Tuesday’s primary elections in five states will be looked back on as a marquee moment ahead of November’s midterm elections, as voters in Michigan, Washington, Virginia, Kansas and Missouri selected candidates for races that could decide which party wins control of Congress.
Here’s a rundown of what we learned from the results:
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Progressives thought their Michigan Senate candidate would be a shoo in – but his victory was narrowMichigan was the site of a bitterly contested Democratic Senate primary in which moderate congresswoman Haley Stevens faced former public health official Abdul El-Sayed , a progressive, in a state that Donald Trump won two years ago. Ahead of Tuesday’s vote, polls showed El-Sayed with a firm lead over Stevens, who had the backing of Governor Gretchen Whitmer as well as top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, and his campaign projected confidence accordingly. But the election turned out to be a squeaker, with El-Sayed winning 48.5% of the vote to Stevens’s 47.5%, the Associated Press reports, far from the blowout polling appeared to show. Republicans nominated former congressman Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost the race for the state’s other Senate seat two years ago.
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The left’s momentum remains strong …El-Sayed’s victory underscored the continued momentum of progressive candidates, who have been on a roll in primaries in New York and Colorado as they harnessed discontent among Democrats with party leadership and their traditional support for Israel. Adding to the movement’s trophies was William Lawrence, the co-founder of climate change activist group the Sunrise Movement, who clinched the Democratic nomination for the battleground seventh congressional district in central Michigan. In Detroit, progressive Donavan McKinney succeeded in ousting Congressman Shri Thanedar, who had been backed by groups aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac).
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… but not unstoppableLeft wing challengers did not triumph everywhere. In Missouri, voters in the St Louis area rejected former congresswoman Cori Bush’s attempt at a political comeback and renominated the incumbent Wesley Bell, who unseated her two years ago with the help of spending from pro-Israel groups. Bush, a progressive who believes the US ally committed a genocide in Gaza, attempted to harness dislike of Israel among primary voters to her advantage against Bell, who received heavy backing from an Aipac-linked Super Pac. But she lost badly , receiving not even 40% of the vote. In Washington, Congresswoman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, one of the few Democrats holding on to a seat that Trump won two years ago, clinched her primary against a crowded field that included a challenger to her left.
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Republicans asked too much of their own votersMissouri’s Republican leaders had backed a ballot initiative that would have made it more difficult for state constitutional amendments to pass, after their voters in recent years approved abortion protections , paid sick leave and cannabis legalization at the ballot box. That measure was rejected by a whopping 80% vote, as was an attempt to phase out the state income tax, by a similarly huge margin. And four years after voters in heavily Republican Kansas approved abortion protections in the state constitution, they turned back a GOP-backed attempt to have state supreme court judges popularly elected rather than appointed by the governor. The current bench had attracted Republican ire for issuing rulings against the party’s interests, including on abortion rights.
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Democrats in battleground Michigan are split all kinds of waysMichigan’s Democratic voters chose their fighters in Tuesday’s primary for a Senate race that could determine whether the party returns to the majority in the chamber, as well as for vital House races. But the primaries also underscored sharp divides among their backers over which brand of the Democratic party works best for them. Stevens’s strong primary performance shows El-Sayed has work to do to win over the centrist voters she courted, as well as those who preferred her views on Israel. The task is much the same for Lawrence, who triumphed over a divided field of moderate Democrats but now must convince voters to get on board with his progressive politics in a district that’s one of the most narrowly divided in the country.