News from tonight's primaries:
In Connecticut's Fourth District, Orange to Blue candidate Jim Himes administered a severe electoral beating to his primary opponent, Lee Whitnum.
How severe?
Himes won 87% to 13%. Granted, Whitnum was an exceptionally weak opponent, but still, a 74-point win is not bad.
In Colorado's Second District - perhaps the one of most interest to Democrats, as the Democratic primary here will determine the next Representative from a safe Democratic district - Jared Polis leads Joan Fitz-Gerald by just under 1,400 votes, with just 30% of the vote counted. Polis has 43% of the vote, to Fitz-Gerald's 39%.
The third candidate, Will Shafroth, trails with 18% and is pretty much done.
In the Fifth District, widely loathed GOP incumbent Doug Lamborn has apparently lived to fight another year. Lamborn picked up 46% of the vote in his reelection bid (it's an R+16 district, so the Republican primary usually is the election here).
His two rivals, Jeff Crank and Bentley Rayburn, have 29% and 26%, respectively, with 58% of the vote in.
Meanwhile in the Sixth District, Tom Tancredo's old stomping grounds, 93% of the vote is in, and it appears that Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman has fended off fellow Republican Wil Armstrong (son of former Sen. Bill Armstrong) to win the nomination (and almost certainly win election).
This has two side effects. First, the next Colorado Secretary of State will be a Democrat, appointed by Democratic Governor Bill Ritter.
Second, Coffman has been mentioned as a potential U.S. Senate candidate for 2010, against Democratic incumbent Sen. Ken Salazar. A loss here would have neatly ended such talk, but Coffman's victory makes a future Senate run a bit more likely. With a statewide electoral pedigree, it would seem the GOP could come up with worse candidates than Coffman.