Voters in four states select candidates in primaries tonight: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington. We've written up all the key races below, and we've also provided interactive, zoomable Google Maps versions of each state's new congressional map where appropriate.
Interactive map of Michigan's new congressional districts
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MI-Sen (R): Ex-Rep. Pete Hoekstra has been harried by Christian private schools entrepreneur Clark Durant, but all polling has showed him with leads ranging from very large to substantial (the smallest being 16 points). Durant got some last-minute, six-figure outside help from former Michigan GOP chair Saul Anuzis, but an upset seems hard to imagine here.
• MI-03 (D): Two Democrats are hoping to take on GOP freshman Justin Amash: former state Rep./former judge Steve Pestka and activist Trevor Thomas. Thomas has outraised Pestka, but Pestka added half a mil of his own money to his campaign coffers and his TV ads are undoubtedly in heavier rotation. Thomas, thanks in part to his work helping to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," has received the support of a lot of national progressives, including VoteVets and House Progressive Caucus chair Raul Grijalva. Pestka, meanwhile, has earned a lot of local and labor. The most recent poll was a Pestka internal from the end of June that had him 39-15, but those numbers came at the very start of the paid media phase of the campaign and the picture has likely changed since then.
• MI-06 (R): Former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk did well to hold Rep. Fred Upton to a 57-43 win in the 2010 primary without any outside support and basically bupkes for fundraising. And if the Club for Growth had decided to play sugar daddy here this time, perhaps Hoogendyk's second challenge from the right would have succeeded. But the CfG must not have been too impressed with what they saw, since they only spent some $53K here. Meanwhile, some third-party groups (mainly the Radiologists and Optometrists) came in to help Upton with more than $200K, and the incumbent once again badly outraised the upstart. A recent independent poll gave Upton a lead of more than 30 points.
• MI-11 (D & R): If you're reading this primary preview, then you almost certainly know how we've reached this crazy point: Ex-Rep. Thad McCotter's unheard-of failure to qualify for the ballot and subsequently abandoned write-in campaign left the GOP in a real mess. The only guy actually on the ballot is Paulist reindeer farmer Kerry Bentivolio, who was enough of a gadfly to want to challenge McCotter in the primary even before his whole ballot saga unfolded. Given Bentivolio's extreme unacceptability to what passes for mainstream Republican these days, the local establishment rallied around ex-state Sen. Nancy Cassis, who is waging her own write-in bid to try to save her party from itself. Both candidates have mostly self-funded (each for about $200K), but Bentivolio has gotten a ton of outside help (over $700K in total), principally from libertarian Super PAC Liberty for All. While an ambitious EPIC-MRA attempted to poll the race (and found Cassis leading), obviously the write-in factor makes this contest all but impossible to handicap.
Democrats have a mess on their hands, too, though. Physician Syed Taj (who, like Bentivolio, entered the race when it was on nobody's radar) is the only legitimate option. That's because the other hopeful, Bill Roberts, is a nutbag LaRouchie who is fond of handing out literature that reads "Impeach Obama Now" and features a Hitler moustache on the president's face. In a just world, Roberts would be an utter non-entity. But in a race where few voters have ever even heard of the candidates, a familiar-sounding name like "Bill Roberts" might pull more votes than an unfamiliar one like "Syed Taj." Democrats, obviously, are hoping for a Taj-Bentivolio matchup.
Head below the fold for the rest of our writeups.
• MI-13 (D): Veteran Democratic Rep. John Conyers has served in Congress since 1965 and has definitely lost a step since then. Republican redistricting hijinks also left him in the 14th District, where he represented just 19 percent of the new seat's constituents, so he swapped with fellow Rep. Hansen Clarke. But the redrawn 13th is still mostly new to Conyers (only 35 percent of its residents are people he's served before), and he consequently drew a boatload of challengers. Lots of anecdata suggested the incumbent might be in serious trouble (submitting barely more than the minimum signatures required, a last-minute labor-packed canvassing and mail push worth six figures), but polling has showed him cruising over his nearest competitor, state Sen. Glenn Anderson. At this point, the more salient question seems to be who can best jockey for position when Conyers, who is 83, finally decides to retire.
• MI-14 (D): As noted above, Rep. Hansen Clarke agreed to trade districts with John Conyers, but because Michigan lost a seat in redistricting, the 14th turned out to be the most appetizing option for another Democratic Rep., Gary Peters. On paper, the demographics of this heavily African-American district seemed to strongly favor Clarke, who is black, over Peters, who is white. But Peters has run a vigorous, well-funded race and locked down lots of support from prominent black leaders. He's also benefited from a potential split in the black vote thanks to the presence of a third candidate, Southfield Mayor Brenda Lawrence. Yet it's been Clarke's somnolent campaign that's been the biggest surprise (he even stopped showing up to candidate forums), and Peters has led in all reliable polling. Indeed, if EPIC-MRA's last survey, which gave Peters a 52-33 edge, is correct, then he could even win with a clear majority.
Interactive map of Missouri's new congressional districts
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MO-Sen (R): The three-way primary for the right to take on Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill sure has been interesting. Democrats are most eager to take on Rep. Todd Akin, a man of unimpressive intelligence who has run a weak campaign yet nevertheless could pull off an upset by claiming the mantle of "true conservative." PPP's final-weekend poll showed him trailing 35-30 to wealthy businessman John Brunner, who has spent absurd sums (around $8 million) on his own behalf. Brunner has his own flaws (mostly related to the fact that he nearly ran his family-owned business into the ground). The person who's been in the race the longest, ex-state Treasurer Sarah Steelman, is, like Akin, a crappy fundraiser (though she's self-funded about $800K) and, thanks to teabagger mistrust, never seemed to cement herself as the wingnut standard-bearer. (She was at 25 percent in PPP's survey.) Democrats have done their best to ratfuck the primary and help Akin across the finish line; we'll soon see if those efforts will pay off.
• MO-01 (D): In what is probably the most pathetic incumbent-versus-incumbent primary brought on by redistricting, the unloved Russ Carnahan is squaring off against the incompetent Lacy Clay. The fight's mostly being waged on Clay's turf, since Carnahan's old 3rd District was popped like a pimple by the GOP. The district's makeup also favors Clay: It's more African-American than not, and a last-minute SurveyUSA poll showed Clay cleaning up with black voters. Because Carnahan didn't fare nearly as well among whites, that gave Clay a sizable 56-35 edge. Given the lack of enthusiasm for either candidate, and the notable lack of vigor on all sides, it's easy to believe that demographics will simply be destiny here.
Interactive map of Washington's new congressional districts
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WA-Gov (Top-2): The marquee event in Washington in November is one of the least consequential races on the primary ballot, since it's abundantly clear that Democratic ex-Rep. Jay Inslee and Republican AG Rob McKenna will advance from the Top 2. Nevertheless, keep an eye on this race because Washington's Top 2 primary tends to be a fairly accurate barometer of what's to come in November, if you add up all the Democratic votes and all the Republican votes (though that's not a failsafe predictor ... just ask Sen. Dino Rossi). Look for Inslee to finish a smidge ahead of McKenna on Tuesday, but that's because McKenna might get five percent or more shaved off by various minor Republicans situated to his right, most notably fundamentalist minister Shahram Hadian.
• WA-SoS (Top-2): A lot of you may know that Washington is the answer to the trivia question of which state has the longest one-party gubernatorial winning streak; the last time a Republican was elected to that office was John Spellman in 1980. But did you know that the Washington Secretary of State office has been entirely in Republican hands for much longer than that? The last Democrat to get elected to that position was Vic Myers in 1956! For some reason, this job is where the state's generally Democratic-leaning electorate has always liked to ticket-split and keep around a token moderate, good-government Republican (most recently Sam Reed, for the last 12 years). With Reed's retirement, though, this may actually be the year the streak ends. The race's lone Republican, Thurston Co. Auditor Kim Wyman, is likely to advance to November by virtue of being the only GOPer. Three high-profile Democrats are competing for the second slot, but it may go to state Sen. Jim Kastama, a moderate who ruffled a lot of Democratic feathers by joining a Republican budget coup earlier this year. He may eke it out thanks to being the only moderate and exurbanite in the race, with the King County liberal vote getting split among ex-Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and ex-state Sen. Kathleen Drew.
• WA-01 (Top-2): The Top 2 primary in the 1st is the must-watch event in Washington's primary ... though, given the likely puny victory margin between the 2nd and 3rd place finishers and Washington's slow count of its mail-in ballots, we'll probably still be watching all week to know who advances. This district is in serious play in November because of Jay Inslee's resignation and a major redrawing (taking it down to 56 percent Obama); right-wing Snohomish Co. Councilor (and narrowly-losing WA-02 candidate in '10) John Koster is a mortal lock to finish first, thanks to being the only Republican. The main battle for the Democratic slot is between the two most recent losing candidates from WA-08, netroots fave Darcy Burner and more establishment-flavored Suzan DelBene. Burner has led most polls so far thanks to greater initial name rec, but DelBene's self-funding has enabled her to advertise heavily in recent weeks, and the most recent poll, from SurveyUSA, showed her pulling into the lead, though not decisively so (by all of 17 to 13). Ex-state Rep. Laura Ruderman (best known at this point for her mom's copious IEs on her behalf), state Sen. Steve Hobbs and rich tech guy Darshan Rauniyar are also in the hunt for the Democratic nod, but don't seem likely to advance.
• WA-06 (Top-2): Most observers consider this open seat—vacated this year after decades of being occupied by legendary Democratic Rep. Norm Dicks—to be Derek Kilmer's to lose; the young state Sen. is the only Democrat in the race in this light-blue district and has been a solid fundraiser. The question for Tuesday is which Republican snags the second slot in the Top 2 primary; most likely it'll be Bill Driscoll, a wealthy timber-industry type and member of the extended Weyerhaeuser family, who has never run for office before but has ponied up several hundred thousand of his own dollars for the race. Driscoll's blandly bipartisan positioning may not generate much enthusiasm among the Republican electorate, though, but he's likely to advance since there are multiple low-profile tea partiers in the field dividing up the right-wing segment.
• WA-07 (Top-2): While it's unlikely that long-time Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott is in any electoral trouble, he does seem to be taking this race more seriously than usual, running ads and staying visible. He faces Andrew Hughes, a young and ambitious attorney who has put some of his own money into the race (and who previously was running in WA-01, up until redistricting and Burner and DelBene's entries into that field). Fellow Democrat Hughes doesn't seem to have any ideological objection to McDermott, but more likely seems to be laying the name rec groundwork for a future run when the septuagenarian McDermott retires. Even if Hughes manages to overperform expectations, though, thanks to the Top 2 he'd still wind up just running against McDermott again in November, in one of the nation's bluest districts.
• WA-10 (Top-2): There's little doubt that Democratic ex-state Rep. Denny Heck (who lost the open seat race in WA-03 in 2010), as the lone major Democrat in the field, will advance from the primary; in fact, given his strong fundraising (and ability to self-fund if needed) and the newly-created district's Democratic lean, there's little doubt that he'll be in Congress next year. Nevertheless, this uphill race still attracted two Republicans with solid resumes, both of whom are Pierce County Councilors, and Tuesday will determine which of them nabs the second slot. Dick Muri may have a bit of an edge over Stan Flemming, though, thanks to more name rec (from his losing but closer-than-expected bid against Adam Smith in WA-09 in 2010) and the strangely amateur-hour nature of Flemming's campaign.
• KS-St. Sen (R): There aren't any notable federal or statewide primaries this cycle in Kansas, but thanks to a bitter schism in the state Republican Party, the state Senate is worth watching. Self-described "moderate" Republicans practically belong to a separate party from their "conservative" brethren: They absolutely hate each other, and indeed, the moderates have long formed a coalition with minority Democrats to keep control over the chamber. The conservatives are out for blood and need only three or four victories in order to take charge (they already have a majority in the House). Their efforts are supported by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity, and Gov. Sam Brownback; the moderates are pretty badly out-gunned but could conceivably hold on. Indeed, a district-by-district analysis by KingofSpades suggests that the mod/Dem coalition may have even benefited slightly from the state's new court-drawn map. A good list to keep your eye on is the Chamber's roster of endorsees.
