The Republican Senate race in Pennsylvania, the largest and most costly of a five-state primary night, is a picture finish between former hedge fund entrepreneur David McCormick and celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz. It looks that a statewide recount is in the works.
Former President Donald J. Trump’s pick for Idaho governor came up short, Dr. Oz was in a near tie, and his nominees for Senate in North Carolina and governor in Pennsylvania won.
Early Wednesday, Kathy Barnette, a far-right broadcaster who focused her campaign on Mr. Trump’s election claims, trailed her tightly split competitors Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary.
But, with around 25% of the vote, Ms. Barnette outperformed many political experts only two weeks ago, when she launched a last-minute push on the strength of outstanding debate performances.
On electoral issues, Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz are rarely grounded in reality. Both have refused to recognize Mr. Biden as the legitimate victor of the 2020 election, appealing to their party’s Trump voters.
May 17 was the largest day in the 2022 midterm season thus far, after the primaries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
What’s at Stake: G.O.P. supporters are prepared to nominate candidates that repeat Donald J. Trump’s 2020 falsehoods, indicating that this year’s elections may have an impact on the country’s ability to have free and fair elections.
Trump’s Boundaries: The MAGA movement is sweeping across Republican primaries, but Mr. Trump’s grip on the movement is eroding.
Trump’s Supporters: The majority of the candidates favored by the previous president won. There are, nevertheless, some notable losses.
Up Next, on May 24, closely watched contests in Georgia and Alabama will provide a better sense of Mr. Trump’s might.
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Additional Takeaways: Democratic voters in Pennsylvania have nominated a left-leaning political brawler for Senate, demonstrating their preference for change over the agreement. What else have we discovered?
The election deniers’ victory comes after a year and a half in which Mr. Trump has remained fixated on his 2020 defeat and, in some cases, has urged Republican state lawmakers to attempt to decertify their states’ results, which is illegal.
The GOP will be optimistic about the Senate contest in Pennsylvania. The governor’s race is a different story.
When Ms. Barnette, who had a lengthy history of unpleasant statements and had placed ninth in the fund-raising struggle in Pennsylvania’s Senate campaign, slid significantly behind Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz, Republicans escaped what many viewed as a general-election disaster.
Both Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund entrepreneur, and Dr. Oz, who was backed by Mr. Trump, have mostly self-funded their campaigns and may continue to do so in a general election, though neither would have many issues gathering money.
The winner will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has long been a leftist favorite but has lately shifted to the center after his primary victory was confirmed.
As ballots were tabulated overnight, Democratic voters pushed for change over consensus, electing a left-leaning political brawler to the Senate in Pennsylvania and moving a prominent moderate in the House closer to loss in Oregon.
Here are some significant conclusions from Tuesday’s primaries, which were the most important day of the 2022 midterm season thus far:
Republican voters favored candidates who disputed the election results in 2020.
The Republican candidates who performed best on Tuesday were those who have thrown the greatest doubt on the 2020 election results and campaigned on tightening voting restrictions and altering election procedures.
Doug Mastriano, the far-right candidate who swept the G.O.P. nomination for governor of Pennsylvania, attended the demonstration that led to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and has since asked for the results of the 2020 election to be decertified.
Representative Ted Budd of North Carolina, who defeated a former governor in the state’s Republican Senate primary by more than 30 percentage points, voted last year against certifying the 2020 election results — and then texted Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, to push the bogus claim that Dominion Voting Systems was linked to liberal billionaire George Soros.
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Pennsylvania’s Senate election.
The GOP will be optimistic about the Senate contest in Pennsylvania. The governor’s race is a different story.
When Ms. Barnette, who had a lengthy history of unpleasant statements and had placed ninth in the fund-raising struggle in Pennsylvania’s Senate campaign, slid significantly behind Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz, Republicans escaped what many viewed as a general-election disaster.
Both Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund entrepreneur, and Dr. Oz, who was backed by Mr. Trump, have mostly self-funded their campaigns and may continue to do so in a general election, though neither would have many issues gathering money.
The winner will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat who has long been a leftist favorite but has lately shifted to the center after his primary victory was confirmed.
With virtually all of the votes tabulated, the gap between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz was considerably under 0.5 percent, which is the threshold for automatic recounts in Pennsylvania statewide elections. Thousands of mailed-in ballots from around the state must still be tallied before that can happen.
Whoever wins the Republican Senate primary will be on a ticket with Mr. Mastriano and will very certainly be pressed to justify his ideas. He ran a hard-right campaign and faces Josh Shapiro, the state’s Democratic attorney general, in the general election.
Trump’s backing is still quite crucial.
Trump’s support is still very valuable. However, Republican supporters often have their own opinions.
J.D. Vance earned 32% of the vote in Ohio earlier this month. Charles W. Herbster received 30% in Nebraska last week. And only on Tuesday:
In Pennsylvania, Dr. Mehmet Oz received roughly 31% of the vote. In a House primary in North Carolina, Bo Hines received 32% of the vote. Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin of Idaho received nearly a fourth of the vote in her primary for governor.
Mr. Trump backed all of these candidates in tough primaries. And the results of these elections have determined the importance of Trump’s endorsement in 2022: around one-third of Republican primary voters will support Trump.
In other contexts, such as Mr. Vance’s for Senate and Mr. Hines’, that’s all it takes to win and give the former president credit. Mr. Herbster’s run for governor, for example, fell short of Trump’s expectations.
To be fair, Mr. Trump has won many more elections than he has lost, and he rescued his face on Tuesday night by endorsing Mr. Mastriano late in the campaign when polls showed him leading in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Trump’s early backing for Mr. Budd in the North Carolina Senate campaign stifled support and fundraising for Mr. Budd’s establishment-backed opponents, notably former Governor Pat McCrory.
Mr. Herbster and Mr. Trump, on the other hand, couldn’t compete with a local political machine and millions of dollars from Gov. Pete Ricketts in Nebraska. Despite Trump’s backing, several local Republicans in Pennsylvania never warmed up to Dr. Oz.
None of this bodes well for Mr. Trump’s Georgia candidates, who are up against monetary deficits and entrenched incumbents, unlike in other primary fights this year. Next week is the Georgia primary election.
John Fetterman was chosen by the voters.
Conor Lamb believes that electability is most important. Voters agreed, and John Fetterman was elected.
Conor Lamb pitched himself as the Democrat who could win over Republican voters in tight elections when he came onto the national political scene in 2018 by winning a special election in a House seat that President Trump had won by 18 points.
Mr. Lamb‘s core message to Pennsylvania voters in this year’s Senate contest was electability. Democrats did not disagree; they just determined that his opponent, Mr. Fetterman, was the stronger general-election candidate in the contest.
Despite using the same fund-raising staff as Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, the lieutenant governor generated far more money than Mr. Lamb. Mr. Fetterman’s robust liberal platform also inspired more people than Mr. Lamb, who separated himself not just from Democrats’ left-wing but also from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whom he refused to support as the party’s leader, from the day he joined Congress.
Mr. Lamb ended up being ideal for the resistance-era Democrats of 2018 and 2020 when primary voters were focused on winning at any costs. Now that the party has taken control of Congress and the White House, Pennsylvania Democrats chose a candidate who they saw as a warrior.
Progressives also had a nice night in Oregon, where Representative Kurt Schrader, a longtime Democratic moderate, was lagging severely behind Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a left-leaning opponent. Mr. Schrader, who had received Mr. Biden’s endorsement, had been chastised by her for voting against major components of the Democratic leadership’s policy agenda.
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Madison Cawthorn learned this the hard way.
Madison Cawthorn discovered the hard way that there is a limit to how many votes she can get.
Representative Madison Cawthorn shot into Congress like a rocket two years ago, earning an upset victory in a primary for his western North Carolina district against a Trump-endorsed opponent and becoming an immediate national media phenomenon.
He lost his primary on Tuesday and did not deliver a concession speech at his election-night celebration. Even Trump’s supporters in western North Carolina had had enough by the conclusion of the campaign.
The barrage of unpleasant recordings from Mr. Cawthorn’s personal life, which surfaced after he infuriated fellow Republicans by making outrageous accusations that members of Congress had taken cocaine and staged orgies, proved to be too much.
This was not the case when Republicans opted for electability over fiery rhetoric. Mr. Cawthorn was unlikely to lose a general election, despite Democrats’ best efforts.
Instead, Republican officials in Washington and North Carolina banded together behind Chuck Edwards, a state legislator endorsed by Senator Thom Tillis and a slew of other North Carolina Republicans.
Mr. Cawthorn’s short political career, which started with the promise of being the youngest person ever elected to Congress, has come to an end with this setback. He now has a sizable social media following and the possibility of lucrative career choices outside of political politics at the age of 26.
