Welp, it actually happened: In Virginia, two-time former statewide candidate and friend to white supremacists everywhere Corey Stewart won the GOP’s Senate nomination in a primary on Tuesday.
He did this after video surfaced last week of Stewart calling fascist Republican congressional candidate Paul Nehlen “his personal hero.” And that’s in addition to Stewart’s well-known love of Confederate monuments, something he can’t even use the “Southern heritage” excuse for because he’s from fucking Minnesota.
Naturally, Donald Trump was thrilled.
Stewart will face Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine in November. Some Virginia Republicans, like former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, are not stoked:
If Bolling’s lack of enthusiasm is any indication of what the majority of Virginia Republicans believe—Stewart just barely beat state representative Nick Freitas for the nomination with a plurality of the vote—the nomination could depress Republican turnout and possibly doom endangered House incumbents in swing districts.
Kaine is widely favored to win re-election, but nonetheless, he’s already on the attack. “A cruder imitation of Donald Trump who stokes white supremacy and brags about being ‘ruthless and vicious,’ Corey Stewart would be an embarrassment for Virginia in the US Senate,” Kaine communications director Ian Sams told CNN.
Meanwhile, in South Carolina, GOP Rep. Mark Sanford—a former governor who infamously dropped his duties in that role and ran off to Argentina to be with a girlfriend whom he later broke up with—lost his House primary to state representative Katie Arrington, which should make Trump pretty happy:
In typical fashion, Trump lent Arrington his support less than three hours before the polls closed. So, it’s impossible to know how much of an effect he had, although Arrington did barely clear the threshold needed to avoid the runoff with 50.5 percent of the vote.
Sanford is the second House Republican to go down in a primary this year after Robert Pittenger of North Carolina, and he might not be the last—fellow Trump critic Martha Roby of Alabama was reduced to less than 40 percent of the vote in a five-way primary earlier this month, and will face a runoff.
In addition to South Carolina and Virginia, Nevada, North Dakota, and Maine had primary elections last night, and Wisconsin had a special election. Here’s what happened:
- Last month, it was discovered that South Carolina Democrat Archie Parnell had abused his ex-wife, which caused most of the staff on his campaign for Congress to quit. The fact that he assaulted his wife didn’t seem to bother Democrats in his district, though, because he won his primary with 60 percent of the vote. He’ll face Ralph Norman, who narrowly beat him in a special election last year, in November.
- South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who succeeded Nikki Haley after she became Trump’s ambassador to the UN, placed first in the GOP primary but failed to clear the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff with businessman John Warren. The winner will face state representative James Smith, but South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1998.
- Nevada Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen easily won the Democratic Senate primary on Tuesday, and will face incumbent Republican Sen. Dean Heller (who also won easily) in November. Nevada is the only state which went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 that has a Republican senator up for re-election this year (as opposed to 10 Democrats running for re-election in states won by Trump), so if Democrats are to have any real shot at winning back the Senate, Rosen needs to defeat Heller.
- Nevada’s slightly Democratic-leaning 4th Congressional District was created following the 2010 census and has had three elections since. So far, it’s elected three different people. Democrat Stephen Horsford was elected in 2012. He lost his seat to Republican Cresent Hardy in 2014. Hardy, in turn, lost his seat to Democrat Ruben Kihuen in 2016. Kihuen isn’t running for re-election because he sexually harrassed a staffer, so Horsford and Hardy both jumped back in to run for their old seat. Both won their respective primaries on Tuesday, so that district’s going to have a rematch of its 2014 race. (Got that?)
- Remember Sharron Angle? This woman? Well, she ran for Congress again and lost. Sucks to suck.
- Democrats nominated three women to try to pick up a trio of targeted Republican-held seats in Virginia: state senator Jennifer Wexton in the 10th District, where she’ll face incumbent Barbara Comstock; DCCC-backed retired Navy commander Elaine Luria in the 2nd, a seat currently held by Scott Taylor; and (of course) former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger in the 7th, who will face Dave Brat.
- As expected, North Dakota congressman Kevin Cramer won the GOP Senate primary and will take on incumbent Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp in a race to see who loves Donald Trump more, while state representative Kelly Armstrong won the Republican primary to succeed Cramer in the House.
- Maine used ranked choice voting yesterday for the first time, which was most important in the primaries for governor (the current governor, Paul LePage, is one of the absolute worst in America and is thankfully term-limited) and the Democratic primary for the 2nd Congressional District. Shawn Moody, who previously ran for governor as an independent in 2010, ran as a Republican this time around and won that primary, while liberal state representative Jared Golden appeared to win a three-person primary to take on Republican incumbent Bruce Poliquin in the congressional district. As of about 1 A.M. ET, attorney general Janet Mills was leading the Democratic gubernatorial pack with nowhere near a majority. (Also, a ballot measure in Maine to keep ranked-choice voting appeared headed for a victory.)
- In Wisconsin, Democrat Caleb Frostman won a special election to the state Senate in a district that hasn’t been won by a Democrat in 41 years and which was won by Donald Trump by 17 points in 2016. Republican Governor Scott Walker was forced by multiple courts to call this election, but both Frostman’s seat and another House seat which stayed in GOP hands on Tuesday night will be up again in November.