On one of the most consequential nights of this year’s primary season, Donald Trump’s sway in a series of Republican races remained unclear but voters in red-state Kansas resoundingly rejected an amendment aimed at restricting abortion rights.
Tuesday night’s marquee races were in Arizona, where Republicans are on the verge of tapping prominent election deniers to be their nominees in contests for governor, secretary of state and US Senate.
In the governor’s race, Trump-backed Kari Lake, a former news anchor who has built her campaign around misinformation about the 2020 election, was trailing Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy real-estate developer who is endorsed by Mike Pence and the current Arizona governor, Doug Ducey. The winner will take on Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s current secretary of state, who was projected to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
Down the ballot, Mark Finchem, a close ally of Trump who aggressively sought to overturn Arizona’s election results, was on the verge of clinching the GOP nomination to be secretary of state in a four-way primary. Trump has endorsed Finchem in the contest, which typically gets little attention, boosting him to the front of the field.
If elected in November, Finchem would wield considerable power over elections in Arizona, including how ballots are counted and there is a loud alarm he could use that power to throw out an election result he doesn’t like, especially given his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 race.
Underscoring how deeply embedded Trump’s election lies are among Republicans in Arizona, the New York Times reported on Tuesday that two politicians involved in the efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in the state worried the scheme could “appear treasonous”.
On the Democratic side, Adrian Fontes, the former top election official in Maricopa county, home to Phoenix, is vying for his party’s nomination against Reginald Bolding, the minority leader in the Arizona house of representatives.
And in the US Senate race, Blake Masters, who has embraced extreme anti-immigrant positions and is backed by Trump and the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, is the frontrunner to win the GOP nomination. He will face Senator Mark Kelly this fall, who ran unopposed.
Meanwhile in Kansas, a state that Trump won by nearly 15 points, voters defeated an amendment that would have paved the way for abortion restrictions and delivered an energizing win for Democrats who face tough odds in the midterms.
The resounding win came as a surprise in a deeply conservative state. Republican lawmakers scheduled the vote during the partisan primaries thinking that low Democratic turnout would bolster their anti-abortion cause, but the secretary of state, Scott Schwab, suggested that the massive voter turnout on Tuesday may match the turnout of the 2008 presidential election.
The vote is viewed as a litmus test for the future of abortion access across the US.
There is also a tight race in western Michigan, where the freshman congressman Peter Meijer is trying to fend off a challenge from John Gibbs, a former Trump administration official. Meijer was one of 10 House Republicans to back Trump’s impeachment and Trump has backed Gibbs in an act of retribution. Whoever wins the district will be in a competitive race in November. Democrats have faced criticism in recent weeks for trying to boost Gibbs, calculating that the more extreme candidate may be easier to beat in November.
Michigan Republicans nominated a conservative media commentator, Tudor Dixon, who has falsely said Trump won the state in 2020 and earned a late endorsement from the former president. She will take on Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, in November. Dixon emerged as the party’s nominee after an extremely chaotic primary during which several candidates were disqualified and one was arrested for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection.
On the Democratic side, redistricting set two Democratic House incumbents against each other in Michigan. Andy Levin, a former president of his synagogue, was ultimately defeated by Haley Stevens, after a pro-Israel Super Pac funded ads attacking the former and amplifying the later. Levin has been critical of Israel’s human rights record.
In Washington state, representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, both of whom voted to impeach Trump, are hoping to survive Trump-backed challengers.
In Missouri, Eric Schmitt, the state attorney general, prevailed in a competitive primary for an open US Senate seat. Schmitt trounced the state’s scandal-plagued former governor, Eric Greitens, who was attempting a political comeback. Both vied for Trump’s endorsement – and earned it – when the former president declined to choose between them. Instead Trump issued a statement on Monday announcing that he had endorsed “Eric” but did not specify which one.
