About Last Night: Primaries in North Carolina, Pennsylvania & More
Cuyahoga County polling place, Ohio. Photo by Tim Evanson via Wikimedia Commons
Four states held primaries on Tuesday, including very high profile races in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Here’s what happened last night…
North Carolina
The GOP senate race in the Old North State wound up being anti-climactic. Congressman Ted Budd, who was endorsed early on by Trump in a shocking move to just about everyone, cruised to an easy win over former governor Pat McCrory and others. On the Democratic side, former State Supreme Court justice Cheri Beasley won an easy race and will face off with Budd in what is going to be a tough race most have at least leaning Republican. Beasley also had some warning signs, as our friend Eric Cunningham noted, by underperforming even in her win.
Another high profile race for all the wrong reasons, Representative Madison Cawthorn is a one-and-done congressman, thanks to a parade of scandals that were rained upon him by his own party and North Carolina’s US Senator Thom Tillis, among others.
Pennsylvania
Lt Gov Fetterman might be in the hospital recovering from a weekend stroke, but he had no trouble dispatching Conor Lamb, cruising to a decisive victory for the Democratic nomination for US Senate. The GOP side is still too close to call, with Dr. Oz up a few thousand votes on Dave McCormick in a margin that could well go to an automatic recount.
On the gubernatorial side, Doug Mastriano doubled up his closest opposition to win the nomination for the GOP, and with it a ton of controversial positions. He will face off against PA AG Josh Shapiro who ran unopposed.
Oregon
Tina Kotek(D) and Christine Drazan(R) won their respective party’s closed primaries for the governors race, while US Senator Ron Wyden(D) racked up a 90% in in his re-election bid. His Republican challenger has not yet been declared, as Jo Rae Perkins and Darin Harbick are within a percentage point of each other at last count.
Idaho
Incumbent Republican Governor Brad Little dispatched a crowded field, and a Trump-backed primary challenge, to comfortably win the GOP primary. He’ll face Stephne Heidt who ran practically unopposed for the Democrats. For US Senate, Democrat David Roth will move on to face Senator Mike Crapo(R) in the general election. One worthwhile note also, the sitting Superintendent of Public Education Sherri Ybarra came in third in her primary.
Next Tuesday: Georgia, Alabama, Texas runoffs, and Arkansas.
Just another few data points demonstrating the continuing slide of the Republican Party into an insurrectionist authoritarian faction.
The candidates like Mastriano who fervently promote the Big Lie and promise to steal the 2024 election are winners while those who don’t, lose.Report
The most interesting result in Oregon was not the Governor’s primaries, but the Democratic nomination for the Fifth Congressional District. The district has changed substantially. From 1993 through this year, it encompassed Lake Oswego and other maybe-not-quite-so-well-to-do southern suburbs of Portland, Salem, and a good chunk of the middle of the Coast. Now it extends a little bit further north into the southern stretches of Portland proper, excludes Salem, and goes east over the mountains into the populated portion of Deschutes County (meaning explosively-growing Bend and Redmond). Less than half of the new district’s residents lived in the old district.
The 7-term incumbent, moderate Democrat Kurt Schrader, remains a resident of the newly-redrawn district. He was endorsed by President Biden, one of the few primary endorsements Biden made, along with most of the unions who are usually the most powerful force on the Democratic side of things here. However, Schrader lost his primary to a much more progressive challenger, natural resources attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner of Bend, who got an endorsement from Senator Elizabeth Warren and the local Democratic party activist groups in Clackamas, Linn, Marion, and Deschutes counties and various progressive groups.
McLeod-Skinner will face off against Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the former mayor of Happy Valley, another relatively affluent southern suburb of Portland. She may have some machinery available to her from previous unsuccessful runs for the State House of Representatives in 2016 and 2018. Her amply-capitalized platform issues are “Keep Our Communities Safe,” “End Cancel Culture,” “Oppose Critical Race Theory: NO CRITICALRACE THEORY,” “Champion our Constitutional Rights,” “Put America, and Oregon, First,” “Parental Choice in Oregon Schools,” and “Low Taxes. Balanced Budgets,” which suggests to me a basically bog-standard national baseline set of following-the-leaders Republican-side talking points for 2022. (And, I belatedly note, that she is focusing on issues she’d have more influence on were she in Salem rather than Washington, but why should that matter in a campaign?)
No one really knows what’s going to happen here because the district is brand-new and covers a lot of purple territory. I’m told that the Cook Report is downgrading the district from “Likely Democratic” to “Leans Democratic” and that may be giving the Democrats just a bit too much credit in a cycle where the national fundamentals are going to favor Republicans.
I say, keep your eye on this race as one of the national bellwethers.Report
I’d be curious to know what Chavez-DeRemer proposes, if anything, that Congress should, or legally could, do to “End Cancel Culture.”Report