The August primaries began Tuesday in some of the country’s most troubled states and included the first referendum on abortion since The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade this summer.
Kansas stole the headlines and caught the eye of President Joe Biden as voters flocked to the polls to take sides on an amendment protecting abortion rights.
Voters in Michigan had to choose between Democratic House incumbents who represented the moderate and progressive wings of the party, while former President Donald Trump was on the proxy ticket across Arizona.
Here are the main conclusions Tuesday’s primaries.
Kansas rebukes anti-abortion bill
Kansas voters were the first to express how their state Constitution should address abortion rights in the wake of the The monumental Dobbs ruling of the Supreme Court in June, which overturned Roe v. Wade.
and it was a beating against anti-abortion forces.
By about 20 percentage points, the Sunflower state rejected the so-called Value Them Both amendment, which would have allowed the Republican-controlled state legislature to impose new restrictions on the procedure or ban it altogether.
Democrats, liberal activists and progressive groups were quick to tout the amendment’s failure Tuesday as a sign of how unpopular repealing Roe is nationally.
Politics: Abortion rights face test in Kansas vote, first of its kind since Roe’s fall
Plus: The fight for abortion will be on the ballot this November in at least 5 states
Trump against everyone in Arizona
The Arizona Republican primary was a continuation of proxy wars Trump has engaged in with notable Republican officials, including former Vice President Mike Pence.
At the gubernatorial level, Trump-backed former TV journalist Kari Lake and Karrin Taylor Robson, a former member of the Pence-backed Arizona Board of Regents and current Gov. Doug Ducey, are in a tight race to be the Republican nominee. of the state. Since early Wednesday morning, Lake had been ahead.
Secretary of State Katie Hobbs easily won the Democratic nomination for governor. She gained notoriety for resisting false claims about the 2020 election.
Mark Kelly’s opponent is…
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly’s Republican opponent in the fall will be Trump-backed Blake Masters, who beat out businessman Jim Lamon and Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.
Masters won Trump’s support by accepting the former president’s lies about the 2020 presidential race and has recently called into question the legitimacy of the midterm elections. He also has the backing of tech billionaire Peter Thiel.
Kelly, a prolific fundraiser, has raised $52 million so far, but Republicans are determined to make his re-election one of November’s most competitive contests. Arizona’s Senate race is one of a handful of random elections in November that will determine who controls the upper house in 2023.
The Denier Prevails in Arizona
In this midterm season, many candidates who believe they stole the last presidential race have sought to oversee the next round of elections in secretary of state bids across the country.
Mark Finchem, a lawmaker from Arizona, has long promoted Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. He won the GOP primary to be the top election official against multiple rivals.
Finchem is part of a Trump-backed coalition of secretary of state candidates run in key swing states that have spread the former president’s election lies.
In Georgia, Rep. Jody Hice previously lost his bid to oust incumbent Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who defied Trump’s demands to find more votes in the 2020 election, earlier this year. But in Nevada, another major swing state, Jim Marchant, who said the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, easily won a seven-candidate Republican primary for secretary of state in June.
Arizona speaker goes down
Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers is among the Republicans who rejected Trump’s attempts to nullify the 2020 election and, like most, faced a primary challenger as a result.
Bowers testified publicly during one of the committee’s first hearings on Jan. 6 this summer, telling the committee that he refused to say the election was rigged.
The Republican speaker lost to David Farnsworth, a former Trump-backed state lawmaker, according to early results.
Schmitt wins the ‘Eric’ showdown
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt won the state dramatic contest to replace retired Senator Roy BluntThat is a sigh of relief for many Republicans.
It was a crowded field from the start, but it had a lightning rod candidate in former Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned in 2018 amid sexual assault allegations and campaign fundraising problems.
Greitens dipped in the polls after his ex-wife began detailing her claims of domestic abuse, which he denied. From there, establishment Republicans also began to flee, worried that the seat might be more vulnerable if the former governor prevailed.
In a final twist before election day, Trump issued a statement Monday night to make your backup in the race.
The former president said he was supporting “ERIC,” but left out whether that meant Schmitt or Greitens.
Politics: Blunt will not run for re-election, complicating GOP bid to retake Senate
Plus: Trump endorses ‘Eric’ in Missouri Senate race, but won’t say which one
Michigan GOP Nomination for Governor Goes to a Political Newcomer
Tudor Dixon, a Trump-endorsed conservative businesswoman and former TV commentator, won the Republican primary for governor of Michigan on Tuesday.
Speaking after his win, Dixon said he suspected his race against Whitmer this fall would be an “epic battle” and vowed to work “to make sure the next four years are filled with opportunity and not closed classrooms and massive grocery bills.” “.
Dixon beat out businessman Kevin Rinke and chiropractor Garrett Soldano. In November she will face Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who did not face any opponent in the primary and has the advantage of holding the office.
Do you remember the 10 anti-Trump?
After January 6 there was 10 House Republicans Who Supported Removing Trump From Office for inciting the riot.
Since then, the former president has been seeking revenge, and at least three of those Republican lawmakers, Representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse of Washington and Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan, opposed pro-Trump challengers on Tuesday. .
Meijer lost his primary bid to little-known candidate John Gibbs, who has Trump’s backing. However, Herrera Beutler and Newhouse led their Trump-backed rivals in the open Washington primary, so they are likely to secure a spot on the general election ballot this fall.
Progressive Democrats lose
Michigan saw two House incumbents clash Tuesday in a primary race that gave moderate Democrats another win this 2022 primary season over the party’s more progressive wing.
Rep. Haley Stevens defeated fellow Rep. Andy Levin in a newly drawn 11th Congressional District outside of Detroit.
This was just the latest House race in which moderates are outperforming progressives, such as Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, the last anti-abortion House Democrat, who won his primary, and Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio. , who defeated leftist Nina Turner.
Levin has been a critic of Israel’s human rights record and brought in Senator Bernie Sanders to campaign for him. But Stevens was backed by party leaders and was buoyed by more than $4 million spent on her behalf by a new group launched by the US-Israel Public Affairs Committee.
Pen-gate in Arizona?
A conspiracy theory that pens handed out by poll workers in Arizona make it possible for voters’ choices to be changed. came to a head on Tuesday when the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office ordered a Republican candidate to stop spreading the lie.
In a cease and desist letter to Maricopa County Board of Supervisors candidate Gail Golec, the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said to stop urging voters to replace government-issued pens in colleges. electoral.
“As you are well aware, theft of any kind is illegal,” Deputy County Attorney Joseph La Rue said in the letter. “Furthermore, encouraging the theft of fast-drying ink pens specifically recommended for Election Day voting is a deliberate attempt to interfere with election administration.”
Maricopa County Elections Department it says on their website that ballpoint pens have slow-drying ink that can easily stain the inside of the ballot-counting machine, causing the tabulator to go dark and delaying election results.
golec fired back on twitterwriting that his intention was “Protect our vote, not encourage you to steal pens.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Key Takeaways: Abortion Rights in Kansas, Trump Candidates in Arizona