Zephyr Teachout & Tim Wu
Tuesday capped off a very long 2014 primary season that began with Texas all the way back on March 4. Here's our recap of the final electoral action before the general election on Nov. 4, with Daily Kos Elections' race ratings appended after each writeup:
• NY-Gov/LG (D): Gov. Andrew Cuomo, battered by corruption allegations and harried by an energetic primary foe in law professor Zephyr Teachout, survived with a very underwhelming 62-34 margin of victory on Tuesday night. The financial chasm was startling: Cuomo's spent almost $20 million in campaign funds (if not more) since 2011, while Teachout had only spent $283,000 as of 11 days before the election. Serious liberal hostility to Cuomo powered this result, and it makes you wonder how a stronger progressive candidate, such as state Sen. Liz Krueger, might have fared.
Cuomo's handpicked choice for lieutenant governor, ex-Rep. Kathy Hochul, also prevailed, but by a similarly unimpressive 60-40 score over Teachout's running mate, law professor Tim Wu. Given Hochul's lack of name recognition, her conservative record, and the New York Times's decision to endorse Wu, it had looked like Wu was the better bet to pull off an upset than Teachout. But there ultimately was little daylight between Hochul and Cuomo, who spent heavily on mailers to boost his preferred number two choice.
Cuomo remains the overwhelming favorite to defeat Republican Rob Astorino in November, but if these results demonstrate anything, it's that there's no way Cuomo could ever win a Democratic presidential primary. This has long been evident to independent observers, but Beltway pundits have remained perversely impressed by Cuomo's desire to stick it to unions. But if a no-name, no-money candidate can hold someone as powerful as Cuomo to just 62 percent of the vote, then how will he survive against real competition? (Safe D)
Head below the fold to see how other primaries turned out.
• NY State Senate: Democrats hoping to strike a blow against renegade members of their party who handed control of the state Senate to Republicans fell short on Tuesday. In New York City, state Sen. Jeff Klein, head of the so-called IDC, turned back former Councilman Oliver Koppell 67-33, while state Sen. Tony Avella narrowly beat former city Comptroller John Liu, 52-48 (though Liu is refusing to concede). However, Democrats did improve their caucus by turning out indicted state Sen. Malcolm Smith, who got destroyed by former Councilman Leroy Comrie 69-19. (Another corruptocrat, John Sampson, survived 54-30 against labor leader Dell Smitherman, but Republicans have their own indicted member, Thomas Libous, who also won his primary.)
However, the biggest news actually came from a Republican primary upstate, where state Sen. Mark Grisanti, a former Democrat who'd voted in favor of same-sex marriage and Cuomo's gun safety laws, got smashed 57-43 by conservative challenger Kevin Stocker. Stocker had primaried Grisanti once before in 2012 and lost badly, but this time, teachers' unions smartly ratfucked the race, sending out mailers calling Grisanti too liberal for the GOP. It worked, and now Democrat Marc Panepinto, an attorney, has a great shot at defeating Stocker in the 60th District, which went 56-42 for Obama.
• MA-Gov (D): The polls wound up being terribly, terribly wrong in Massachusetts, but state Attorney General Martha Coakley nevertheless narrowly prevailed over state Treasurer Steve Grossman 42-36, while former Medicare chief Don Berwick took 21 percent. The result was a shocker, though, because not only had no poll ever shown the race in single digits, all but one had given Coakley leads of 20 points or more!
There was a little bit of evidence to suggest that the race might be narrowing, and it appears that all the undecideds went to Grossman and Berwick. But the last three surveys had Coakley ahead 32, 20, and 21 points, so this counts as a huge miss that a lot of pollsters will have to answer for. Coakley will still start off the general election as the strong favorite over Republican Charlie Baker, but hopefully her smaller-than-expected win doesn't hint at some sort of weakness. (Likely D)
• MA-06 (D): Democratic Rep. John Tierney became the fourth and final member of the House to lose in a primary this year, falling 49-41 to Iraq vet Seth Moulton. Tierney had long been dogged by a tax evasion scandal that sent his wife to jail; while Tierney was never directly implicated, Moulton succeeded in tarring him as ethically shaky. Moulton has, in the past, described himself as "fairly centrist," so progressives have reason to lament Tierney's loss. But a recent poll showed that with Moulton as the nominee instead of Tierney, it will likely make it harder for Republican Richard Tisei to prevail in the fall. (Lean D)
• NH-Sen (R): Carpetbagging Sen. Scott Brown—definitely not a phony from Massachusetts—unimpressively won the Republican primary with 50 percent of the vote, defeating former state Sen. Jim Rubens and ex-Sen. Bob Smith, who each got 23. Rubens had the backing of Larry Lessig's Mayday PAC, which set a lot of money on fire in what was always going to be a sure loss. But Brown certainly doesn't look so hot coming off Tuesday—not that he ever did. (Likely D)
• NH-Gov (R): The GOP establishment got their man in businessman Walt Havenstein, who defeated conservative activist Andrew Hemingway 55-37. But Havenstein, who also has some residency issues, will be a major underdog against Gov. Maggie Hassan (Likely D).
• NH-01 (R): Rep. Carol Shea-Porter will face her third match in a row with ex-Rep. Frank Guinta, who beat former business school dean Dan Innis 49-40 for the Republican nomination. Innis, a relative moderate in today's GOP, had been supported by a group that backs Republicans who support same-sex marriage, but it wasn't enough to overcome Guinta's name recognition. Guinta still has lingering campaign finance issues on his rap sheet, but this race will be a difficult hold for Democrats. (Tossup)
• NH-02 (R): For the first time in what seems like a long time, the Club for Growth succeeded in nominating their preferred candidate in a potentially competitive race. Riding the Club's heavy spending, state Rep. Marilinda Garcia defeated ex-state Sen. Gary Lambert 49-27 and will go on to face Rep. Annie Kuster. Kuster remains the favorite. (Likely D)
• RI-Gov (D & R): In a major bummer for progressives, state Treasurer Gina Raimondo, a favorite of the Mike Bloomberg/punish-the-unions set, won the Democratic nomination with 42 percent of the vote, while Providence Mayor Angel Taveras took 29 and self-funding attorney Clay Pell 27. It's likely that Taveras and Pell split the liberal vote, allowing Raimondo, who had the support of EMILY's List, to prevail with a plurality. She's still very likely to defeat Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who won the GOP nomination, but there hasn't been a poll of that matchup in almost a year. (Likely D)