States’ primary results set up intense races for Senate
Primary elections in four Republican-leaning states rattled Congress on Tuesday night, as voters ejected a sitting member of the House and set up intense campaigns for the Senate in several battlegrounds.
Republicans averted a worst-case scenario — the nomination of an ex-convict coal baron in West Virginia — but faced warning signs elsewhere.
Here are our takeaways from the evening.
Congress is very unpopular
The night was a near wipeout for members of the House seeking higher office. Three Republican lawmakers lost campaigns for the Senate: Luke Messer and Todd Rokita in Indiana, and Evan Jenkins in West Virginia.
Most alarming for Republicans was Rep. Robert Pittenger’s defeat in North Carolina, which may cost them a seat in the general election. But it was not just voters on the right showing dissatisfaction: Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia saw 3 in 10 Democratic primary voters cast ballots for a low-profile liberal activist instead.
Manchin is in for a fight
Manchin, a conservative-leaning Democrat, has led a relatively charmed political life, twice winning races for governor and for the seat he holds now. But West Virginia continues to drift from its New Deal Democrat roots, and Manchin may face the most difficult race of his career.
His hopes for facing Don Blankenship, the former coal executive and convicted criminal, were dashed Tuesday when Attorney General Patrick Morrisey claimed the Republican nomination. Blankenship, who during the primary attacked Sen. Mitch McConnell’s family in racially charged language, would likely have been abandoned by Senate Republicans had he won the nomination.
And he may have been unelectable by general election voters.
Morrisey, who first made his name by suing the Obama administration, will enjoy the full support and financing of the national party.
Also worrisome for Manchin were the number of Democratic voters who supported his primary opponent, who ran a nominal campaign. He lost about 30 percent of the vote and did even worse in some of the state’s coal counties, which are full of the sort of ancestral Democrats he will need to hold onto in November.
Interventions work
National Republicans and Democrats waded into the West Virginia Senate primary, and they found that interventions can be effective. First, a Republican group backed by McConnell’s allies spent heavily attacking Blankenship.
Then President Donald Trump issued a tweet Monday warning West Virginia Republicans that Blankenship “can’t win the General Election in your State.”
Voters seemed to listen: The controversial coal baron finished third in what was largely a three-person race, taking just 20 percent of the vote.
Less immediately consequential, but still significant, was the role Democrats played in the state’s Republican primary, as a liberal super political action committee linked to Washington strategists aggressively attacked Jenkins.
They feared that the Democrat-turned-Republican with a base in the state’s coal counties would be the strongest candidate against Manchin, and they wound up helping lift Morrisey to the nomination.
The year of the women, continued
Women have found success in the early primaries of 2018, with the trend continuing Tuesday: Nineteen open House Democratic primaries had at least one female candidate and a woman won in 16 of them.
Some of the seats are safely controlled by Republicans and will not be competitive this fall. But the success of candidates like Liz Watson in Indiana and Kathy Manning in North Carolina, and of female Democrats across the four states that voted Tuesday, illustrates how much women are driving the opposition to Trump.
There are more women who are Democratic House candidates this year than ever, and the first primaries of 2018, beginning with Texas and Illinois in March, have demonstrated that they are not just running — they are also winning nominations.
But it’s Trump’s party
When Trump won the presidency, the Republican Party was fractured and important conservative leaders still opposed him.
On Tuesday, not one Trump critic won a Republican primary. The major Republican candidates cast themselves as Trump allies and in some cases explicitly invoked him as a role model.
In Indiana, Mike Braun, a wealthy former state legislator, won the Republican Senate primary by branding himself as a Trump-like businessman and outsider. And Trump’s opposition to Blankenship in West Virginia may have helped doom him.
Republicans may be more careful about embracing Trump in bluer states. So far, though, they are assembling a 2018 slate tied closely to him in every important race.