On Tuesday, voters in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington 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 8 PM ET in Missouri and most of Kansas and Michigan, and as always, we’ll be liveblogging all the results at Daily Kos Elections and tweeting as well.
● MO-Gov (R): Four Republicans are facing off to succeed termed-out Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon. Missouri infamously has no contribution limits, and that’s predictably led to an expensive and nasty campaign.
Polls have generally shown a close race, but retired Navy SEAL Eric Greitens, who founded a non-profit for veterans and has been a frequent presence on television, has led in most released surveys. Greitens has several wealthy allies who have given him the resources to run ads stressing his military background and arguing that he’s a political outsider. But that support has not come without a price: Greitens’ biggest backer, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist named Michael Goguen who gave the candidate $1 million, has been sued by a woman claiming he kept her as a sex slave for 13 years. Greitens’ opponents haven’t hesitated to use this deeply unpleasant story against him.
And Greitens’ lack of past involvement in GOP politics has also proved to be a problem, since he used to be a Democrat. (In fact, the DCCC even spoke to him about running for Congress in 2009.) Wealthy businessman John Brunner, who has been bankrolling his own campaign, has naturally used this to argue that Greitens is not a real conservative. Despite Greitens’ flaws, though, national Democrats launched a last-minute ad buy against him, a sign that Team Blue would rather not face him in November.
A third candidate, ex-U.S. Attorney Catherine Hanaway, a former speaker of the state House, has largely been bankrolled by conservative zillionare Rex Sinquefield and his allies. Hanaway has been emphasizing her law enforcement background, though she also launched a late attack against Greitens. Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, the fourth contender, has had trouble raising cash, though he, too, acquired some wealthy backers late in the campaign. While Greitens, Brunner, and Hanaway have each led in at least one recent poll, Kinder hasn’t been so lucky. However, Kinder is the only Republican who doesn’t come from the St. Louis area, so he may be able to pull off a win if he can do well in the rest of the state, where plenty of Republican voters reside.
The winner will face Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster, who faces only minor primary opposition, in the fall. Daily Kos Elections rates the general election as a Tossup.
● KS-01 (R): Tea partying Rep. Tim Huelskamp has had an awful relationship with the House leadership for years, and his iconoclasm even got him kicked off the Agriculture Committee. Huelskamp’s opposition to farming subsidies has also inflamed local agriculture interests in his rural western Kansas seat. In 2014, the congressman only defeated an underfunded foe 55-45 in the GOP primary, and this time, he faces a stronger challenge from physician Roger Marshall.
This contest has largely turned into a proxy war between the GOP establishment and the “tea party establishment.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Ending Spending have run ads hitting Huelskamp for being ejected from his committee, and the Kansas Farm Bureau has also sided with Marshall. Meanwhile, the anti-tax group the Club for Growth is arguing, of course, that Marshall is insufficiently conservative. This seat is safely red.
● MI-01 (R): Republican Rep. Dan Benishek is retiring from this rural northern Michigan House seat, which Mitt Romney carried 54-45. However, the area still often favors Democrats downballot, and Team Blue is excited about their likely nominee, ex-state party chair Lon Johnson. Republicans, though, have an unpredictable three-way contest.
Benishek is supporting state Sen. Tom Casperson, one of the few Republicans in the legislature to vote against anti-labor laws, earning him support from some unions. Ex-state Sen. Jason Allen, who lost the 2010 primary to Benishek by just 16 votes, is making another try for this seat. Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Jack Bergman, who has been self-funding his bid, is also in the mix, and he’s outspent his opponents late in the contest. The district is largely concentrated in Michigan’s distinctive Upper Peninsula, but Casperson and Bergman both hail from there. Allen, meanwhile, lives in the southern part of the district that’s on the Lower Peninsula (“under the bridge" or a “troll,” in the region’s colorful parlance), so he could benefit if his opponents split the U.P. vote.
● MI-10 (R): Republican Rep. Candice Miller is retiring from this safely red suburban Detroit seat. None of the GOP candidates have raised much cash, but businessman Paul Mitchell has used his personal wealth to air ad after ad. Mitchell only moved to the area last year around the same time that he kicked off his bid, but his opponents don’t seem to have the resources to inform voters of that fact. However, state Sen. Phil Pavlov represents about a third of this seat in the legislature, and his base of support may allow him to win despite being badly outspent. Ex-state Sen. Alan Sanborn and state Rep. Tony Forlini are also in the mix.
● WA-07: Under Washington election law, all candidates run on the same ballot in what is known as a "top-two primary," where the two candidates with the most votes advance to the November general election, regardless of party. Three notable Democrats are trying to succeed retiring Rep. Jim McDermott in this safely blue seat, and it’s likely that two of them will make it to the general.
State Sen. Pramila Jayapal was a prominent supporter of Bernie Sander’s presidential bid, and his supporters helped her amass a huge warchest. Jayapal also has earned a few major labor endorsements. Most of Jayapal's legislative seat is in the nearby 9th Congressional District, though, which means most of the people who've voted for her in the past can't do so now.
State Rep. Brady Walkinshaw has the backing of several major local power players. King County Commissioner Joe McDermott hasn’t spent as much money as his two main foes, though he does have some prominent local supporters, most notably King County Executive Dow Constantine. Joe McDermott is not related to Jim McDermott, but it’s possible that he’ll benefit from voters who think they're the same guy or at least members of the same family. Both Walkinshaw and McDermott are openly gay, making this perhaps the first federal race with multiple credible LGBT candidates. A few other minor candidates are also on the ballot.