Politics Briefs TURNOUT SHATTERS STATE RECORDS FOR PRIMARY
MICH.» Voter turnout LANSING, in Tuesday’s primary election in Michigan shattered records going back at least as far as 1978, a state election official confirmed early Wednesday.
More than 2 million votes were cast. And, based on still incomplete and unofficial election returns, it appears voter turnout exceeded 27 percent.
Those numbers likely help account for precincts running out of ballots Tuesday at polling places in Oakland County and elsewhere.
Based on data from the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office, the most people to vote in any Michigan primary — midterm or presidential — since 1978 was the 1,722,869 people who voted in the 2002 gubernatorial primary. State officials pegged the turnout that year at 23.3 percent, based on 6.8 million registered voters.
Women just broke a record: Most female nominees for governor in a single year.
Nowhere is there a stronger gender disparity in U.S. politics than in governor’s mansions. Right now there are six female governors.
Tuesday may go down as a day that helps change that. Primary voters in 2018 just set a record for nominating women to run for governor in either major party, according to data collected by the Center for American Women and Politics.
Democratic voters nominated women for the governor’s mansion in Michigan and Kansas, bringing the total number of female nominees for governor to 11. And there are 16 more female candidates still competing in gubernatorial primaries this year, from Hawaii to Florida, and in Wisconsin, Alaska and New York.
The previous record for female gubernatorial nominees was 10, which was set in 1994 and has been matched a couple of times since.
Not all the female candidates in the remaining primaries are likely to win, and not all the female nominees are likely to win in November. Of the 11 major-party nominees so far, eight or nine are ranked by election analysts as favored to win or in competitive races.
In election victory speech, Kansas official remembers son killed in 2016 water slide tragedy.
KAN.» Two KANSAS CITY, years to the day after his 10-year-old son was killed on a water slide at a water park, Scott Schwab rode to victory in the Republican primary for Kansas secretary of state.
Caleb Schwab died Aug. 7, 2016, from a fatal neck injury on Schlitterbahn’s Verruckt water slide. The Schwabs, of Olathe, were visiting the water park in Kansas City as part of a free day for the families of elected officials. Scott Schwab is a state representative.
During his victory speech Tuesday night at Overland Park’s DoubleTree Hotel, Schwab remembered his son.
“I want to take a minute,” Schwab said, standing with wife, Michele, and son Nathan. “We did not spend our day caring a whole lot about politics or campaigns.
“Between 1 and 2 o’clock we lost a son two years ago to that hour. And how much we would love to have Caleb on this stage with us. So we just took a moment and said, ‘God, say hi to him for us.’ ”
In Tuesday’s primary, Schwab defeated four other Republicans for the opportunity to replace Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in the office as Kobach mounted a run for governor.
Schwab will face Democrat Brian McClendon in the general election.
Gay American Indian busts candidate mold in Kansas.
KAN.» Democrat TOPEKA, Sharice Davids added her name Wednesday to her party’s increasingly diverse slate of candidates advancing to the November ballot.
Davids, who would be the first gay American Indian elected to Congress, narrowly won a sixway primary in her eastern Kansas district, shattering the mold for a congressional primary winner in conservative Kansas and embodying the range of ethnicities and sexual orientations of Democratic candidates running throughout the country this fall.
Notably, the 38-year-old lawyer and activist from Kansas City is among a wave of gay, bisexual and transgender candidates running — the vast majority as Democrats — including at the top of the ballot in key states.
“Voters in the 3rd congressional district have sent a clear message to the nation: Fairness and tolerance are Kansas values,” said Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas, a LGBT advocacy organization.
Approximately 200 LGBT candidates are expected to be on the November ballot across the country for state and federal office, the most ever, according to Sean Meloy, senior political director of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, a nonpartisan political advocacy group.