On Tuesday, voters in Arizona and Florida will cast ballots for their state’s downballot primaries. Below is our look at the key races to watch. The first polls will close at 7 PM ET in most of Florida (a small portion of the state will remain open another hour), and as always, we’ll be liveblogging all the results at Daily Kos Elections and tweeting as well. Polls close in Arizona at 10 PM ET.
● AZ-Sen (R): Sen. John McCain has had an uneasy relationship with his party’s conservative base for a long time, but while a few notable politicians made noises about challenging him for renomination, all of them sat the race out. McCain’s main foe wound up being ex-state Sen. Kelli Ward, but she doesn’t look strong enough to take advantage of McCain’s problems. Ward has raised very little money, and she held an infamous legislative hearing a couple of years ago to address the topic of "chemtrails," the it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-sad conspiracy theory that airplanes are secretly spraying an unsuspecting populace with nefarious chemicals.
Unsurprisingly, powerful outsider groups like the Club for Growth decided early on that Ward was too weak to win, and they’ve done nothing to help her. Ward’s only real outside assistance came from wealthy GOP donor Robert Mercer, who funded a super PAC to attack McCain late in the race, and a recent poll from CNN/ORC gave the incumbent a 55-29 lead. However, McCain and his allies are certainly acting like they think this race is closer. A pro-McCain super PAC has continued to launch ads against Ward, and in a last-minute twist, McCain launched his own late hit on Ward. A Ward victory would still be a huge upset, but with the way McCain and company are behaving, we can’t rule it out. The winner will face Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in a race that Daily Kos Elections rates Lean Republican.
● AZ-01 (R): Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is leaving behind a northern Arizona seat that Mitt Romney won 50-48, and both parties are going to fight hard to win it. National Democrats have consolidated behind Tom O'Halleran, a former Republican state senator who was unseated in a GOP primary in 2008, then nearly defeated a different Republican senator as an independent in another district in 2014.
On the GOP side, though, it’s not clear whom the party will put forth. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu held wide leads in early polls, and no one has released contradictory numbers. However, Republicans are reportedly worried that Babeu will cost them a pickup opportunity if he takes the party’s nod, thanks to the string of ugly headlines he’s attracted over the years. Perhaps most notably, Babeu was exposed in a home video speaking favorably about the abusive treatment of students a school for troubled youth he once ran had engaged in—after long denying he ever had any knowledge of the abuse. However, Babeu’s primary rivals do not appear to have aired any ads attacking the sheriff.
Three other credible Republicans are running here. Wealthy rancher Gary Kiehne came very close to winning the 2014 primary, and he has the support of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a favorite of Arizona Republicans. Ex-Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who took a distant fourth in the 2014 gubernatorial primary, and 2014 9th District nominee Wendy Rogers are also in. A fifth candidate, state House Speaker David Gowan, recently dropped out and begged Bennet and Rogers to, as he did, also throw their support behind Kiehne, lest Babeu prevail. They declined. All four remaining candidates have spent comparable amounts of money in recent weeks. We rate the general election as a Tossup.
● AZ-02 (D): Freshman Republican Rep. Martha McSally won her first term by just 167 votes in a Tucson seat that backed Romney 50-48, making hers the tightest House election of 2014. Two Democrats are competing to take her on this fall. Ex-state Rep. Matt Heinz, who badly lost the 2012 Democratic primary to then-Rep. Ron Barber, is the favorite of national Democrats, and he’s decisively outspent ex-state Rep. Victoria Steele. However, Steele is backed by neighboring Rep. Raúl Grijalva. McSally has amassed a massive warchest, and whoever wins the Democratic nod will need to start aggressively fundraising very quickly. We rate this race Lean Republican.
● AZ-04 (R): Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, shouldn’t have much to worry about in this safely red northern Arizona seat. However, a group called Right Way has aired a few ads attacking the incumbent. Right Way is primarily funded by the Western Growers Association, which is complaining that Gosar has “chose[n] to denigrate our members and dismiss their legitimate concerns.” Gosar’s primary foe, pastor Ray Strauss, has almost no money, so he probably can’t take advantage of of the situation.
● AZ-05 (R): Republican Rep. Matt Salmon has decided to retire from this safely red Mesa seat, and he immediately endorsed state Senate President Andy Biggs on his way out the door. However, that didn’t deter former GoDaddy attorney Christine Jones, who took a distant third place in the 2014 gubernatorial primary, from jumping in. Jones has self-funded her bid, and she’s dramatically outspent Biggs, even though he won $10 million in the 1993 Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.
However, the powerful anti-tax Club for Growth is airing ads to promote Biggs and portray Jones as a liberal. Biggs is also backed by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arapio. Speaking of Arpaio, ex-Maricopa County Commissioner Don Stapley is also in. He was infamously targeted by Arpaio on trumped-up charges a few years back and ultimately won a $3.5 million settlement from the county. Stapley’s been running as the responsible Republican in the race, which is not usually the path to victory in a GOP primary. State Rep. Justin Olsen rounds out the field, but he’s spent very little.
● FL-Sen (R & D): Sen. Marco Rubio delighted national Republicans when he went back on a year’s worth of promises to enter the private sector and instead run for re-election after his failed presidential bid. Almost every Republican who was running to succeed Rubio quickly deferred to him, but wealthy homebuilder Carlos Beruff decided to stay in the race. However, every single poll has shown Rubio defeating Beruff by wide margins. Beruff tried to portray himself as the Donald Trump of Florida, but that task became impossible after Trump himself endorsed Rubio.
The Democratic primary is a contest between Reps. Patrick Murphy and Alan Grayson. Murphy has the support of most prominent Florida Democrats, as well as President Barack Obama, and he decisively outspent Grayson. Grayson has run a chaotic campaign and earned some awful headlines on topics ranging from potential ethics violations to alleged domestic abuse, and polls show Murphy easily ahead. Both parties are planning to spend heavily in the fall. This contest is a Tossup.
● House: Last year, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the congressional map drawn by the Republican state legislature following the 2010 census constituted a partisan gerrymander that violated state law. After lawmakers failed to agree on a new map, a trial judge drew new congressional districts that will be used for the first time in the 2016 election. You can find our interactive map of the new congressional districts here.
● FL-01 (R): Rep. Jeff Miller, who was once expected to run for Senate, instead decided to retire from this safely red Pensacola seat, and eight Republicans are running to succeed him. However, state Rep. Matt Gaetz has decisively outspent the entire field, and he also has the help of an allied super PAC. Gaetz’s main opponent looks like state Sen. Greg Evers, who represents about two-thirds of this seat in the legislature. However, Evers has been a very weak fundraiser.
● FL-02 (R): Redistricting turned what was a competitive Tallahassee-area seat into a safely red district, and Democratic Rep. Gwen Graham chose to retire after just a single term in office rather than face certain defeat. The GOP primary has turned into an expensive battle between the House leadership and anti-establishment forces. Urologist Neal Dunn, who has the support of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, has spent the most thanks in part to self-funding. But attorney Mary Thomas, the former general counsel to the state department of elder affairs, is backed by the anti-tax Club for Growth, and she has Gov. Rick Scott’s unofficial endorsement.
Both sides have been portraying their candidate as the true conservative, and both have also run ads tying their opponent to ex-Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican-turned-Democrat who is now the most despised man in Florida GOP politics. Thomas, a first-generation child of immigrants from India, has also done her best to join herself to Donald Trump. Most notably, she ran a commercial where she claimed she "led the fight against Obama's plan to bring dangerous Syrian refugees to Florida" and pledged to "put America first." Former U.S. Attorney Ken Sukhia, who served in the George H.W. Bush era, is also running, but he’s spent little money and no one has bothered to attack him.
● FL-04 (R): Rep. Ander Crenshaw, notable for being one of the most obscure members of Congress, is retiring from this safely red Jacksonville seat. The frontrunner looks like ex-Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford, who has posted clear leads in two recent polls and has the support of Lenny Curry, the city’s mayor. Attorney Hans Tanzler III, the son of a former mayor, has outspent Rutherford, but his strange cowboy-themed ads left something to be desired. State Rep. Lake Ray, despite his Florida-tastic name, appears to be an afterthought, as does St. Johns County Commissioner Bill McClure.
● FL-05 (D): Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown spent years fighting redistricting reformers in an effort to preserve the GOP’s preferred congressional map, which gave her an infamously gerrymandered district that snaked from her Jacksonville base to Orlando, over 120 miles south as the crow flies. Brown’s old district was designed to scoop up as many black voters as possible to help Republicans in neighboring seats, an arrangement that didn’t help any Democrat who wasn’t named Corrine Brown. However, she finally accepted her fate, dropped her hopeless legal challenges, and decided to run for re-election in the new 5th District, which now stretches from Jacksonville eastward to Tallahassee.
The new seat is safely blue, but Brown only represents about 38 percent of it, and she has little name recognition in the Tallahassee area. Her competition is former state Senate Minority Leader Al Lawson, who ran for Congress twice unsuccessfully in older versions of what was then the Tallahassee-based 2nd District but is well-known in the area. Brown was always going to face a tough re-election, but her problems got much worse a few months ago, when she was indicted for allegedly abusing her office to solicit hundreds of thousands of dollars for a bogus charity that prosecutors say she used as a personal slush fund. Lawson has outspent Brown, and unless the Jacksonville area comes through for her, she’s in real trouble on Tuesday.
● FL-06 (R): GOP Rep. Ron DeSantis spent a year running for the Senate, and a number of local Republicans got into the race to succeed him. However, DeSantis decided to seek re-election when Sen. Marco Rubio parachuted back into the Senate race, and most of DeSantis' would-be successors exited the House race. But one did not: State Rep. Fred Costello, who lost to DeSantis 39-23 in 2012, decided to stay in and try his luck against the incumbent. Unsurprisingly, DeSantis outspent Costello by a wide $308,000 to $113,000 spread, and no major outside groups have done anything to help Costello. Romney carried this Volusia County seat by a fairly slim 52-47 margin, but Democrats don't have any strong candidates, making this seat safely Republican, at least this year.
● FL-09 (D): Rep. Alan Grayson is leaving behind his Orlando-area House seat, which is safe for Democrats in presidential years. State Sen. Darren Soto has spent the most in recent weeks, and he's hoping that the area's large Puerto Rican population will help him in the primary. A second candidate, former Grayson district director Susanna Randolph, originally hoped to become her old boss’s heir, and both she and Soto have won several local labor endorsements.
However, in an awkward development, Grayson’s then-girlfriend, pharmaceutical lobbyist Dena Minning, entered the race herself despite having only recently moved to the area. (Grayson reportedly tried to push Randolph out, but to no avail.) Minning also recently became Dena Grayson, after marrying the congressman a few months ago, potentially giving her a name-recognition boost.
Indeed, a recent survey from St. Pete Polls showed Grayson beating Randolph 33-27, with Soto at 19. However, the pollster conceded that the sample had too few Hispanic voters, which would have almost certainly hurt Soto the most. Randolph has also been attacking Soto, not Grayson, on the air, a sign that she thinks the state senator is actually her main opponent.
● FL-10 (D): Redistricting turned what was a reliably red seat into a safely blue Orlando district, and the Democratic nominee won’t have any trouble in November. The frontrunner is former Orlando Police Chief Val Demings, who ran for the old 10th in 2012 and came remarkably close to winning. Demings is in again, and she has the support of national Democrats, several prominent Orlando politicians, and labor groups.
Ex-state Democratic Party Chair Bob Poe is also running, and he’s used his fortune to air a number of TV ads. However, Demings has also spent a credible amount of money, and she has the help of Michael Bloomberg's pro-gun safety super PAC, Independence USA. State Sen. Geraldine Thompson is also in, but she’s spent very little money. The DCCC released a poll at the beginning of the month showing Demings far ahead of her two rivals, and no one has produced contradictory numbers.
● FL-11 (R): Republican Rep. Dan Webster watched as redistricting make his 10th District unwinnable for any Republican, and he spent months deciding what to do. He eventually kicked off a bid for the safely red 11th District, which is held by retiring Rep. Rich Nugent. However, Webster only represents about 18 percent of this redrawn seat, and Nugent is backing Justin Grabelle, his former chief of staff.
Webster ran quixotic speakership campaigns against both John Boehner and Paul Ryan last year, but while the GOP establishment may not be in much of a hurry to help the incumbent, they're not exactly throwing money at Grabelle either. During the pre-primary period, Webster outspent Grabelle $155,000 to $88,000. There has been no major outside spending on either side.
● FL-18 (R & D): Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy is leaving this South Florida seat behind to run for the Senate, and at 52-48 Romney, it gives the GOP a good pickup opportunity. The Republican primary, though, has been a crowded and hard-to-predict affair. The only recent poll came from Brian Mast, an Army veteran who lost both his legs in Afghanistan. The survey showed him leading Martin County School Board member Rebecca Negron, the wife of powerful incoming state Senate President Joe Negron, by a wide 39-19, with self-funding physician Mark Freeman at 18.
Despite Freeman’s person wealth, Negron has spent the most cash in recent weeks, though Mast has also dropped a credible amount, and no one has released any polling to contradict his numbers. Given Mast’s background, he’s probably the candidate the GOP would most like to see prevail. Attorney Rick Kozell and disastrous 2014 nominee Carl Domino are also airing ads here.
The Democratic contest is a duel between wealthy businessman Randy Perkins, the DCCC's preferred candidate, and attorney Jonathan Chane. Not surprisingly, Perkins outspent his rival by a massive $1.4 million to $189,000 during the pre-primary period. The two have been airing ads attacking one another, so Perkins seems to be taking Chane's campaign at least somewhat seriously. The general election is a Tossup.
● FL-19 (R): After a very brief tenure following a special election victory just two years ago, Rep. Curt Clawson is retiring and leaving this safely red Fort Myers district open. Wealthy GOP donor Francis Rooney, a former ambassador to the Vatican, has run ads like there’s no tomorrow, and he has the support of Gov. Rick Scott.
Chauncey Goss, a former aide to Paul Ryan and the son of ex-Rep. Porter Goss, ran for this seat in 2012 and lost the primary 30-22. Ex-Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, a former Maryland congressional candidate who moved to Florida last year (and apparently doesn’t actually live anywhere near the district), is also in. However, Goss and Bongino haven’t spent anything close to what Rooney has thrown down. A recent poll from Remington Research showed Rooney beating Goss 45-29, and while it’s possible that Remington has some skin in the game on Rooney’s behalf, no one has released contradictory numbers.
● FL-23 (D): Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who ignominiously had to resign as chair of the DNC on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, had long inflamed Bernie Sanders supporters over her role in the Democratic presidential primary. Spurred by this anger, law professor Tim Canova decided to challenge her in the primary for this safely blue South Florida seat, and he’s raised insane sums. However, Wasserman Schultz has always been a strong fundraiser, and she has more than enough cash to defend herself. Wasserman Schultz also has the backing of President Obama and most of the Democratic establishment, whether lovingly or grudgingly.
Wasserman Schultz attracted plenty of negative attention after Wikileaks released a series of unflattering emails stolen from the committee, which prompted her ouster from the DNC and gave Canova more fodder. But he still faces serious headwinds, because this district gave almost 70 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton in the March presidential primary, meaning Canova needs a significant number of Clinton supporters to back him. However, even a Canova poll taken in the days after Wasserman Schultz resigned showed her up 46-38. The pro-Wasserman Schultz group Patriot Majority subsequently released a poll showing her up 59-26, while an independent poll from Florida Atlantic University has her up 50-40. While Canova has Sanders’ endorsement, a group of top former Sanders advisers quit Canova’s campaign after only a few weeks on the job, an indication that they didn’t feel he was worth their time.
● FL-26 (D): Ex-Rep. Joe Garcia is hoping to earn a rematch with freshman Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo in November, but he needs to get past businesswoman and 2014 lieutenant governor nominee Annette Taddeo in next week's Democratic primary first. Taddeo, who is backed by the DCCC, started the primary with far less name recognition, and she even released a poll in May showing her badly trailing. However, while Garcia has decided to save most of his resources for a general election, Taddeo has been airing commercials ahead of the primary. This Miami seat backed Obama 55-44, but both sides think that Curbelo could hang on in November. We rate the race a Tossup.