While the Mississippi upset led all the news accounts of yesterday’s primaries, some other contests bear mentioning. First up, Cochran was not the senior Member of Congress who appeared to have won a close race; with 100% of precincts reporting Charlie Rangel managed to up his margin of victory over Adriano Espaillat from two points in 2012 to three points yesterday. Espaillat’s strong appeal to his fellow Dominican-Americans wasn’t enough, partly because Rangel did well among Puerto Ricans in Spanish Harlem. But the AP has not called the race (nor has Espaillat conceded) due to an unusually high number of absentee and provisional ballots.
In the other contested Senate primary yesterday, Rep. James Lankford exceeded expectations by beating T.W. Shannon with a majority of the vote, avoiding the predicted runoff. This contest is being frequently referred to as another “Establishment crushes Tea Party” result, since Shannon was backed by Ted Cruz and some Tea groups, but Lankford has his own Christian Right street cred.
But “the Establishment” did get good news in Colorado, where former Rep. Bob Beauprez edged out Tom Tancredo for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. Democrats had hoped for (and even helped along with some negative ads on Beauprez) a Tancredo nomination that might have taken down the whole GOP ticket thanks to his harshly nativist background. But Beuprez is no world-beater, having lost an earlier gubernatorial race by a landslide.
As expected, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown easily dispatched the field in the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial primary, and is a strong favorite over GOP nominee Larry Hogan. And there’s now a possibility Eric Cantor won’t leave the House GOP Conference without a single non-Christian, since Jewish state senator won the primary in NY-01, a marginal Long Island district currently represented by Democrat Tim Bishop.
Feel free to mention other results of interest to you in the comments thread.
