Main Street Independent’s roundup of Tuesday’s primaries, based on the Associated Press’s reporting, highlights how endorsements, spending, and election administration played out across several battlegrounds and other states.
In Kentucky, the AP said President Donald Trump scored another win against a Republican rival by dislodging Rep. Thomas Massie in the state’s primary, with Ed Gallrein emerging as the winner. The AP described Massie as an outspoken critic who had pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, opposed the war with Iran, and voted against Trump’s signature tax legislation last year, before losing to Trump-backed challenger Gallrein.
The AP also framed the Kentucky result as part of a broader pattern in this primary season, saying Massie’s defeat sends a message to Republican critics of Trump. The AP said Massie would still remain in Congress through his term, which ends in January, and that without another Republican primary on the horizon, he would face fewer constraints on how he operates going forward.
Beyond Kentucky, the AP said Trump’s influence continued to show in other races Tuesday. In Georgia’s Republican gubernatorial nomination, the AP described an unusually lopsided contest between Lt. Gov. Burt Jones—backed by Trump—and billionaire Rick Jackson, with both headed to a June 16 runoff after the primary. The AP said Trump stayed on the sidelines in Georgia’s Senate nomination contest, while in Alabama he endorsed Rep. Barry Moore for Senate, and in Texas he endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, after a prior sideline in a Texas Senate runoff taking place next week.
On the Democratic side, the AP reported that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro showed political strength in his home state’s primary contests. The AP said Shapiro, who may look to succeed Trump in the White House, endorsed four Democrats running for Congress and that all four won their primaries, including Paige Cognetti, mayor of Scranton; Bob Brooks, president of the state firefighters’ union; Bob Harvie, a Bucks County commissioner; and Janelle Stelson, a former television news personality who narrowly lost two years ago.
The AP portrayed the Shapiro-backed results as part of a larger effort by Pennsylvania’s Democratic leaders as November approaches, with Shapiro looking toward reelection in a swing state. The AP also included comments from Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party chairman Eugene DePasquale, who told an election night crowd that “no one” is more invested in flipping seats and “taking back the country” than Shapiro.
Georgia’s primaries also drew attention for how they played out among Republicans who had spoken out against Trump, according to the AP. The AP said Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan were among the few Republicans to speak out against Trump’s effort to overturn his 2020 loss, and that both lost decisively—Raffensperger in a Republican contest for governor and Duncan in the Democratic race.
The AP said the results contrasted with the candidates’ attempts to persuade voters: Raffensperger spent millions of his own money to remind Republicans of his conservative credentials, while Duncan tried to convince Democrats they could trust him after renouncing prior opposition to abortion rights, gun control, and Medicaid expansion in Georgia. The AP tied the governor’s race context to Trump’s ongoing false claims about the 2020 election and his efforts to warn of election fraud ahead of November’s midterms.
In Alabama, the AP reported that voters faced unusual uncertainty over whether some primary votes would count after the state moved to postpone primaries. The AP said more than 100,000 people cast ballots in four of the state’s seven congressional districts that may not count because Republican Gov. Kay Ivey postponed the primaries until Aug. 11 following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that the AP said hollowed out the Voting Rights Act.
The AP said the secretary of state indicated that ballots cast Tuesday for Alabama’s 1st, 2nd, 6th and 7th congressional districts would be voided while state officials restore a previous set of Republican-drawn district boundaries. The AP added that the district lines remain the subject of litigation, including efforts by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and other groups to stop use of the new map, and that if those efforts succeed, Tuesday primaries would determine party nominees for districts in question.
Separate from Alabama’s voided votes, the AP said Oregon voters rejected a 6-cent gas tax increase proposed by Democratic lawmakers by large margins across counties. The AP described the vote as cutting across political divisions and as occurring at a time when Americans were already feeling stretched by high gas prices, which the AP linked to the war in Iran.
The AP also included a politics-and-generations note from Georgia, where it said the late Rep. David Scott, D-Ga., was the fourth Democrat to die in office this term, fueling restlessness on the left over aging leadership. The AP said Scott, 80, was seeking a 13th term, that votes for him would not be counted, and that state Rep. Jasmine Clark won the Democratic nomination Tuesday night, setting her up for what the AP said is an all-but-certain general election win in a district that tilts strongly toward Democrats.