Three Southern states are holding primaries Tuesday, while Texas is hosting runoffs for races where no candidate earned a majority of the vote in the March 1 primary. Minnesota is also conducting primaries for an Aug. 9 special election to fill the vacant 1st Congressional District.
We’ll be liveblogging the results here and also covering the returns closely on Twitter.
Key races: Previews | Cheat-sheet ●●● Results: AL | AR | GA | TX | MN-01
Let’s briefly recap:
• Trump endorsees are having a mostly poor night in Georgia. While Herschel Walker has unsurprisingly won the Senate nomination, David Perdue got truly pasted by Brian Kemp in the gubernatorial contest. Kemp survives without a runoff and will face off against Democrat Stacey Abrams in a marquee rematch in November. Similarly, incumbent Attorney General Cris Carr has survived his challenge, and incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger appears to be doing so as well, though he may not escape a runoff.
• The closely-watched Democratic runoff in Texas’s 28th district is extremely close and will probably remain that way all night. Incumbent Henry Cuellar leads progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros 51-49.
GA-07 (D): After a long wait to collect enough votes, we can finally report on the Democratic primary in Georgia’s 7th district, which sees a matchup between two incumbents, Lucy McBath from the 6th and Carolyn Bourdeaux from the previous version of the 7th. This matchup is courtesy of Georgia Republican redistricting, who turned the 6th back into a red district.
While Bourdeaux has a geographical advantage, McBath seemed better poised to win here because of the demographic and ideological fundamentals of the new district, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing. McBath is winning without risk of a runoff, leading Bourdeaux 64-31 with state Rep. Donna McLeod lagging at 6%.
GA-14 (R): This wasn’t on our list of competitive races to watch, since there was no indication she was ever in any real trouble beyond various online people’s wishcasting, but in case anyone’s wondering, we’ll note that the AP has called the Republican primary without a runoff for Marjorie Taylor Greene. She leads her nearest opponent 70-16. She will face Democratic nominee Marcus Flowers in November, in what will also not be a competitive race despite what you will hear on social media.
AR-Sen (R): There was a mildly competitive Republican primary in Arkansas that mostly flew under the radar, where unremarkable conservative incumbent John Boozman faced multiple challengers for the sin of not being a wackadoodle. However, Boozman is surviving the race without a runoff; he’s at 57% with his opposition divided between the well-funded ex-football star Jake Bequette at 22 and the truly out-there gun range owner Jan Morgan at 19.
AL-05 (R): I know a lot of you out there are saying “why do you keep talking about this TX-28 nonsense, we want to know what’s happening in the Republican primary in AL-05!” Well, you’re in luck; it’s finally time to talk about the race to replace Mo Brooks, who’s giving up his dark-red Huntsville-area seat to run for Senate and will need someone similar to fill his large clown shoes. Madison County Commissioner Dale Strong is in pole position at 47%. If he ends up in a runoff, the likeliest opponent is Freedom Caucus-aligned former Defense Dept. official Casey Wardynski, who’s at 20%.
TX-AG (R): Well, it looks like George P. Bush will have plenty of time to practice his love in the private sector to put food on his family; the AP has called the Republican runoff in the Attorney General’s race for the (we’ll say it again: indicted) incumbent, Ken Paxton, who currently leads 66-34.
TX-28 (D): Incumbent Henry Cuellar’s lead has crept up a bit in the 28th district; he leads Jessica Cisneros 53-47. We’re still waiting on early votes in three small counties (Atascosa, Duval, and Zapata), as well as the election-day votes.
AL-Sen (R): We’ve finally accumulated enough votes in the Republican primary in the Alabama Senate race, to replace Richard Shelby, who’s been there so long that he was a Democrat pre-1994. The results so far seem to confirm trends in the most recent polls we’ve seen, with Katie Britt (former Shelby aide and former head of the Business Council of Alabama) leading and Rep. Mo Brooks, left for dead after Trump’s endorsement revocation, pulling back into 2nd place ahead of veteran and self-funder Mike Durant. That’s what the results currently show: Britt is at 42%, which would put into a runoff with Brooks, who’s at 30%; Durant lags at 25%.
AL-Gov (R): Incumbent Republican governor Kay Ivey is another one of those anodyne very-conservative southern GOPers who’s facing a rough primary for the sin of not going all in on the crazy sauce, but she appears to be getting by without a runoff, thanks to the benefit of incumbency, a split opposition, and her own spate of red-meat ads to shore up her right flank. Ivey currently sits at 57%, with former ambassador Lindy Blanchard at 19 and businessman/2010 candidate Tim James at 17.
GA-07 (D): We’ve got an AP call in the member-on-member Democratic primary in Georgia’s 7th in Atlanta’s eastern suburbs, with the more progressive option coming out ahead. Lucy McBath has defeated Carolyn Bourdeaux without a runoff; McBath currently leads 64-31.
AR-Sen (R): Another AP call: Sen. John Boozman has easily warded off two primary challengers. With about 115,000 votes counted, he leads Jake Bequette 58-22. Boozman will be the overwhelming favorite in November in this deep red state.
TX-28 (D): We’ve got a new lead change in the closely-fought Democratic runoff in the 28th district. Jessica Cisneros has pulled back into a 51-49 lead, with the addition of some election day votes from Bexar and Guadalupe Counties in the San Antonio area, which is Cisneros’s home turf. We haven’t, however, seen any election day votes from Cuellar’s home turf in Webb County.
TX-28 (D): We’ve gotten yet another lead change in the Texas’s 28th district Democratic runoff: Henry Cuellar moves back into a 51-49 lead over Jessica Cisneros, with the apparent addition of some more votes from Starr County in the Rio Grande Valley. (We’re hearing that the New York Times has a consistent Cisneros lead, but the NYT site also doesn’t seem to have included any Starr County votes yet, so be careful of relying on them.)
TX-15 (D): The 28th isn’t the only close race between a liberal and a moderate in a swingy Rio Grande Valley seat; in fact, the Democratic runoff in the nearby 15th is even closer. Michelle Vallejo, the more progressive option here, has pulled into a 50.1-49.9 lead over Ruben Ramirez (with the actual vote totals 5,999 to 5,967).
TX-AG (D): The AP has called the Democratic runoff in the attorney general’s race for Rochelle Garza. She faces off against indicted incumbent Republican Ken Paxton.
The liveblog continues here.
