Tuesday’s elections show Trump still has pull
The day after FBI agents searched his home in Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump yet again illustrated his electoral pull on the Republican Party.
In a series of primaries in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Vermont and Connecticut on Tuesday — and in a newly conceded race from last week’s election in Washington state — Trump’s candidates scored victories and his enemies drew defeats, with a notable exception.
Republican voters in Wisconsin and Minnesota elevated a slate of nominees who have peddled baseless claims of fraud over the 2020 presidential election, setting up high-stakes battles in the fall over the future of fair elections in critical battleground states. And in Connecticut, the Trump-backed Senate candidate Leora Levy trounced a moderate Republican, Themis Klarides.
Here are key takeaways.
One of the country’s pivotal races for governor takes shape.
Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, was always going to be in trouble.
He was facing a prospective showdown against either Tim Michels, a millionaire construction magnate endorsed by Trump, or Rebecca Kleefisch, the state’s former lieutenant governor, who had the backing of former Vice President Mike Pence. On Tuesday night, Evers learned his Republican rival would be Michels, the latest victor of the power struggle across the country between Trump Republicans and establishment Republicans.
The electoral contest is likely to be one of the most consequential in the country.
Trump fever has not quite broken.
Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, came within a whisker of losing on Tuesday to a candidate with little name recognition, all thanks to a Trump endorsement. The near miss for Vos, the most powerful Republican in Wisconsin politics, shows just how crucial that endorsement can be in the land of cheese and election rejection.
The race between Vos and Adam Steen in the Republican primary for a Wisconsin Assembly seat was tighter than virtually any Wisconsin analysts predicted, though Vos is an 18-year incumbent who has been speaker for a decade and who grew up in the district. Steen is an Indiana native who had no paid advertising beyond a small bit of mailings, but he had Trump’s backing and a claim he would work to take back the state’s 10 Electoral College votes from 2020, a legal impossibility.
A ray of hope for Democrats.
In a state where the last two presidential elections were won by razor-thin margins, Democrats in Wisconsin have some cause for optimism.
Some of that has to do with sweeping legislation, covering climate change and prescription drug prices, which is on pace to pass by November. Some of it has to do with the energy galvanizing Democratic voters over abortion rights. And some of it, in Wisconsin, has to do with Mandela Barnes, the state’s lieutenant governor.
Barnes — a former community organizer from Milwaukee — won the Democratic nomination in a Senate race to take on the Republican incumbent, Sen. Ron Johnson. Barnes’ victory sets up a heated general election race that could help decide control of the Senate. Barnes, Wisconsin’s first Black lieutenant governor, would be its first Black senator if he were to win.
Another Republican impeacher will not return to Congress.
Of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump, the fate of all but one is now sealed. Four declined to seek another term, two others survived their primaries and three have lost.
In Washington state, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, who sharply criticized Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, became the third House Republican to lose, conceding her race with a statement on Tuesday. “I’m proud that I always told the truth, stuck to my principles, and did what I knew to be best for our country,” she said.
The 10th House Republican who voted to impeach the former president, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, has her primary next week