While Donald J. Trump’s wing of the Republican Party flexed its muscle in primaries across the country on Tuesday, a remarkable victory for abortion rights in Kansas, coupled with a couple of defeats for Trump-styled candidates, suggest this year’s midterms are a trickier environment for uncompromising conservatives than Republicans once believed.
But there’s a twist: In areas where the night was the most difficult for far-right parties, the Republican Party could be in the best position to win in November.
Missouri’s defeat of former Gov. Eric Greitens’ defeat in the Republican Senate primary means that Senator Roy Blunt’s seat, which is retiring, will likely remain in G.O.P. hands. Tudor Dixon, a G.O.P., was elected governor of Michigan. candidate for governor backed by the state’s powerful DeVos family (and, in the final days, by Mr. Trump), defeated several far-right rivals to set up what could be a competitive general election against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.
Democrats could prosper where Trump-backed candidate prevails. This is particularly true in Western Michigan, where a candidate who was endorsed by the former President, John Gibbs beat Representative Peter Meijer by a narrow margin. Mr. Gibbs’s victory handed Democrats a golden opportunity to grab a seat that has been redrawn to lean toward their party.
Here are five lessons learned from the big election night that took place in Arizona, Kansas and Michigan.
Kansas’s vote for abortion rattles the nation.
Voters in deep red Kansas issued a loud warning shot for Republicans across the country. They signaled that abortion could energize voters who were not part of the G.O.P. Voters in deep-red Kansas sent a loud warning shot to Republicans across the country. This signaled that abortion has the potential to energize voters who the G.O.P. hoped would remain disengaged. Democrats are likely to use their vote to build momentum and portray Republicans out of step with the majority Americans on the issue.
The vote in Kansas, which resoundingly rejected a ballot referendum that would have removed the right to abortion from the State Constitution, was the first test of Americans’ political attitudes on the issue since the Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade decision. It revealed that from the bluest counties to the reddest ones, abortion rights outran Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s performance in the state in 2020.
As the polls began to close, Scott Schwab, the Kansas secretary of state, said election officials expected turnout to reach about 50 percent — far above the 36 percent that his office had predicted before Election Day, and particularly stunning for a primary in a nonpresidential election year.
It is too soon to tell the partisan breakdown, but early results indicated that the strength of the abortion rights side wasn’t limited to Democratic areas.
The referendum was rescinded in blue and moderate areas like the Kansas City suburbs but also in conservative parts of the state. Swing areas swung to the left.
Kansans have shown that the political winds in the area are shifting as both parties look ahead at elections in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Georgia this fall.
His seat is also lost by another impeachment vote
For most of the year, a vote to impeach Mr. Trump in 2021 for inciting the Jan. 6th 2021 attack on Capitol seemed like a career-ending move to a House Republican.
Four of the 10 voters who cast that vote retired before they could face primary voters. One, South Carolina Representative Tom Rice, was defeated by a Trump-endorsed Republican. One, Representative David Valadao from California, survived the primary night and will remain on November’s ballot.
Tuesday was a major defensive stand for the anti-Trump G.O.P., with three of the remaining four Republicans who voted for impeachment facing the former president’s wrath on the ballot. Races for two in Washington, Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, were too close to call — and one, Mr. Meijer, did not survive.
There was a lot of drama. There was a lot of drama. Mr. Meijer was not only fighting the Trump-backed Mr. Gibbs but also the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. They spent more than $400,000 advertising to lift the little-known, unpopular Mr. Gibbs in hopes that he could lose to Hillary Scholten, Democrat, in November.
Ms. Beutler’s Trump-endorsed opponent, Joe Kent, is a square-jawed retired Army Ranger whose wife was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria. Mr. Kent is now a hard-righter, expressing sympathy with Jan. 6 rioters while making false claims of a stolen 2020 vote.
The Democrats’ high-risk strategy of elevating an election-denying conspiracy theorist in Michigan worked for now: Mr. Gibbs will be the Republican nominee in a newly drawn seat that Mr. Biden would have won by nine percentage points in 2020. If Mr. Gibbs wins November, the recriminations towards the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee are brutal.
If the impeachment supporters win Washington, it would mean more of the 10 candidates who faced primary voters are alive than were defeated. Representative Liz Cheney, who will be the last of the 10, will be facing voters later in the month.
Meanwhile, the former president’s winning streak in Republican primaries for the Senate kept rolling in Arizona, where a political newcomer, Blake Masters, captured the nomination after receiving Mr. Trump’s endorsement.
Another conspiracy theorist is closer to overseeing elections.
If Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is loosening slightly, his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen have persisted and spread among prominent Republican candidates. And some candidates’ primary victories on Tuesday could make the issue of democratic elections a central theme in their November general elections.
Mark Finchem, a former member of the Oath Keepers militia, won the Republican nomination in Arizona for secretary of State. He has also made false claims about election improprieties.
He will be running in November for the post of overseeing future elections in a state Mr. Biden narrowly won back in 2020, and where election conspiracy theories have caused havoc since.
The Arizona governor race between Kari Lake (a Trump-backed conspiracy-minded candidate) and Karrin Taylor Robertson (a rival favored in the establishment) was close to calling. Ms. Lake would win in addition to Mr. Finchem, Mr. Masters and it would complete a sweep of election-denying candidate backed by the former President of Arizona.
In Missouri, the victor in the Republican primary for the state’s open Senate seat, Eric Schmitt, led several other state attorneys general in appealing to the Supreme Court in 2020 to take up and possibly throw out Mr. Biden’s election victory in Pennsylvania.
And in Michigan, Ms. Dixon, a conservative commentator who won the Republican nomination for governor, has wavered when questioned whether Mr. Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in her state was legitimate.
Officials are still fighting conspiracy theories. Michigan’s most prominent election deniers, who believe in a stolen 2020 presidential contest, have organized to register as poll workers. Officials have had to respond to a string speculative claims and concerns about safety.
In Arizona, Republican legislators who have questioned Mr. Biden’s victory in their state were calling on Tuesday for people to stake out drop boxes to ensure that no one was illegally stuffing with them ballots, according to voting rights groups and a local news report.
Shame still exists in politics (but it’s a low bar).
The decisive defeat of Mr. Greitens in Missouri’s Republican Senate primary showed that after all the tumult of the last six years, there are still lines that cannot be crossed in politics. Trump once stated that he could shoot anyone on Fifth Avenue in New York without losing any supporters.
In 2018, Mr. Greitens resigned as Missouri governor after he was accused of having lured his ex-girlfriend to his home, stripped her naked, photographed her partially naked, threatened to release the photos if she spoke, and coerced her to perform oral sex.
He thought he would be able to make a political comeback in the United States as a senator. He continued to deny the allegations of his ex-wife and one of his sons.
On Wednesday morning, Mr. Greitens had received less than 19% of the vote, which was a distant third-place finish. Mud that is still rancid sticks.
The results set up three competitive governor’s races.
As she has led Michigan through a severe pandemic, an economic crisis, and a dam-collapse, Governor Whitmer has received much higher approval ratings than Mr. Biden.
But she could face a tough competitor in Ms. Dixon, who managed to unite warring factions of her party allied with Mr. Trump and the state’s wealthy DeVos family. Ms. Dixon has said she decided to run for office out of her anger over Ms. Whitmer’s policies, particularly health restrictions early in the pandemic that were among the most stringent in the country.
Arizona and Kansas may be even tighter.
In Arizona, Katie Hobbs, the Democratic secretary of state and now the party’s nominee for governor, has emerged as a high-profile defender of the state’s 2020 election results who has weathered death threats that prompted round-the-clock security from state troopers.
She will be taking on Ms. Lake or Mrs. Taylor Robson, who have the endorsements of former Vice President Mike Pence (and Gov. Doug Ducey, who has a term-limited.
Governor Kim Johnson of Kansas is the candidate. Derek Schmidt, a Trump-backed state attorney General, will be facing Laura Kelly, a Democrat. It is a tough landscape for Democrats, but Ms. Kelly’s approval ratings are relatively strong. She was a former state senator and rose to higher office after defeating Kris W. Kobach in 2018. Kris W. Kobach is a Republican known for making false warnings about illegal immigration and election fraud. On Tuesday, Mr. Kobach won Kansas’ Republican primary for attorney general.
Maggie AstorAnd Nate CohnContributed reporting
Read the full article here
