Last night we got the results from primaries in West Virginia, Maryland and Nebraska. Republicans are still voting for Nikki Haley as a protest against Trump and his takeover of the Republican Party. West Virginia, of course, is a MAGA stronghold but Haley scored nearly 10% there. The anti-Trump vote in Maryland and Nebraska was double that. Nearly one in four Republicans voted against him in each state, 20.0% in Maryland and 18.0% in Nebraska.
There were also important Senate and House primaries worth looking at. In West Virginia, as expected, Gov. Jim Justice, a crooked establishment Republican beat back a longshot bid by a MAGA congressman extremist, Alex Mooney for the open Senate seat. It wasn’t close, Justice with 61.8% to Mooney’s 26.6%, each spending just north of $2 million, although Club for Growth spent over $2.1 million against Justice while Defend American Jobs (a crypto outfit) spent over $3 million and Conservative Americans PAC spent almost $900,000 for Justice/against Mooney. In the Democratic primary, the corporate Manchine wannabe, Glenn Elliott beat our candidate, Zach Shrewsbury 45.4% to 36.1%. Psychopath Don Blankenship took 18.4%. Elliott won the northern part of the state and Zach won the southern part, minus the two counties Blankenship won. The Democfrats now have exactly zero chance to hold the West Virginia seat, since there is no contrast Elliott will be able to make against Justice other than abortion, which won't be enough.
5 Republicans ran for Mooney’s open House seat and, as expected, state treasurer Riley Moore came out ahead with 45.0% to MAGA nut Joe Earley’s 20.3%.
In Maryland, anti-Trump former Gov. Larry Hogan easily beat MAGAt Robin Ficker, 61.9% to 30.1%. More impressively, Angela Alsobrooks scored a double digit win of rich, gaffe-prone conservative Democrat David Trone (who spent around $60 million of his own money to win 42% of the vote (to Alsobrooks’ 54%. Interesting to note is that 243,637 people voted for Alsobrooks and just 147,563 voted for Hogan. (Votes are still be counted in both races but the disparity will increase by this afternoon.)
There were 2 interesting congressional races and the worst of the candidates won in each— AIPAC puppet Sarah Elfreth beating Harry Dunn 35.4% to 24.8%. Although Dunn spent around $4 million to Elfreth’s $1.2 million, AIPAC flooded the district with $4.2 million worth fads for Elfreth, buying her the win. In the 6th district far right wacko Neil Parrott beat far right wacko Dan Cox, 47.1% to 30.5%. The Democratic primary came down to conservative shit April Delaney and progressive Joe Vogel. She beat him 39.1% to 26.7%. She spent around $1.2 million (over half self funded) and he spent around half that. The only big independent expenditure was from an LGBTQ group, Equality PAC, which spent almost $400,000 for Vogel.
Although the MAGAt-infested Nebraska Republican Party refused to endorse any of the 5 incumbents on the ballot— two senators and 3 members of the House— all 5 won bigly. Dan Frei, the MAGAt who took on Don Bacon turned out to be not much of a problem, Bacon beating him 61.9% to 38.1% and taking all 3 counties in the district, despite Frei having been endorsed by the county GOP organizations and the state Republican Party. Bacon will face Tony Vargas again in November.
Shrewsbury should run third-party in the general just for spite.
Progressive candidates need to be running as independents, the Democratic brand is pure garbage and untold numbers of people are not interested in participating.
Trone may be a bad campaigner. But is he an asshole because his platform is totally anathema to his party? What point could there be to elect someone whose own party won't even do anything on his platform?