who is Biden's personal attorney, and who has also performed a faux Bernie Sanders and a faux Al Gore for Biden in the past.
  
  Trump is not prepping in this way, presumably because it's more than he can handle. Instead, his prep team is trying to program him to respond properly to the questions they think will be asked. He's not going to be able to memorize long, pre-written scripts, so the focus is on outlines—e.g., "If you are asked about [X], don't forget to mention [A], [B] and [C].
  
  According to The New York Times' Maggie Haberman, Trump also has an awareness that his attacks on Hunter Biden rebounded to Joe Biden's advantage. So, the former president might try to approach that subject delicately. Or, in the heat of the moment, particularly if he is angry about his own criminal issues being raised, he might not. You never know.
  
  In any event, it all speaks to someone who is taking the debates seriously, and not someone who is going to bow out at the last moment. If Trump is persuaded of the importance of discipline, and he can actually stick to that for 90 minutes, he may do well.
  
  
• It's a Conspiracy!: At this point, the Trumpers' two most popular debate conspiracy theories, each of them designed to denigrate Joe Biden's performance in advance, are that the moderators are in the bag for the President, and that the President is going to use stimulants in order to overcome his senility. Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) came up with an inventive new take on the latter. He claims that Biden is not going to be hopped up on Adderall or cocaine or meth or whatever, but instead that he'll be "jacked up" on... Mountain Dew.
  
  Does Burlison, or any other Republican, really want to go there? The active substance in Mountain Dew is caffeine. And caffeine is not only legal, it's the most widely used drug in the world by a country mile. If it came out that, before the debate, Biden drank a couple of cups of coffee or had a can of Mountain Dew or pounded a Red Bull, would that really work against him? We are inclined to think it would make him more relatable, since some enormous part of the American population does the same thing on a regular (often daily) basis to help them get through some tough part of THEIR day. That said, if we were advising Biden, we would actually advise against Mountain Dew because the amount of caffeine in one of those is enough to cause jitters.
  
  
• It's a Conspiracy... Again!: We swear, you could be hired for $1 million a month to sit in a room and come up with conspiracy theories favorable to Donald Trump, and you still wouldn't come up with this one. Yesterday, Judge Juan Merchan loosened the gag order on Trump, and radio talker/Trump toady Hugh Hewitt immediately glommed onto the apparent dark designs at play. Apparently, by freeing Trump to say things he could not previously get away with saying, and just 48 hours before the debate, Merchan is trying to screw up the former president's debate prep. Hewitt went so far as to describe Merchan as "the third moderator" of the debate. You just can't make these things up. Well, unless you're Hugh Hewitt.
  
  
• Spin Class: Speaking of conspiratorial thinking, the right-wing media's spin operation is already operating at full capacity. Here's a sampling of headlines:
  
  
  • The Daily Wire: CNN's Debate Moderators: Don't Expect Fairness
  • American Greatness: The Presidential Debate Should Expose a Fragile Biden
  • Outkick: CNN Releases Statement Downplaying Obvious Anti-Trump Bias of Debate Moderators
  • The Daily Caller: The First Presidential Debate Is Obviously Rigged, And Poll Shows [sic] Americans Know It
  • Breitbart: Critics Question if CNN Can Host Fair, Unbiased Presidential Debate
  • The Federalist: Trump's Biggest Debate Opponents Are The Media, Not Biden
  • RedState: Media Is Prepped to Give Joe Biden His Participation Trophy for Walking Unassisted Into CNN Debate
  
  
• The Sporting Life: Yesterday, we wrote: "As the NBA and NHL finals are over, there are no major sporting events remaining this week—just regular-season baseball and women's basketball."
  
  We wrote that having looked at the sporting calendar, and having decided that the events we did not mention were not in serious competition with the presidential debates. Nonetheless, we received many e-mails commenting on our narrow-mindedness and our chauvinism toward American pastimes. Very well; here is an exhaustive list of the sporting events that will be contested on Thursday, in addition to MLB and the WNBA:
  
  
  • BWF Badminton World Tour (U.S. Open)
  • Canadian Premier League Soccer
  • Copa América (group stage)
  • European Cadet Judo Championships
  • European Cadet Wrestling Championship
  • European Canoe Sprint Junior and U23 Championships
  • European Junior Boxing Championships
  • FIBA Basketball European Championship for Small Countries
  • FIH Field Hockey Women's Pro League
  • FIVB Volleyball Men's Nations League Finals
  • Grand Chess Tour
  • ICC Cricket Men's T20 World Cup
  • IFSC Climbing World Cup
  • LPGA Tour Dow Championship
  • Modern Pentathlon Junior World Championships
  • OFC Football Nations Cup
  • PGA Tour Rocket Mortgage Classic
  • World Surf League
  • World Snooker Tour Championship League 3
  • World Table Tennis Series
  • World Tennis Association Bad Homburg Open
  • World Tennis Association Rothesay International
  • World Women's Junior Handball Championship
  
  If any reader was having trouble choosing between the debate and the World Snooker Tour Championships, don't worry, we'll have a link to a full video of the debate on Friday. Fortunately, the Trampoline World Cup does not start until this weekend, so there's no conflict there.

That's the latest. Expect a mega-item on this subject tomorrow. (Z)

Today's Presidential Polls

The most worrisome of these, by far, for Joe Biden is that Georgia poll. The University of Georgia knows what they are doing, and 5 points is a pretty big gap in what's supposed to be a swing state. That said, we will point out again that it virtually never happens that a double-digit percentage of voters votes third-party/independent, much less 19% of them. Not to mention the 27% in Rhode Island. (Z)

State	Joe Biden	Donald Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Georgia	38%	43%	Jun 11	Jun 20	U. of Georgia
Nevada	45%	48%	Jun 12	Jun 18	Fabrizio + Anzalone
Rhode Island	40%	33%	Jun 05	Jun 14	Salve Regina U.

Click on a state name for a graph of its polling history.


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