Note: My sincerest apologies for uploading this three months late; by this point, technical know-how and staff have turned over for the new year
We’re now well into the thick of primary season. From now until September, there will be a steady rumble of elections as each state holds nominating contests for all of the various offices on the ballot, although some weeks will have much less action than others. This week’s primaries will be the last for two weeks, giving political junkies like me a bit of breathing room. There are three and a half states with primaries, so to speak, because Arkansas, Georgia, and Kentucky have the first rounds of their elections, while Texas has run-offs for races in which candidates received less than 50% of the vote in March.
Arkansas
Casual observers might not know it, but even in recent years, Arkansas was one of the most Democratic states in the country. After six terms and twelve years as governor, Bill Clinton won his home state twice. Even though Barack Obama lost here by double digits, three of four congressmen, both senators, the governor, and both chambers of the state legislature were all held by Democrats. However, Obama’s election precipitated a shift in the state’s politics, and by 2015 a new Republican governor sealed full party control of the levels of power. This year, there’s almost nothing to blink at. Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) will sail to an easy renomination and reëlection. His opposition in the gubernatorial race is unremarkable. There’s little to say about the other statewide offices, except that the Democratic candidate for state attorney general has the same name as Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). The Class II and III Senate seats were up in 2014 and 2016, respectively. The one race that does have Democrats excited is in the Second Congressional District, centered around Little Rock, where state rep. Clarke Tucker is hoping to defeat incumbent French Hill (R-AR-2) in the least red district in the state. The other three congressional seats are safe for Republicans.
Results: Tucker won easily with 57% of the vote.
Georgia
Out of all the states with elections this week, Georgia certainly has the most action. I’ll look at the more notable races here. In the gubernatorial race, former state House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams is facing off against state rep. Stacey Evans for the Democratic nomination. Abrams is trying to refashion the moderate-to-liberal coalition of blacks and suburban whites that elected Gov. Roy Barnes (D-GA) in 1998, while Evans is reaching out to more conservative voters in the hopes she can bring some Trump supporters into the fold. On the Republican side, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle is running against state Secretary of State Bryan Kemp to succeed Gov. Nathan Deal (R-GA) who is term-limited after two terms in office. Given that President Trump only carried Georgia by six points in 2016, and the blue-leaning midterm environment, Democrats may stand a fighting chance to win the governor’s mansion back for the first time in 16 years. In terms of other statewide races, there is little to say except that former Rep. John Barrow (D-GA-12), who was the last remaining white Democrat in the Deep South until his defeat in 2014, is running to succeed Kemp as state Secretary of State. As in Arkansas, the Class II and III Senate seats were up in 2014 and 2016 respectively. This means that in terms of congressional races the ones to watch are in the Sixth and Seventh Congressional Districts, both of which are located in the Atlanta suburbs and swung towards Democrats two years ago, although Hillary Clinton won neither. The Sixth District in particular stands out as the site of the most expensive House race of all time, in which tens of millions of dollars were spent to narrowly elect now-Rep. Karen Handel in a special election last June. The election was held to replace Tom Price (R), who has since resigned from the Trump administration as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The other twelve seats in Georgia’s 10R-4D delegation are safe for their respective parties.
Results: Defying closer polls, Abrams wiped the floor with Evans, 76%-24%. Neither of their counterparts, Cagle and Kemp, reached 50% of the vote, meaning that race heads to a run-off. Interestingly, the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary for GA-6, which is heading to a run-off, is similar to the number cast in the Republican primary for GA-7. This could mean that GA-6 will be quite competitive in November, since Democrats as the minority party in one district turned out in similar numbers to Republicans as the majority party in another, and the two are comparable because districts are approximately the same size. Additionally, the gaps between total Democratic and Republican votes were about 50,000 each, or around 5% of the total, which is much less than in previous years. The 17,000-vote gap in the Secretary of State race is even more remarkable, even as Barrow won an outright majority while his prospective general election opponents did not.
Kentucky
Like Virginia and New Jersey in 2017 and Louisiana and Mississippi in 2015, Kentucky is unusual in that it elects its statewide officers in off-off years, meaning the only races on the ballot are for congressional and state legislative seats. Once again, like Arkansas and Georgia, the Class II and III Senate seats were up in 2014 and 2016 respectively, and will be again in 2020 and 2022. Out of Kentucky’s entire 5R-1D House delegation, only one district is deemed competitive this cycle, and that’s the Sixth Congressional District. The Sixth was held by Democrat Ben Chandler until 2013, and despite having been won by both Donald Trump and current Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY-6) by double digits in 2016, still has Democratic roots down-ballot. Like the rest of Kentucky, Democrats still maintain a voter registration edge here. Democrats have two potentially strong candidates in Jim Gray and Amy McGrath. Gray is the openly gay mayor of Lexington, and ran against Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for his Senate seat in 2016. He’s technically won this district before, carrying it 52%-48%, meaning he’s already a proven winner. McGrath, meanwhile, was the first female Marine combat pilot in US history. As a veteran with a unique profile, she could also make this race competitive.
Results: Somewhat unexpectedly, McGrath beat Gray 49%-41%. What’s fascinating is that the number of votes cast in the Democratic primary was more than double that cast in the Republican primary. Even as he was losing, Gray received more votes than Barr did against an unheralded challenger.
Texas (Runoffs)
All the way back in March, when primary season started, some races in Texas went to runoffs, as they must per state law when no candidate takes a majority of the vote. Two months later, those runoffs are happening. The race that stands out is the Democratic gubernatorial primary, where former Dallas County sheriff Lupe Valdez, who would appeal to the state’s large Latino population, is rematching Andrew White, the son of former Gov. Mark White (D), who considers himself “very conservative”. Additionally, the Democratic runoff in the Seventh Congressional District pits Lizzie Fletcher against Laura Moser, a candidate about whom the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) was so concerned that they released their own opposition research against her, including a quote in which she says she’d never want to live in Paris (Paris, Texas that is). If a “blue wave” does end up materializing and President Trump’s poor approval ratings drag down Republican candidates, it’s unclear how that will manifest itself in Texas. This is because Latinos in the state skew heavily Democratic, but there is a large difference between their percentage of the adult population, which is reflected in Trump’s approval rating in the state, and their percentage of registered voters, which is reflected in electoral results.
Results: Valdez beat White by a narrow 53%-47%, while Fletcher and a handful of other DCCC-favored candidates, including those in districts Hillary Clinton won but have Republican incumbents, won their run-offs.
*Note: All results are rounded and courtesy of the New York Times, which cites the AP