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Four states held primary elections yesterday — Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, and that other one … oh, Connecticut, hi! — and all in all, the results look pretty good for Democrats going into the fall’s general election.
In Minnesota, Rep. Ilhan Omar kept the nomination for her US House seat, winning by 56.2 percent to 42.9 percent over challenger Don Samuels, who also ran against her in 2022. Omar’s 13-point margin of victory this time out was much more comfortable than in ‘22, when Samuels came within two points of winning. Omar is expected to win her heavily Democratic district in the fall.
Samuels argued that Omar’s opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza was divisive, but in contrast to the recent primary losses for “Squad” members Jamal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in Missouri, his campaign against Omar didn’t receive significant financial support from pro-Israel PACs, NPR reports, citing federal disclosure records. Samuels said that after Bush lost last week, he did see some increased support, which he said meant things are looking up for “centrist” Dems, and that voters are moving “away from the far left to a more collaborative style” of politics, which may mean that it’s a great day to be David Brooks or something.
Also in Minnesota, and as expected, MAGA loon Royce White, he of the perfectly reasonable campaign expenditures on strip clubs (it was an “accounting error,” OK?) won the nomination to oppose Minnesota’s very popular senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, who is expected to eat his lunch in November, with a staffer’s comb if necessary. White is a very normal candidate who has complained that “Women have become too mouthy,” a sentiment he shared on very normal person Steve Bannon’s podcast in 2022.
White won the state GOP endorsement at its convention in May over normal-conservative Joe Fraser, who initially conceded the nomination but then decided the hell with that because he didn’t want to see his party taken over by weird crazies. Minnesota Republicans said “give us the antisemitic weirdo” in the primary, with White getting 38 percent to Fraser’s 29 percent. White doesn’t just dabble in conspiracy theories, he wades in and wallows around in them while claiming he can attract young voters and voters of color to the Republican tent, even if it’s built over an open sewer.
Even his campaign website sounds like an Alex Jones transcript:
Right now, we face an enemy that intends to bastardize our citizenship through an idea called globalism. We must begin to understand how the global affects the local and take a stand for God, Family, and Country. I have fought against the corporate community responsible for this globalist agenda.
Klobuchar, running for a fourth term, just might have an advantage in the fall, considering her popularity and the fact that she has about $19 million in campaign funds, compared to White’s $85,000. But he has his state party’s support, and we suppose a Trump endorsement is inevitable.
In next door Wisconsin, another GOP weirdo, Eric Hovde, easily won the Republican Senate nomination to run against incumbent Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who needs to be alert but probably not worried, given the fact that. Hovde has a knack for saying things that piss people off, like his opinion that older Americans living in nursing homes “only have five, six months’ life expectancy. Almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote.” He didn’t explicitly call for taking away elders’ right to vote, but hinted that would be a good way to prevent their adult children from submitting fake ballots in their names. He later denied that he meant older people shouldn’t vote, heavens no not that.
Baldwin won reelection in 2018 by 11 points, but she’s taking nothing for granted, calling out Hovde’s weird assholishness in ads that feature audio of him saying that children “born out of wedlock” will end up on “a direct path to a life of poverty.” Hovde has also proclaimed that young Black men are turning to the GOP because they “no longer want to just live on just getting welfare checks. They want to be part of the American entrepreneurial dream,” which is what Republicans think is a terrific outreach strategy we guess.
Also in Wisconsin, voters rejected two constitutional amendments placed on the ballot by the state’s gerrymandered Legislature, which for the time being remains in Republican hands, at least until new maps are used this fall. The measures would have given the Legislature power to override the governor in making decisions about how the state would spend federal money, yet another of the Lege’s attempts to strip power from Gov. Tony Evers.
Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler celebrated the vote, saying in a statement that voters
“defeated an attempt by MAGA politicians to bend our Constitution.” […]
“Republican politicians in Madison pushed these amendments because they recognized their grip on power was waning with new, fair maps, and they were desperate to cement their extreme agenda into Wisconsin’s Constitution.”
That’s a pretty good day for democracy, then!
In other primaries, Republicans in Vermont picked Gerald Malloy to lose this fall against Bernie Sanders (I), who ran unopposed. Malloy previously lost badly in 2022, when he was stomped 68 percent to 28 percent by Sen. Peter Welch (D).
And in Connecticut, Sen. Chris Murphy ran unopposed in the Democratic primary; he’ll be faced in the fall by Matthew Corey, who beat the state GOP’s endorsed candidate, Gerry Smith. That means this year’s Senate election will be a rematch of 2018, when Murphy squooshed Corey in an 825,579 to 545,717 vote. Murphy may squeak out another win this time, with his campaign funds at $9.7 million compared to Corey’s $32,000.
[NPR / CBS News / NBC News / CT Insider / Photo: Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons License 2.0]
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