In addition to the exciting culmination of the Democratic presidential battle, Tuesday night also hosted a number of crucial downballot primaries in several states. Below is our recap of the key contests in Iowa, North Carolina, and New Jersey. California, as befits its size, will be the subject of another post!
● IA-Sen: As the late polling predicted, former Lt. Gov. Patty Judge defeated state Sen. Rob Hogg for the Democratic nomination, winning 48-39, with a couple of former legislators taking single digits. While Hogg had several labor groups and most of Iowa’s Democratic state legislators on his side, Judge was the only candidate who ran any TV spots. Judge, who had the endorsement of the DSCC, will now move on to face Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley. While Grassley has rarely faced a stiff challenge, his role as chair of the Judiciary Committee in leading the GOP blockade of the Supreme Court has hurt his image at home and could make him vulnerable. Daily Kos Elections rates this race as Likely Republican.
● IA-01: Two years ago, former state House Speaker Pat Murphy beat Cedar Rapids City Councilwoman Monica Vernon 37-24 in the Democratic primary, before going on to lose to Republican Rod Blum in the fall. In their rematch on Tuesday night, Vernon turned things around and completely crushed Murphy, 68-32, after outraising him by a wide margin. Vernon was also the preferred candidate of the DCCC, and beating Blum, a freshman with a YOLO attitude about his re-election prospects, will be a top priority for the committee this fall. We currently rate this race a Tossup, but Barack Obama won this district 56-43, so we could see this contest move in the Democratic direction.
● IA-03: When competing campaigns release dueling internals that each paint a different picture of a given race, you expect that the truth either lies in between, or that at most one of them is off-base. You do not expect both to be wrong—but that's precisely what happened in the Democratic primary in Iowa's 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday night. Not long before the election, wealthy investor Mike Sherzan released a survey from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner showing him with a 43-29 lead on Iraq vet Jim Mowrer, who had run against GOP Rep. Steve King in the neighboring 4th last cycle. Mowrer then responded with his own poll, conducted by GBA Strategies, that gave him a super-slim 36-35 edge.
So what happened? Mowrer wound up punishing Sherzan by a 50-36 margin. It's impossible to say what went down here (a late attack ad by Mowrer alleging Sherzan had tried to undermine the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms probably could not have moved that many voters), or why two respected pollsters both missed the mark so badly. But regardless, Mowrer now gets to take on freshman GOP Rep. David Young in November. Obama carried this seat 51-47. We currently rate this race Lean Republican.
● IA-04: Iowa’s all-important ethanol industry was reportedly pissed at Republican Rep. Steve King’s decision to back Ted Cruz, who never shied away from expressing his hostility toward ethanol subsidies on the presidential campaign trail. However, if state Sen. Rick Bertrand thought that these titans would finance his primary campaign against King, he was badly mistaken. King defeated Bertrand, who raised very little money and got almost no outside support, 65-35. This seat is Safe Republican.
● NC-02: In an outcome both predictable and predicted, Rep. George Holding utterly smashed fellow Rep. Renee Ellmers by a 53-24 margin in the Republican primary after new congressional lines implemented under a court order threw the two into the same district. Holding had represented far more of the redrawn seat than Ellmers, and while Ellmers got her start as a tea party outsider, she infuriated conservatives at all ends of the spectrum, including the anti-tax Club for Growth and anti-abortion activists like the SBA List.
And Ellmers enemies followed their words with deeds: The Club, as well as a super PAC backing Holding, ran ads here, while Ellmers got very little outside support. As a result, Ellmers never stood much of a chance, which made Donald Trump's last-minute endorsement of the congresswoman utterly futile. (No, Trump didn't do her in, but his decision to get involved here highlights his political acumen—or rather, his unsurprising lack thereof.) Holding is a lock in November in this Safe Republican seat.
● NC-03: Rep. Walter Jones has often pissed off his members of his own party thanks to his iconoclastic foreign policy views, and last cycle, some establishment Republicans banded together behind a challenge issued by former George W. Bush aide Taylor Griffin, who held Jones to a dicey 51-45 win. Griffin was understandably motivated to try again, but this time around, for whatever reason, he was left to twist. Jones sailed, taking 65 percent of the vote, while Marine vet Phil Law finished second with 20. Taylor came in a distant third with only 15 percent. Jones is safe for re-election.
● NC-09: Whoa baby! In what was the closest, most exciting, and most unexpected result of the night, GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger finished just 142 votes ahead of megachurch pastor Mark Harris, a margin of 34.96 percent to 34.42. Ex-Union County Commissioner Todd Johnson was very close behind with 30.62 percent of the vote. What explains Pittenger's weakness? For starters, his former real estate company has been under investigation by the FBI and IRS for over a year in connection with loans he made to his first congressional campaign in 2012. But redistricting also left him with a seat where 60 percent of voters were new to him, giving his opponents an additional opening. Neither Harris nor Johnson spent very much money but while the wealthy Pittenger outspent each of them, the $151,000 he deployed leading up to the primary was a relatively small sum, and his complacency almost cost him everything.
Unsurprisingly, Harris' campaign says it intends to seek a recount, aptly noting that 65 percent of the district voted against the incumbent. But while the margin between the two candidates might seem small, history shows that a 142-vote gap is an enormous one to overcome, so Pittenger is likely to hang on. As for the general election, this district is safely Republican on paper, but four years ago, Pittenger won with a surprisingly soft 52-46 margin over Democrat Jennifer Roberts, who is now mayor of Charlotte. This time, Democrats are only fielding Some Dude Christian Cano, but if Pittenger is the nominee and the feds were to close in around him, things could get crazy—just like they did on Tuesday.
● NC-12: Even though redistricting swept her home base of Greensboro out of the revamped 12th District, Democratic Rep. Alma Adams handily turned back state Sen. Malcolm Graham by 42-29 margin on Tuesday. State Rep. Tricia Cotham finished third with 21 percent. Adams is safe for November.
● NC-13: What happens when mid-decade redistricting creates an open seat and 17 candidates charge into the GOP primary? You wind up with the victor prevailing with just a fifth of the vote—and in America, that's more than good enough. On Tuesday, gune range owner Tedd Budd finished in first with 20 percent, while a trio of opponents each took 10 percent, including state Rep. Julia Howard, the primary sponsor of North Carolina's notorious new anti-LGBT law. Budd started the contest looking like just another Some Dude but the powerful Club for Growth picked him out of obscurity and spent a hefty $400,000 on his behalf.
While in theory this is now the most competitive district in the state, Democrats aren't putting up much of a fight here. Budd should win handily in the fall, and assuming he does, he'll walk into Congress with one of the smallest primary pluralities in recent memory.
● NJ-01: While Democratic Rep. Donald Norcross flashed a couple of surprising signs of concern late in the game—he secured a rare endorsement from Barack Obama and also loaned his campaign a few hundred grand—he easily turned back a challenge from 25-year-old activist Alex Law, 70-30. If there was any particular reason for Norcross' stepped-up efforts, they were probably aimed at deterring stronger opponents in future years. This seat is safely Democratic.
● NJ-07: Republican Rep. Leonard Lance escaped with just a 54-46 win against Some Dude David Larsen in 2014, and he didn't do any better in terms of his share of the vote on Tuesday night, once again collecting just 54 percent. However, while Larsen ran again (his fourth stab at the seat), this time he only managed 33 percent, because a third candidate, Craig Heard, took 13. If a stronger Republican ever wants to challenge the "moderate" Lance in a future primary, he could very well be doomed. Despite his close scrape, though, Lance will be the overwhelming favorite in November.