Jun.17

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

In This Case, Red and Blue Do Not Make Purple

Among the 51 entities that are entitled to electoral votes, Washington, DC, is the bluest and Oklahoma is the reddest. It's an interesting coincidence that they both held primaries yesterday, along with runoffs in Alabama and Georgia. Here are the most notable results:

• Trump Wins Some...: We're not sure we love the idea of framing every contest in terms of Donald Trump's endorsements, but that's how everyone is reporting the two biggies from yesterday, so we'll briefly allow it. In the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff, the President got his candidate in Rep. Mike Collins (R), who took 55% of the vote as compared to 45% for football coach Derek Dooley (R), who had the backing of Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA).
  
  Trump is sort of a winner here, in that his horse came out on top. But he's not much of a winner, since he waited until the last second to endorse, by which time the outcome was not seriously in doubt. Kemp, meanwhile, comes out of the night a loser, a fellow who can't even influence Republican politics in his own state. That does not augur well for a presidential bid. And the Republican Party is another loser here. The more extreme Collins is clearly the weaker opponent for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), whose primary was uncontested, who has been banking all kinds of money, and who has run a disciplined, centrist campaign. Preliminary polling has Ossoff as a 5-point favorite over Collins, which seems about right to us.
  
  
• ...And He Loses Some: Meanwhile, both Trump AND Kemp were backing Lt. Gov. Burt Jones (R) for the nomination to replace the term-limited Kemp. Jones took 47% of the vote, as compared to 53% for businessman Rick Jackson, who showed the world that you can overcome a non-endorsement from Trump for the bargain price of $100 million. Jackson, like Collins, is the more extreme candidate. He is also politically inexperienced, and politically inexperienced candidates in Georgia have a bad habit of saying impolitic things (see Walker, Herschel).
  
  Jackson's success is good news for the Democrats and their candidate, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The only recent poll of that matchup has Bottoms up by a whopping 15 points, 53% to 38%. Even if you question the poll's conclusions, it still makes clear that Jackson is the weaker candidate, as the same poll had Bottoms leading Jones by just 10 points.
  
  
• U.S. Senate, Alabama: Rep. Barry Moore (R) easily won his runoff over former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson, 56%-44%. Aren't there only something like a few hundred Navy SEALs? Seems like half of them are running for office as Republicans at any given time. In any case, the GOP does not have great luck with Alabama Senate candidates named "Moore," so maybe lawyer Everett Wess, winner of the Democratic runoff with 54% of the vote, will somehow triumph. But we wouldn't bet on it if we were you.
  
  
• U.S. Senate, Oklahoma: Rep. Kevin Hern (R) easily won the right to run in the special election to succeed Markwayne Mullin, taking 69.8% of the vote to 14% for runner-up Gary Ty England (R). On the Democratic side, nurse N'Kiyla Jasmine Thomas and lawyer and minister Jim Priest advanced to a runoff. The last time Oklahoma sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, Bill Clinton was just the yokel governor of Arkansas, best known for giving a long and boring speech at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
  
  Though we really don't like making every contest about Trump, we are duty-bound to point out that he did endorse Hern and Moore; in both cases when the contest was no longer in doubt. So, the President was 3-1 in the big races yesterday, though it's a pretty flimsy 3-1.
  
  
• Governor, Oklahoma: In the only primary that matters in this race, AG Gentner Drummond (R) claimed a shade over 26% of the vote, former state Sen. Mike Mazzei (R) got a shade under 26%, and they will advance to a runoff. Can Drummond overcome the fact that Mazzei has Trump's endorsement? Probably depends on whether he has a spare $100 million laying around. State Rep. Cyndi Munson got the Democratic nomination, not that it matters.
  
  
• Mayor, Washington, DC: The District has ranked-choice voting, so it could be a little while before we know the result of the Democratic primary (which is the de facto election, in the D+44 DC). However, the leftier Democrat, Janeese Lewis George, had 52.8% of the vote with 64% reporting. Needless to say, if she can stay above 50%, there will be no need to process the ranked ballots. The less lefty Kenyan R. McDuffie is in second place right now, with 36.6% of the vote.
  
  
• CA-14: Between Alabama, Georgia and Oklahoma, there are only two House seats that are swingy (the D+5 AL-02 and the D+4 GA-02), and neither had runoffs yesterday. So, the only House race from yesterday that's really of interest is the special election in CA-14, where Aisha Wahab (D) is close to the promised land, with 43% of the vote, but is not likely to avoid a runoff, most probably against Melissa Hernandez (D). Note that CA-14 is D+28, so the contest there is not THAT interesting; the district's obviously going to end up in Democratic hands. Incidentally. yesterday's election was for the right to finish off disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell's (D) term; Wahab is also the favorite to win the seat in her own right in November.
  
  
• OK-01: Actually, we lied. There's one other House race that's sort of interesting, albeit in an indirect way. State rep. Mark Tedford (R) and fundamentalist pastor Jackson Lahmeyer (R) advanced to a runoff for the R+11 district being vacated by Kevin Hern. The reason this is somewhat interesting is that Lahmeyer got caught... sexting with a woman who is not his wife. When Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner (D) got caught doing the same thing, many right-wing politicians and pundits were so scandalized they needed their fainting couches and their smelling salts. The lack of GOP commentary on Lahmeyer, who holds himself out as a model of Christian virtue, may just hint at the existence of a double standard.
  
  
• Nevada Secretary of State: Speaking of double standards, Nevada did not have a primary yesterday, but it DID finish counting the ballots from last week's contest for the Republican nomination for state secretary of state. The race was won by crazypants Trumper and election denier Jim Marchant (R), who will now face off against the incumbent, Francisco Aguilar (D).
  
  Despite the fact that Nevada is a much smaller state than California, and has somewhat less rigorous anti-fraud measures in place, nary a Republican, from Donald Trump on down, has had so much as a peep of complaint about how long it took for Marchant to be crowned the winner of his primary. Hm, what explains the difference here? We'll have to get the Electoral-Vote.com research staff on that right away.

Not as interesting as last week but, by politics junkie standards, not too bad. Next week, it's primaries in Maryland, New York and Utah, along with runoffs in South Carolina. That should be pretty good. (Z)