#BREAKING Democratic candidate Lauren Arthur wins a special election for Missouri’s 17th’ state Senate District, swinging the district by 24 points and FLIPPING control from R to D. This is the 45th legislative seat Democrats have flipping from R to D since the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/HRiXVUUmER
— G. Elliott Morris??????? (@gelliottmorris) June 6, 2018
Polls have closed in California, and results are already coming in elsewhere. The Washington Post is posting updates as they come in here. They also have some general notes:
Polls have closed in all eight states holding primary contests Tuesday, capping the biggest single day of primary elections this year, encompassing 85 House races, five gubernatorial seats, five Senate seats and hundreds more state and local races.
Tuesday’s results are expected to provide new insight into Democrats’ chances for retaking congressional majorities in November — especially in California, where President Trump is deeply unpopular and scores of Democrats are running for House seats.
California polls closed at 11 p.m. Eastern time, so much of Tuesday’s high-profile races won’t be settled until late this evening — and, perhaps, not even then. Some tight races may have to wait for mail-in ballots, which won’t be fully counted for days.
In the early hours of Tuesday evening, the biggest surprise was in Alabama, where incumbent Rep. Martha Roby failed to win 50 percent in the primary for her own seat and now faces a runoff. Roby, first elected in 2010, angered constituents in 2016 by un-endorsing then-candidate Donald Trump after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he bragged about groping women.
In the GOP runoff for her seat, Roby will now face Bobby Bright — a former Democrat, whom Roby defeated to take the seat eight years ago. Bright has now switched parties and become a fervently pro-Trump Republican. In this race, he attacked Roby for turning “her back on President Trump when he needed her the most.” The two will now meet in a July 17 runoff…
Anybody got local wisdom to share with the rest of us?
Major Major Major Major
House of Thai 2 on Haight Street has pretty good curry plates.
West of the Rockies
@Major Major Major Major:
Darn it… Now I have a taste for cashew chicken.
cain
I want to see a bloodletting and then I want to observe the Orange Fuckwad embarass himself on twitter.
randal m sexton
I just got back from canvassing in district 10 in CA – The Denham district. This year has been my first time doing this sort of thing. I maybe, maybe managed to convince a few people to meander over to their polling place in Modesto today. Maybe Maybe – it will get a D on the ballot — Curse this stupid jungle primary. The Dem folks I talked to in general were MOTIVATED.
Platonailedit
If CA is touted as a deep blue state, how come the rethugs are in the second place in many places including govnor?
Mai naem mobile
I know this isn’t the top of his priorities buy Paul Manafort’s wife or lawyer really needs to get some hairspray and fix his hairpiece so that it doesn’t look like a total hairpiece. Also too, did he have a mugshot taken? Was it without the hairpiece?
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: We have a really nice Malaysian restaurant a few miles up the road.
Yarrow
Mai naem mobile
I was hoping for Fagg to win the Montana Sen GOP primary because the GOP is stupid enough not to vote for somebody named Fagg. Alas, it doesn’t sound like it’s going to be Fagg.
Peale
Speaking of the House of Thai 2…since this is an open thread, I’m going to put in a plug for the Thai movie, Bad Genius, now streaming on Netflix. It’s a “regular man” thriller/heist movie about a girl who decides that a full scholarship isn’t enough compensation for the prestige she brings to her elite prep school. Think of it as an NCAA football player realizing that there’s billions of dollars floating around college sports, who decides to try to get some of that for himself. It was the box office winner in Thailand last year and the top Thai international box office champ as well.
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
There were about 27 candidates running for governor, a good number of them Democrats.
Similar log jams for a few other offices.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
Goddamn did that page have a small font.
ETA: This was the desired result, though: an easily-beat Republican that would let Democrats focus their attention on other races. Or so I’d heard.
cain
@Brachiator:
Who are tehse selfish people running for office and spliting the vote? Can’t they get behind one candidate? I find it appalling that the party allowed so many candidates to vy for one office confusing democrats. While Republicans get a nice easy choice.
The worst part is that this has already happened in Canada.. jeez.
ruemara
In the interests of national mental health, here is Hime Beribetto.
Anne Laurie
Anne Laurie
@ruemara: Princess Velvet! — she looks like that’s appropriate…
Chet Murthy
@Anne Laurie: Oh god yes. yes yes yes, please yes.
Raoul
Dunno if this got talked about in earlier threads today, but MN is heading for crazy-time. Rep. Keith Ellison has filed to run for MN A.G. office, and our current (and I think well liked) A.G. who didn’t get the state convention endorsement is running in a three way race to be the Dem nominee for Governor this fall (we vote late in our MN primary). The GOP has a contested primary with gawdawful (one-time) mullet-head/current millionaire bank lobbyist/former governor and budget destroyer Pawlenty in the mix.
Now there’s an 8-way scrum to replace Ellison, and the August primary is the defacto election in the 5th.
MisterForkbeard
@Platonailedit: …you mean, as opposed to the GOP being in FIRST place?
Feebog
I am following the results in CA 25. My favorite, Katie Hill is trailing Bryan Caforio by a couple points. Katie will be the stronger candidate in the general against Steve Knight (R). Hope she can pull it out.
Major Major Major Major
I can see no way in which this could get dicey, at all.
MisterForkbeard
@Raoul: One of the MN commenters was up in arms and super pissed at Keith Ellison about it, yeah. Basically saying he was a good rep and there’s no reason for him to throw the MN races into chaos like this – he should know better.
Origuy
There were 10 Democrats and 5 Republicans on the CA governor’s ballot. If you add all the Democratic votes other than Newsome’s, they still don’t quite add up to Cox’s vote. It looks like De Leon might hold on to second place for Senator, though. It’s still a crazy system.
The only election that might get two Republicans is CA-48, Rohrbacher’s district. The leading Democrat has 18.7% and the second place Republican (the one that isn’t Putin’s buddy) has 18.0%.
Raoul
@Major Major Major Major: Our former MN Speaker, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who is super nice and very white has filed. Ilhan Omar, the muslim immigrant woman who won a MN House seat (yay!) and isn’t even done with her first term has also filed. I don’t even know who the other six are yet! Nutso.
Platonailedit
@Major Major Major Major: Dem vs dem would be the desirable outcome. Otherwise, jungle primary is a meaningless idea in a deep blue state. We might as well could have had a two party GE.
MisterForkbeard
On another note, it looks like CA probably won’t fuck up on the House seats, at least not to a major degree. The (early) counting shows the only seat with close margins that might lead to a R/R contest in the general is Rohrabachers, who currently has a Dem sitting at 15% in 2nd place and a R at 13%.
The rest are all pretty solidly Dem in 1st or 2nd place. Crossing fingers and hoping the initial results are borne out.
Major Major Major Major
@Platonailedit:
Why? It certainly wouldn’t benefit the party; there’d be a civil war. The lefties (ETA and several other contingents, but the media would be afire with the left-v-establishment angle) would glom onto whoever wasn’t Newsom, it would cause a whole kerfuffle. Better, this thinking goes, to have an easily-beatable Republican in the race.
Raoul
@MisterForkbeard: Not my take, though. Its nutty, and I don’t get why Keith thinks it’s better to be MN A.G. than a US House member (unless he thinks we won’t take the majority in November …. gaaahh!). Maybe he is exhausted by the D.C. bullshit?
The A.G. race is going to be odd. We have a convention-endorsed candidate, who is IMO kind of an unknown. And we have failed gubernatorial candidate (lost to [ptuh ptuh] Pawlenty, in fact) and longer ago former — and not all that dazzling — AG Mike Hatch seeking his job back after a 12 year gap. I do not want him back. No no no. But I’m not enthused about Ellison for the job. There’s time to sort that out.
The chaos I’m mad about is the Dem primary for Governor. The pissy current A.G. who didn’t get the convention endorsement for another term (I never thought of her as pissy, but she looks terribly that way now!) scrambled to throw together a run for Gov and picked retiring 8th House Dist Rep Nolan who is retiring a second time* from the US House but suddenly has the energy for a dark horse run to be Lt Governor.
What the hell is happening up here?
*Fun fact: Nolan’s 32-year gap between terms in Congress is the longest such break in service in American political history
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie: RE. That Twitter message.
This is true, but Chief Justice Rose Bird lost a reconfirmation vote in 1986, largely over her opposition to the death penalty. Not quite a recall, but another reaction to voter anger, and a California first.
NotMax
Anything more recent about this? Orange County, go take a flying leap.
Help? More than likely hurt (same link).
* Newman’s vote in that case wasn’t any more nor any less notable than the other yesses. He was targeted by vindictive Rs specifically because he was deemed to hold the most vulnerable seat of the aye casters.
? Martin
@Major Major Major Major: I don’t think so. There was a real risk of that happening in the Senate race in 2016 between Harris and Sanchez but nothing materialized. But otherwise I agree with you, better to have Cox in there.
Viva BrisVegas
@Raoul:
Maybe because he likes the look of the MN Governor’s mansion and AG is a first step.
Also too, maybe he thinks that the House is not as good a springboard for the big job than MN Governor.
Four years of Trump, plus eight years of whichever Democratic President replaces him would put Ellison in line for 2028.
As Napoleon said, every corporal carries a Field Marshal’s baton in his knapsack.
Raoul
@Viva BrisVegas: Not much recent history of our A.G. having a successful later run for Governor. I guess he feels he needs to prove he can win enough people outside our biggest and most urban county before making a similar statewide run for Gov?
Or maybe he feels he needs to prove he can do some lawyering, and not just congressing?
I see that there’s a path there, but not sure why it is a good path.
John Revolta
@Raoul:
Get a look at some of his……………………..colleagues.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax:
Your take is right here, the gas/vehicle tax is pretty unpopular though. Folk still don’t seem to get that the roads need maintenance.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Raoul: In California the AG has been a good stepping stone to higher office, both Gov. Brown and Sen. Harris were AG’s.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Which is weird, since the ones upset about the gas tax all probably drive on them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Ah, the legacy of Prop. 13.
gwangung
@Major Major Major Major: And they get even more pissed at the other alternative to gas taxes: toll roads.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@gwangung: Yes tolling is being pushed as an alternative in WA because electric vehicles will pay no gas tax. Along with push back for bicycle lanes. There is going to be some interesting realignments on how we pay for roads.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): And I finally experience the missing edit function.
There are going to be some interesting political realignments on how we pay for roads.
Major Major Major Major
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): Why do people hate bike lanes so much? Isn’t that how Toronto got Rob Ford?
ETA yes, sort of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_mayoral_election,_2010#Issues
“What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you’re going to get bitten… Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes. My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day.”
Mike J
@Raoul: There is also the fact that AG is just a much better job than MoC. Would you want a job where you had to spend three days a week in DC 6 months of the year?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major:
Street parking.
Brachiator
@NotMax:
This effort also got a big publicity boost from local talk radio hosts John and Ken, on the area’s top rated English language talk and news station. They publicized the effort to get rid of Newman, held rallies, gave a lot of time to the issue, and also to elimination of the gas tax.
Steve in the ATL
I suppose we can blame Reagan and the turn the Republican Party took at that time, aided and abetted by Fox News and the rest of the right wing noise machine, for the stupid idea that government should provide goods and services without needing taxes to pay for them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Steve in the ATL: It goes back to Prop. 13.
ETA: You can thank the guy in the cab in “Airplane”.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That is part of it, but it also is part of road diet rage with some of the lost lanes going to bicycles, a perception that they are not used, and not taxed as part of road maintenance. It doesn’t help that bicyclists and bike messengers particularly have earned a reputation as bad drivers around here.
HumboldtBlue
Electric vehicles and other zero-emission (or close to it vehicles), will be charged a yearly fee for road maintenance in lieu of taxes at the pump. There is also a (five?) county-focused study underway on pay-per-miles as a means to fund maintenance
?BillinGlendaleCA
@YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S): Bicycles don’t cause a whole lot of damage to roads. I’ve experienced the joy of bike messengers when I worked for Satan in DTLA. They’re CRAZY.
sukabi
“Printing error” leaves 118,000 voters out of luck.
YetAnotherJay formerly (Jay S)
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The lack of damage isn’t relevant to bike haters. It takes away lanes or dollars for building more roads and god forbid you spend road dollars to provide true bicycle paths to get them out of motor vehicle traffic.
@HumboldtBlue: Until there is a broad consensus of how to pay for roads that includes all traffic (or all beneficiaries) and can be applied with perceived fairness, this issue is going to be a problem. I don’t see it getting resolved any time soon.
Shalimar
Bright was basically a Republican in voting record even before Roby beat him, so not a shock he has gone hard right now that he doesn’t have to fake non-racism for Democratic votes, which are mostly African-American in that southern part of Alabama.
Shalimar
@sukabi: No idea if it is the case here, but this is what the results of Russian election hacking are going to look like when it happens. Much easier to remove voters in heavily Democratic areas than change actual votes.
Eljai
I have been watching the “liberal” MSNBC election coverage for the past couple hours because I am a glutton for punishment and I swear 90% of pundit analysis has framed the primary results in terms of “caution” and “dangers” for Democrats. Steve Kornacki says Dump’s approval rating is ticking up. Really? To what, 41%? Can you recall any president in recent history approaching the midterms with an approval rating below 45% being described as “ticking up”? And lastly, Jeremy Peters of the FTFNYT is quite a tool. He says Democrats need to find a message besides being anti-Trump. I guess Jeremy dozed off when all those Democrats who won special elections ran on expanding medicare and social security, strengthening labor, and improving infrastructure. And excuse me but what was that inspiring message that republicans have been running on for that last 8 years? Oh right, obstruct whatever Obama proposes and let’s kill the poors. I guess we are just going to have to do this whole saving Democracy thing on our own.
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
In Florida? That’s intriguing. What kind of Malaysian food?
Mnemosyne
@cain:
They’re the ones who insist that their preferred candidate was robbed in the presidential primary, and now they’re thumbing their noses at the party and flooding Democratic primaries just to show that the Democratic Party isn’t the boss of them, Mom!
Also a few Republican ratfuckers.
Steve in the ATL
@Eljai:
Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?
Marcopolo
Just dropping in before I get to bed very late in MO.
I wrote GOTV postcards with my Indivisible group in May for Lauren Arthur. We are all celebrating the seat flip.
Anyone else here can join in the fun just go to the website for Postcards to Voters. I’d include a link but I am on my phone which makes doing that a pain in the @ss.
Last but not least, if your candidate was on the ballot today I hope they won.
Eljai
@Steve in the ATL: Yep. While I am disappoint that our media is not woke yet, maybe it’s better to work under the radar. Time to rest up so I can wake up refreshed and ready to kick ass with the Resistance!
Mary G
Many more votes to be counted, but CA49 came through:
Republicans consolidated behind
Nancy Harkey, and she came in first with 23,591 votes 25.6%
Democrats could not agree, of course
but three of them were next with a total of 41,497 votes 45.0%
(Long list of other people who got the rest of the votes)
Just for comparison, in the last midterm primaries (2014)
the late unlamented Darrell Issa 43,171 votes 61.4%
Two Democrats 27,123 votes 38.6%
So from about -21.8% to +19.4, about a 40 point swing!
*I’m doing this in my head in the middle of the night, so the math is probably way off, but you get the general idea.
TS (the original)
Saw a little of Steve Kornacki breathless on MSNBC because democrats might miss out on some CA districts. Doesn’t matter who they are – their happiness is in democrats losing. Looks like most, if not all districts will have a democrat in the election.
magurakurin
@Platonailedit:
because the number 3 Dems are Berners/OurRevolution fuckwits that are mostly hated even in California. If they can’t beat Republicans in California, how in the fuck are they going to beat them in Alabama…where a real Dem did? Answer, they can’t. They are nothing more than a disgruntled rump that can’t do much good and can do much bad by acting as spoilers in close races. punks.
Schlemazel
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not so much here in MN.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Can you imagine if Clinton was at 41% with Mueller investigating her for treason and her campaign team in jail, facing life in prison – the whole media would be screaming Armageddon1!1.
But IOKIYAR.
Mel
@ruemara: He is beautiful! Love his sweet, gentle expression and his perfect pink nose.
Schlemazel
@Raoul:
I have no idea why Swanson did not get the nom for AG, she has been fine in the role & the new guy brings in nothing that I can see as special.
So instead of taking the opportunity to increase her income in the private sector she decides to see if she can F up the governor race which was already dicey. Stupid move on her part & it will fail but petty grievances must be attended to I guess.
Ellison. WTF? If he thought AG was such a great gig why not announce & campaign across the state to get the nom? Waiting until the last day to file might have allowed his hand chosen successor a free shot but no, he called everyone he thought might be interested & told them what he was going to do. And this guy is co-chair of the DNC.
His seat is safe in Dem hands but there are now 9 or 10 people running in the primary so the odds of getting someone of Ellison’s quality are not what I would hope for.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Starbuck Chairman Howard Schultz
I’ve seen him interviewed a number of times over the years and he’s low-key and boring. I don’t see how that translates into winning primaries.
Juice Box
@cain: Because the party doesn’t control who can enter the primary. It was another brilliant attempt to get the politics out of politics by further weakening the already weak party system.
Schlemazel
@Schlemazel:
BTW – Because he is my Congressman I follow Ellison. I just checked & on May 25th he filed to run for CD5 & stated how proud he was to continue to serve us.
Something is wrong, this smells really bad.
Bobby Thomson
After reading Keirstead’s Wikipedia entry, I really hope Rouda hangs on to beat him. Keirstead claims to have won “a crowded primary race” and says he is “the” Democratic candidate but the footnote leads to an article he planted in local press about a convention victory. If he will play fast and loose with the facts like that he’s a scandal waiting to happen.
Bobby Thomson
@Schlemazel: we already knew he had questionable judgment.
Bobby Thomson
@cain: California has performed a valuable service in modeling how stupid voter initiatives, ballot budgeting, and top-two primaries are.
Elizabelle
@Bobby Thomson: I’m still good with the top two. California needs to refine their process, though, and cull the number of candidates on the ballot. Make them collect a lot of signatures of actual voters. Reduce the number of vanity/spite candidates and ratfuckers.
Elizabelle
@ruemara: What a doll. Master of those stairs.
Schlemazel
@Bobby Thomson:
I was not a fan of his endorsement of Bernie but I felt he used his safe seat to try to pull the party in a better direction. There are many members in safe seats who sit back & collect donations while offereding weakened Repub solutions. Keith could have done that (his predecessor was pretty tame) so he gets points for not doing it.
Another Scott
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Krugman reminded us yesterday that he’s also Teh Debt is going to kill us all in our beds scold.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Cheers,
Scott.
JaneE
It looks like my congressional district will have to choose between two Republicans, again. (CA-08) I only remember one Democrat on a November ballot since they changed to the top-two primary. I will either not vote for that office, or write in the Democrat.