Florida And AZ Primary Funtimes YEEHAW!

Looks like we won't have crazy Kelli Ward to kick around anymore, until she signs with Fox News.

Arizona, Florida, and Oklahoma held primaries yesterday, but for all the pure brainmelting crazy running around loose in those three states, the actual candidates that emerged tended not to be the biggest kooks. With, of course, the exception of Florida's Republican winner of the gubernatorial primary Ron DeSantis, who Trump-humped his way to the win and will continue the rich legacy of assholery he started as a member of Congress. He'll be faced by Dem nominee Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee, who came from almost nowhere in the polls to win with an unabashedly progressive agenda.

Sadly for Yr Wonkette, the Arizona Republican race for Jeff Flake's Senate seat was won by the decidedly non-flamboyant congresswoman Martha McSally over certified ninnyhammer Kelli Ward, largely because the GOP wackaloon vote was split between Ward and living legume Joe Arpaio. Gosh, where will we ever find enough crazies to keep us writing things now? We have faith: The Republicans will provide.

Florida Man Guaranteed To Win GOP Bath Salts Vote

In a win for satirists that threatens to beclown the state for another four years, Florida Republicans chose DeSantis over blandly rightwing Florida Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam as their nominee for governor. Yes, even though Putnam promised he would roll over for the NRA and give them everything they wanted -- and after his office carelessly flooded Florida with dubiously vetted concealed carry handgun permits . (As you'll recall, some moron forgot the password for the national background check system and just stopped doing that part of the process.)

DeSantis hopes the sheer force of his love for Trump will get him to the governor's mansion. He ran this ad in which he's depicted reading "The Art of the Deal" to his babby and teaching his little daughter to "build the Wall" with blocks. It's a lighthearted promise that if Donald Trump wants to shoot someone on the third green at Trump National Doral, Ron DeSantis will eagerly throw the gun into a water trap and declare "problem solved, sir!" On camera, in sight of the FBI.

OK, fine, we like the Trump ducky. It's a nice detail.

We'll give DeSantis this much: He knows how to pander. He's a proud member of the House's Jail Hillary caucus, because she is such an email-deleting, Benghazi-stand-downing traitor who colluded with the Russians by funding the Steele Dossier that accused Trump of colluding with the Russians. As for Trump's own pathetic Putin-humping, of course, DeSantis happens to know what went wrong there:  It was all Obama's fault. 

DeSantis expects Florida Republicans to reward him for firmly attaching his groin to Donald Trump's shin and humping it for all he is worth, on Fox News whenever possible. It's worked so far -- at Trump's big Florida rally earlier this month, the Great Man even remembered to mention DeSantis's name once or twice.

Florida Dems chose Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum to run against DeSantis, giving him the nom over former congresswoman Gwen Graham (the daughter of former governor and US Senator Bob Graham) and rich guy/former Miami Beach Mayor Phillip Levin. Gillum is aiming for a big-tent progressive coalition: Bring on the millennials, the very engaged Parkland kids, and especially the women who want some damn change -- particularly African-American women. Gillum saw how energizing key Democratic constituencies in Alabama helped Doug Jones beat Roy Moore in red, red Alabama and figured that was a model he could use, even if he isn't running against a sex crimer. The word "charismatic" gets attached to Gillum a lot, and it's easy to see why. Here's the kind of draw he is:

Gillum was also boosted by big infusions of cash from Tom Steyer and a smaller chunk of change from George Soros, which of course gave Fox News the only headline its readers will care about:

Gillum is campaigning on a $15/hour minimum wage and Medicare for All (yes, a federal thing, but governors help) and has so far not made Trump a central issue in his campaign, instead going with issues that affect Floridians more directly, like finally passing Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. Of course, Trump's inevitable attack on him this morning as a "failed socialist mayor" will no doubt help energize Gillum supporters as much as it riles up the usual gang of idiots who were going to vote for DeSantis anyway. Yr Wonkette rates the Florida governor's race Very Worth Watching, and as of yet we have no idea whether Gillum will be helped among Tolkien fans by the fact that standard keyboards make this kind of typo inevitable:

In other Florida primary news, (allegedly) spouse-abusey former congressman Alan Grayson lost his comeback attempt, and good riddance.

Arizona: Kelli Ward Back To Perennial Candidate Status

Wingnut darling Kelli Ward lost bigly to Congresswoman Martha McSally in her attempt to get the GOP nomination for Jeff "Imaginary Backbone" Flake's US Senate seat (ands race-baiting Friend of Donald Joe Arpaio finished a distant third). McSally will face Democratic Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema in the fall. Sinema led all three of the Rs in the race in pre-primary polling, but now of course things will get ugly real fast. Trump stayed out of the Republican primary even though Ward insisted she was his spiritual twin, Arpaio was a useful campaign prop whom Trump pardoned for being racist, and McSally had distanced herself from him in 2016. Once it was all decided, of course, Trump endorsed McSally, who has suddenly embraced immigrant-bashing. Sinema hopes that Arizona Dems -- and the substantial numbers of Latinx voters who turned out to defeat Arpaio in 2016 -- will be angry enough to overcome the creaky, divided Arizona Republican GOP this fall.

We're a little sad as satire-doers to see uberwingnut Ward go away so soon, but at least there's no chance she'll blow chemtrails all over the Senate chamber in January, so that's good for "America" we guess. Besides, no ego-driven jerk like Ward will ever really be content to fade away -- she'll be back in a couple years to run for the remainder of John McCain's term. Crazy like that refuses to shut up, which is why we'll keep "Kelli Ward" in our Google alerts.

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