Washington Post: “Voters in New York, Illinois and Colorado choose their nominees for governor Tuesday after expensive, competitive primaries.”
“Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina are deciding on their candidates for U.S. Senate, while voters in two Illinois districts deal with the prospect of member vs. member races.”
Leave your reactions in the comments as votes come in.
A new ad for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) features former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY), a political icon in the state, backing Cheney’s re-election, NBC News reports.
“But in an interview with NBC News about the ad, the Wyoming political giant minced few words about his frustration with former President Donald Trump, who is backing a primary challenge against Cheney over her repeated criticism of the former president.”
New York gubernatorial candidate Harry Wilson (R) called rival Lee Zeldin (R) and an aide “scumbags” in a group text that he accidentally sent to Zeldin.
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Politico breaks down the primaries today in Colorado, Illinois, Mississippi, New York, Oklahoma and Utah.
“Democrats have a lot riding on Tuesday’s primaries. The Republican primaries, that is.
“Facing hurricane-force electoral headwinds in November, Democrats have launched an unprecedented effort to meddle in GOP nominating contests across the country, elevating extreme candidates and attacking Republican hopefuls they view as greater threats in the general election.”
Yesli Vega (R) — the GOP nominee in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District vying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) — drew outrage after audio published by Axios Richmond appeared to capture her theorizing inaccurately about why rape might not lead to pregnancy in a conversation about abortion and exceptions to abortion bans, the Washington Post reports.
Washington Post: “Democratic strategists argued that such a massive change in the legal landscape will trigger a drumbeat of news coverage as states adapt, keeping the issue front of mind for a sustained period. Some argued it could help the party improve its standing among women, including those in the suburbs who grew frustrated with Democrats over pandemic school closures.”
Said pollster John Anzalone: “If you are in a close race this will be a game changer.”
“A political shift is beginning to take hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans,” the AP reports.
“More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year… The previously unreported number reflects a phenomenon that is playing out in virtually every region of the country — Democratic and Republican states along with cities and small towns — in the period since President Joe Biden replaced former President Donald Trump.”
“But nowhere is the shift more pronounced — and dangerous for Democrats — than in the suburbs, where well-educated swing voters who turned against Trump’s Republican Party in recent years appear to be swinging back. Over the last year, far more people are switching to the GOP across suburban counties from Denver to Atlanta and Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Republicans also gained ground in counties around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa.”
“A worker at a grocery store in New York was arrested after slapping Rudy Giuliani on the back and calling him a ‘scumbag’ during a campaign event Sunday for his son, a GOP candidate for governor,” the HuffPost reports.
“The incident, which was initially cast as an assault, was shared in video footage in the hours after the encounter at a ShopRite store on Staten Island. A man wearing a mask is seen walking by Giuliani before hitting him on the back with an outstretched hand. It’s unclear how hard the man slapped the former New York City mayor, who looked surprised by the encounter but didn’t seem to be physically reeling.”
“If you are in a close race this will be a game changer.”
— Democratic pollster John Anzalone, quoted by the Washington Post, on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Politico: “Multiple Republicans in tough races this fall — incumbents in districts Joe Biden carried — avoided abortion questions in the hours after the decision. Several others said only that it was an issue for states, not whether they’d support any legislation Democrats might put on the floor.”
“Democrats say that silence, or occasional deflection, is a telling sign that Republicans know abortion rights remain broadly popular with much of the electorate — and that the GOP will soon face the wrath of suburban and purple-district voters. Some Republicans, too, acknowledge that abortion rights polling generally favors the left. But they say voters are harder to pin down when it comes to ‘late-term’ abortion or ‘heartbeat’ bans — terms the GOP leveraged to define the debate in recent years as the religious right gained influence.”
“A Providence police officer who was running for state office as a Republican dropped out of the race on Saturday amid a criminal investigation for allegedly punching his Democratic opponent in the face during an abortion protest,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Jennifer O’Rourke (D) on Twitter: “Last night, after speaking at our Roe rally, my Republican opponent — a police officer — violently attacked me. This is what it is to be a Black woman running for office. I won’t give up.”
“Republicans finally got the Roe v. Wade decision they wanted, and in public, they are delighted,” Politico reports.
“More quietly, however, according to interviews with more than a dozen Republican strategists and party officials, they just didn’t want it to come right now — not during a midterm election campaign in which nearly everything had been going right for the GOP.”
Jonathan Bernstein: “Trump is taking credit for endorsing the winner in the Alabama Senate primary run-off. This is actually more about reporters than it is about the Republican Party. Trump had originally endorsed one candidate, then pulled his support and switched to the polling leader. He did a similar thing in the Pennsylvania governor’s primary, with a very late endorsement to a big polling leader. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with endorsing sure winners. It’s part of politics.”
“But any pundit or journalist who buys the idea that the subsequent results say anything at all about Trump’s strength within the party or among Republican voters is failing a very easy test. The truth is that Trump’s endorsements haven’t been very effective in moving voters during this election cycle (or, for that matter, previous ones). That doesn’t mean Republican voters don’t like him. They do. But voters usually like all of their party’s politicians.”
“The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday to eliminate the broadly supported constitutional right to abortion ignited a political firestorm in an already heated election year, landing less than five months from a slew of contests for Congress, statehouses and governor,” NBC News reports.
“The Supreme Court’s historic decision enables states to ban abortion. It also allows Congress to outlaw abortion nationally, for the first time in a half-century, giving the winners of the 2022 elections new powers to determine whether abortion stays legal.”
“Democrats vowed political revenge at the ballot box, with President Joe Biden immediately seeking to channel the backlash by urging voters to put Democratic candidates in power so they can maintain a woman’s right to end a pregnancy.”
Axios: Democrats campaign on abortion ruling while GOP sticks to inflation.
Amy Walter: “Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen several polls showing Democratic Senate candidates running either slightly or significantly ahead of President Biden’s job approval ratings in their state. The latest example was an AARP poll in Pennsylvania that showed Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman outpacing Biden’s dismal 36 percent job approval in the state by 14 points, and leading his GOP opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz, 50 percent to 44 percent.”
“The good news for Democrats is that they’ve shown an ability to create distance between themselves and an unpopular president… The big question is whether they’ll be able to keep this distance between themselves and Biden for the next four months, especially as GOP candidates and campaigns start focusing in earnest on attaching them to the unpopular president and his policies.”
A new ad from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is spotlighting his GOP opponent’s ties to a domestic terrorism group linked to the Capitol insurrection, Politico reports.
The spot hits Frank Pallotta (R) for refusing to denounce the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group that helped plan the Jan. 6. riot.
Arizona U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters (R) called for privatizing social security yesterday at a FreedomWorks forum.
“Sheena Greitens grew concerned enough about her then-husband Eric Greitens’ (R) violent and controlling behavior four years ago that she contacted both a marriage therapist and family lawyer to outline allegations of the former Missouri governor being physically and emotionally abusive to her and their young children,” the Kansas City Star reports.
“The two communications, sent in 2018, offer an exhaustive account of the abuse allegations against Eric Greitens that were first made public in a sworn statement filed by Sheena Greitens in March.”
“Now a candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, Eric Greitens has tried to paint the allegations as a political conspiracy orchestrated by establishment Republicans in an effort to derail his campaign.”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.