Hey We Heard There Were Some Elections
California should be finished counting primary ballots before November.
Six states held primary elections Tuesday, and the big shocker was that for the first time this primary season, a Trump-endorsed contender lost, HOW SAD FOR HIM (and America). In Iowa, Trump’s choice to succeed Kim Reynolds as governor, Randy Feenstra, lost narrowly to Zach Lahn, a righty activist who’ll probably be just as terrible as anyone Trump supports. Trump only thought to make an endorsement in the race last Friday, leaving Feenstra without any time to try to get advertising up touting the endorsement. More important for Great Leader, Trump will no doubt insist Feenstra’s loss doesn’t count against his perfect endorsement record, because Feenstra let him down. Besides, Lahn ran on the slogan “Iowa First,” so Trump may just decide he’d supported Lahn from the start, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar.
Lahn also had the support of creepy racist and former congressman Steve King, who still freaking hates Feenstra for having turfed King out of his congressional seat in 2020, the last time we recall Republicans actually rejecting an incumbent for being an open, raving racist.
Back in 2017, when King insisted “we can't restore civilization with somebody else's babies,” the remark only won praise from David Duke, although it’s now indistinguishable from mainstream messaging from the Trump administration. So we guess it’s time for the New York Times or the new-look 60 Minutes to do a feature on King’s “vindication.”
Lahn will run against Democratic nominee Rob Sand, Iowa’s state auditor, who is not repellent and has a well-funded war chest that could make him one of the few Democrats this year with a solid chance of becoming governor in an otherwise red state. It’s been a couple decades since a Democrat has been elected governor in Iowa.
Prefer a non-Substack subscription? The button below will take any amount of your choosing at Paypal — let us know if you want the newsletter subscription too! they’re separate! — or we have a Patreon too.
Iowa Senate Primary
Also in Iowa, Chuck Schumer beat Donald Trump because Trump’s guy lost the primary for governor and Schumer’s guy, Paralympics gold medalist and state Rep. Josh Turek, won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat currently held by Joni Ernst, who will go castrate pigs in the private sector. Turek thumped the other top Democratic contender, state Sen. Zach Wahls, by 25 percentage points and change, running on his story of personal achievement as a professional wheelchair basketball player, his success winning a state House seat in a district that voted heavily for Trump, and a $10 million ad buy by the Democratic-friendly group Vote Vets. The group said it got involved in the race because Turek was born with spina bifida following his father’s exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
Wahls has his own compelling backstory; in 2011, when he was a 19-year-old Eagle Scout, he gained national attention when he gave a speech defending his two moms before the Iowa Lege, urging legislators not to ban gay marriage. He won election to the Iowa Senate in 2018, when he was just 27, and likely has a long political career ahead of him despite his primary loss. While Millennial Democrats in some states have had success running against the establishment, Wahls’s promise to oppose another Senate Democratic leadership term for Schumer didn’t play so well with Iowa voters, so it goes.
Turek will face GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson in the fall, and Democrats hope he’ll have an edge if enough rural voters are sick of being screwed over by Trump’s tariffs and by high fuel and fertilizer costs directly resulting from Trump’s stupid war on Iran.
California: It’s (Maybe!) Xavier Becerra And Steve Hilton In Governor’s Race, Karen Bass and ??? For LA Mayor
The big result in California is that, as usual, it’s going to take a few days or weeks to count all the ballots, because it’s a big damn state and because California accepts ballots that were postmarked by Election Day, as long as they’re received by June 9. And of course California does those weird open primaries where the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, go on to the general election.
Governor: As of Wednesday evening, the governor’s race is still too close to call. A lot can still change depending on late-arriving mailed ballots, since it looks like a lot of Democratic voters waited to mail their ballots until Election Day.
After former Rep. Eric Swalwell self-immolated in a fireball of sexual harassment, there was no obvious Democratic front-runner, which led to some worries that Republicans, with fewer choices, would somehow grab the top two spots, but nah, not happening.
With about 56 percent of votes counted so far in the governor’s race, Republican pundit Steve Hilton is narrowly ahead with 28 percent, and Democrat Xavier Becerra, the former HHS secretary, very close behind with 26 percent. Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer is behind both, with 20 percent, and there are a bunch of other candidates as well. Former Rep. Katie Porter, the only major female candidate from either party, conceded on Wednesday afternoon.
Because Donald Trump is an idiot who thinks that only the votes counted in the first few hours are real, he has already congratulated Hilton for winning the primary, and of course accused the state of cheating before the results are all in. If the vote count shifts and Steyer edges ahead of Hilton, expect Trump to order California be nuked.
Los Angeles Mayor: Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass will definitely be on the ballot in November, with 35 percent of votes tallied, but results for the second slot in the general election are still not decided. The count in Los Angeles is further along, with 62 percent of ballots counted by Wednesday evening. So far, weird rightwinger Spencer Pratt is in second place (29.9 percent), and LA City Council member Nithya Raman, who’s challenging Bass from the left, is in third (22.8 percent). Again, the late vote count could change considerably, and Donald Trump will freak out if it does.
Montana Senate Race: This Could Get Interesting
In Montana’s race to replace Sen. Steve Daines, who dropped out on the day of the filing deadline to ratfuck the Democratic slate, Air Force veteran Alani Bankhead won the Democratic primary for Senate, and Kurt Alme won the GOP primary.
Since Daines’s last-minute withdrawal from the race was seen as an attempt to preempt well-known Dems from running, there’s now a lot of speculation that Bankhead may strategically drop her own campaign to give a boost to former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar, who’s running an independent campaign. Bodnar has raised more than $2 million for his campaign, far more than Bankhead.
For her part, Bankhead has repeatedly denied that she plans to drop out of the race, but then until Daines coordinated his little scheme with Alme, he said he was definitely seeking reelection, so we hereby give Bankhead permission to fight the ratfucking with a bit of a fib.
And The Rest / The Professor And Mary Ann
New Jersey weirdness: Democrat Rebecca Bennett won the primary to face incumbent Rep. Tom Kean Jr. in District 7. But “facing” Kean may not be the right term, since he’s been absent from Congress since early March, having missed more than 100 votes. Trump repeated his endorsement of Kean Monday, and a statement from Kean’s office says he’s “focused on my recovery” and planning to return to work “in a matter of weeks.” Maybe he’ll bring Trump’s healthcare plan with him when he comes back.
New Mexico Nice Time: Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland easily won the Democratic primary for governor, making it likely that very blue New Mexico will choose her to become the nation’s first Native American woman elected to serve as any state’s governor. She’ll be running against Republican Greggory Hull, who should be disqualified for having too many gs in his name.
South Dakota Had An Election Too: The Lower Dakota had a four-candidate Republican primary to replace former Gov. Kristi Noem, who now holds the vitally important job of whatever Trump shunted her into after shitcanning her. As a result, neither incumbent Gov. Larry Rhoden nor challenger Toby Doeden got more than 35 percent of the vote in the primary, which was the cutoff for outright winning the nomination. They’ll go to a runoff on July 28. Doeden received 31 percent of the vote, and Rhoden got 25 percent.
First-time candidate Doeden is a car dealer who insists he’s a “total political outsider who’s tired of the government’s failure to deliver on its promises” but also says he’s one of Donald Trump’s “fiercest supporters,” because it’s not like Trump has any influence in the government or anything. Trump didn’t endorse anyone in the race, but he has to be proud of Doeden’s anti-government bid to embed himself in government.
No Democrat has been elected governor of South Dakota since the 1970s.
[AP / NYT / NPR / CalMatters / WaPo (gift link) / Guardian / NBC News]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations. If you can, please become a paid subscriber, or if you’d like to make a one-time (or recurring) donation, you can click this here button.
I routinely call Kean's office to remind him that he's a spineless-ass nepo baby and his grandfather, who helped rescue people from the Nazis, would be deeply ashamed of him.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles Spencer Bratt, a.k.a. Trailer Park Trump alleging election fraud...while the votes are still being tallied...and he's slowly losing ground to Nithya Raman...