Primary Season Nears Twenty Percent Completion

Tomorrow, voters in four more states will head to the polls for Primary Day. After tomorrow, one in five states will have already held their primary races.  Primary voters in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Oregon, and Idaho will have the opportunity to narrow the field of candidates hoping to represent their states at the Federal and state level.   

Unlike last week, where all of the primaries took place on the east coast, many of the results may not become clear until well after Midnight Eastern Time, especially in Oregon, where the polls do not close until 11:00 p.m. Eastern time. 

Also in contrast to last week, where only one of the four states had a gubernatorial race, all four states holding primaries tomorrow have gubernatorial races.  Nebraska, Oregon and Pennsylvania all have incumbent governors running for a second term while Idaho’s Republican governor has declined to run for a fourth term in an office.

All three of the incumbent governors have decent enough approval ratings that they should win re-election.  Nebraska’s incumbent Republican Governor, Pete Ricketts, looks like he will have the least trouble securing re-election, as he has an approval rating of 53 percent in a state that President Trump won by double digits.  Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democratic Governor, Tom Wolf, has a slightly less impressive approval rating in a state that President Trump narrowly won; although more Pennsylvanians still approve of his performance than disapprove.  He will learn the identity of his opponent tomorrow, when either State Senator Scott Wagner, Businessman Paul Mango, or attorney Laura Ellsworth will capture the GOP nomination for Governor of the Keystone State.

In Oregon, Republican voters will get to decide which candidate they would like to see go up against incumbent Democratic Governor Kate Brown, who has established a reputation as one of the farthest left governors in the United States.  Of the three governors up for re-election in states with primaries tomorrow, Brown boasts the lowest approval rating.  Only 43 percent of Oregonians approve of Brown’s job performance despite the fact that Hillary beat President Trump there by slightly more than 10 points. Brown, previously Oregon’s Secretary of State, ascended to the governorship in 2015 after her predecessor John Kitzhaber resigned because of corruption charges.  (Oregon does not have a lieutenant governor.) She won a special election to finish out the remainder of Kitzhaber’s term, which took place concurrently with the 2016 Presidential Election. Perhaps trying to outdo her neighbors to the south and north, Brown has said she would refuse to send National Guard troops to the border with Mexico if President Trump had ordered her to do so.  Brown apparently sees illegal immigrants as an essential political constituency, as she signed a bill into law last year that requires taxpayers to cover the abortions of illegal immigrants.    

Republicans hoping to defeat Governor Brown certainly have their work cut out for them, as Oregon has not elected a Republican governor since 1982; only its northern neighbor of Washington has had a longer hiatus from Republican governors.  Recent polling has indicated that Brown could lose to any one of her three potential Republican challengers; moderate State Rep. Knute Buehler and more conservative outsiders Sam Carpenter and Greg Wooldridge.   

In Idaho, which has not elected a Republican governor since 1990, the real race will take place in the primary.  Quite a few Republicans hope to succeed retiring Governor Butch Otter, including Rep. Raul Labrador, Businessman Tommy Ahlquist, and Lieutenant Governor Brad Little.

Only two of the four states also have Senate races.  Nebraska’s Republican Senator Deb Fischer looks like she should not have any trouble winning re-election in a state that President Trump won by more than 20 points.  She will likely face off against Lincoln City Councilwoman Jane Raybould in the general election.   

Pennsylvania may feature a more competitive Senate race, as one of ten states with a Democratic Senator running for re-election in a state that President Trump won, albeit narrowly.  Pennsylvania Republicans will get to decide which candidate they would like to compete against Senator Bob Casey Jr., the son of the popular former governor Bob Casey Sr. who got shunned at the 1992 Democratic National Convention for his pro-life views.  Casey first rode into office on the blue wave of 2006, unseating Senator Rick Santorum by campaigning as a pro-life Democrat.  Unfortunately, he has largely abandoned his pro-life credentials by voting to fund Planned Parenthood; although he did vote for a 20 week abortion ban.

One of the candidates hoping to unseat Casey this year, Rep. Lou Barletta, has become an outspoken opponent of illegal immigration after witnessing the transforming effect illegal immigration has had on his home city of Hazleton. During his tenure as mayor of Hazleton, Barletta signed the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, designed to discourage employers from hiring illegal immigrants. Not surprisingly, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals found the ordinance unconstitutional.  In 2000, non-Hispanic whites made up 95 percent of the population in Hazleton.  Today, non-Hispanic whites make up a minority of the population.  The situation in Hazleton should lead The Washington Post to posthumously give Ted Kennedy four Pinocchios for his claim that the 1965 immigration bill would not change the demographics of the country.

Of the 28 Congressional races on the ballot tomorrow, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has three targets while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has eight.  The Democrats would like to flip Nebraska’s 2^nd Congressional District, which only voted for President Trump by a very small margin.  A Republican represented the district until 2014, when Democrat Brad Ashford defeated Rep. Lee Terry, one of only two Republicans to lose re-election that year.  Ashford lost re-election in 2016 and the Democrats hope to take back the seat this year. The Democrats hope to pick up several seats in Pennsylvania, where court-sanctioned redistricting increased the number of Hillary Clinton-won districts from six to eight.

Republicans would like to flip Pennsylvania’s 8^th Congressional District, one of twelve Democrat-held districts that Hillary Clinton lost.  Hillary lost the 8^th District, which overlaps with much of the old 17^th District, by 10 points.  The Republicans have also set their sights on Oregon’s 4^th and 5^th Congressional Districts.  While Hillary won both districts, she failed to capture 50 percent in either of them.  She defeated President Trump by slightly more than 500 votes in the 4^th District, while she captured 48 percent of the vote in the 5^th district to President Trump’s 44 percent. 

The bonanza of competitive house seats on the ballot tomorrow lie in Pennsylvania, where redistricting dramatically affected the Congressional map.  The new map gave all but one of the 18 districts a new number.  Republicans will likely take back control of Pennsylvania’s 14^th Congressional District, which overlaps with much of Pennsylvania’s 18^th district under the 2012 lines.  Republicans lost control of Pennsylvania’s 18^th Congressional District in a special election earlier this year but the redistricting made the new district more Republican.  The newly elected incumbent, Democrat Conor Lamb, does not even live in the 14^th District; he will instead run in the newly drawn 17^th District against Republican incumbent Keith Rothfus. 

The Republican Primary in the new 14^th District will effectively serve as a rematch of a primary that never took place.  Rick Saccone, who narrowly lost the PA-18 special election to Lamb, will face off against State Senator Guy Reschenthaler, who unsuccessfully sought to become the Republican nominee in the special election.  This special election did not have a primary, the parties chose their candidates via convention. Reschenthaler, whose State Senate district consists of 142 of the 172 precincts that flipped from Trump to Lamb, probably could have defeated Lamb but did not end up as the general election candidate thanks to a third candidate, Kim Ward, who told all of her delegates to vote for Saccone on the second ballot because of a personal animus she had against Reschenthaler.

Three districts in eastern Pennsylvania look like good pickup opportunities for Democrats, especially considering the fact that they have no incumbents running.  Two of the three retiring incumbents had already decided to retire before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the old map.  Charlie Dent, a Trump critic who represents Pennsylvania’s 15^th Congressional District, announced his plans to leave Congress last year, long before the new map renumbered his district the 7^th district.  Pat Meehan, who represents Pennsylvania’s 7^th Congressional District, jumped ship earlier this year due to sexual misconduct allegations.  Hillary narrowly won the old 7^th District but she won the new 5^th district by nearly 30 points.  Both Dent and Meehan have already resigned from Congress, leaving their seats vacant for the remainder of the 115^th Congress.  Ryan Costello, who represents Pennsylvania’s 6^th Congressional District, announced his retirement five days after the filing deadline, apparently feeling that he did not have a shot at winning in a district that Hillary Clinton carried by nine points.

Prior to the redistricting, the Democrats had their eyes on Pennsylvania’s 16^th District and Pennsylvania’s 11^th District, held by the retiring Rep. Barletta.  The Democrats have decided to abandon these races as both districts have become more Republican after redistricting.  The Democrats have instead decided to focus on picking up Pennsylvania’s 10^th Congressional District, a more Democratic version of the former 4^th District, and Pennsylvania’s 16^th Congressional District, a slightly more Democratic version of the former 3^rd District.  They would probably only pick up these districts in the event of a “blue wave,” which looks increasingly unlikely as the most recent CNN poll shows that their advantage in the generic ballot has slipped from 16 points in February to just 3 points now.   

The countdown to the midterms will continue next week as three more states will hold their primaries.  In the meantime, only 176 days remain between now and Election Day.