Takeaways from Tuesday's primaries

Primaries in Florida and elsewhere are sending some mixed signals or are they they also pointed to what could be some cracks in the president's grip over the Republican party so let's talk about it It's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Tamer Keith. I cover politics. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting and I'm actually Lopez. I cover politics Let's dive in on some of the key congressional races that we've been following and I want to start with Florida's 20th Ashley we talked about this on the pod yesterday It is a district that for a very long time has been represented by African-American lawmakers What was it stay here? What happened well Debbie Wasserman Schultz who is a long-time congresswoman in Florida who is white One pretty decisively in this seat, and this is interesting because she was running against an entire slate of mostly black candidates And so this is a sort of mixed bag for Democrats I should say this is a safe democratic seat So it's part of the reason she chose this seat. She had been redistricted out of her her seat in South Florida So she chose this seat one that she could reliably win in the general and it was an open question Well, it would mean for Democrats depending who won, right? Because this was a seat where black voters had some power in Congress and now That is not the case. I was just surprised that this election wasn't even close I mean she got into five person primary 45% of the vote and you think about She's just a politician's politician. You know, she clearly understood when she was picking She had a decision to make when they redrew these districts Do I run in the 25th, which is this competitive district that we're going to talk about as well against another incumbent Jared Mosquitz Do I run in the 20th, which is a safer district, but it presents these complicated race questions She clearly saw an easier path or herself. She's in 11-time incumbent She's a former chair of the DNC This is somebody who understands politics and she had a pretty easy primary last night It's arguably why she won, right? If it's a crowded primary, the person who has the most name recognition and money is likely to win All right, Florida's 25th. You mentioned it. So let's go there This is a district that is seen as a true toss-up It is another one of these redrawn districts in this Republican effort to gain more seats in Florida And the democratic primary in this district presented one of these moderate-democrat versus DSA candidate races and in this case the more moderate-democrat congressman Jared Mosquitz Easily won he did he beat this DSA candidate Oliver Larkin which this was a race that did garner a lot of attention Mosquitz blew him out. I mean he won by more than 25 points And so he immediately upon winning took this and basically did a victory lap against DSA and said Florida is the place. I think he told political playbook Florida is the place where DSA comes to die He seems to be sort of carving out this niche as a person in the democratic party Which is not a very popular place to be right now, but being sort of anti far left anti progressive It seems like he's also very pro-Israel and Larkin had opposed military support for Israel This is one of these classic divides But you take it and you move it out of New York City and you put it in Florida Where the population is different and you get a different result I mean it is a weird message getting into a general election though because the the decision before voters is going to be Republican versus Democrat, not Democrat versus this like ghost figure which is the democratic Socialists of America that is not who's going to be on the ballot usually at this point a politician will pivot To fighting the other party because you're moving into a general so picking a fight to your left flank is sort of weird I don't think it's weird at all given the themes that we are going to see in these midterms where Literally every Republican is going to be running against the DSA whether the candidate is moderate or not The socialism communism messaging coming out of Republicans is so incredibly clear and loud and it's breaking through with voters I get where why mosquits is doing. I think it's also important to say though that okay Maybe DSA doesn't have quite the level of familiarity with voters But you know who's really unpopular is Republicans right now and it is I would argue Uh an easier fight to say you know who is in control of everything right now and you know who is in control of the economy and all of this like The better boogie man is the party in power which usually is a winning strategy and a midterm cycle that might be true nationally But I when I saw him going pretty far on the anti DSA stuff. I kind of was thinking oh well I mean he is there's a lot of Republicans in that district and the reply should we should also note that was a That was a pretty competitive primer in the Republican side is gonna be facing the former mayor of Boko Raton a guy named Scott singer in that general election Another race we were watching very closely they got a lot of national attention was florida's seventh Which covers parts of central florida and the east coast the incumbent Republican Cory Mills Who had been endorsed by president trump lost his primary in a big way What happened there? Yeah, I mean this seems like a situation where voters did not want to vote for a candidate who isn't embroiled and embroiled is the keyword Embroiled in scandal. This is not one scandal. This is not two scandals I mean Cory Mills is facing allegations of domestic violence. He's facing other sexual misconduct allegations He's facing campaign finance allegations. So You know the person who ended up winning this race Ryan Elijah who's a former news anchor said explicitly at a debate earlier this year I would not have gotten into this race against a sort of normal Republican candidate He said I got into this race because I was worried that if Cory Mills won This would be a vulnerable seat to Democrats in November and Cory Mills continues to deny all of these allegations It's interesting what happened here because president trump had endorsed him And then there were stories overnight that said the candidate that president trump endorsed lost And so president trump went on social media and was like yeah I endorsed him but then I told him he should drop out and now I totally support and fully endorse the Republican nominee Not terribly surprising though because I will say he had endorsed it but then more recently had posted something about all of his endorsements in florida And had left off Cory Mills even though he had endorsed him previously And so he had started distancing himself but seeing him then post that he was like no I never thought that guy should run or I thought he should drop out was it did seem kind of classic trump in sort of distancing himself from a person after they've lost Ashley what does this mean for the general election? Well I mean I think Elijah like solved a problem for Republicans here because this district Does lean are this is a state that is generally a place where Republicans have been more motivated in recent years So I think this probably shakes out in the favor of Republicans It makes it easier for them to get you know more centrist voters or people who were put off by the stories of mills You know and and it is interesting to see in in a trump era that there is a limit to some scandals You know, I'm curious to to see what happens in some other races that have been high profile like in Ohio Where there is a scandal written incumbent So yeah, we'll see I do think for Republicans in florida. They're probably pretty relieved right now I would say Let's turn now to the special election for the US Senate seat that had been held by now secretary of state Marco Rubio and On the Republican side the appointed incumbent Ashley moody easily won On the democratic side we had another one of these DSA aligned versus mainstream moderate dim kind of races and the result was surprising Well, it was I almost poised to be surprising because like there were a lot of undecideds in the polling ahead of this race I mean we talked about this yesterday that there was also a big difference in the money spent But to cut to the chase the state Representative from the Jacksonville area her name is Angie Nixon Who financially speaking was the underdog here one and one pretty decisively like me this race was called pretty early in the night Which is not aty typical for florida call races pretty early, but um, you know She defeated Alex Vindman who had a pretty significant national profile He became famous during the first Trump impeachment trial. Um, he was a witness in those hearings And you know, he raised a ton of money like 16 million more than 16 million And she barely raised a million which and the fact that she was able to win signals to me She has been an organizer for years The results of this will show what matters more whether it's mobilization retail politics Yes, just hitting the pavement Convincing voters over time or whether it's money and I think the answer here is well at least with among democratic voters in florida It's not money that wins. I think that this race You know Alexander Vindman raised a ton of money which he could do because he was a resistance figure and he had support from big names And he could put out an internet video and get a lot of money But if you look at like how much of that money he actually spent on ads in the primary It was very little and the ad was focused on the general election It seemed like he was focused on the general election I mean, I was emailing with a political scientist in florida this morning about this and she noted It's 63% of registered Democrats in florida are women and what she said is that they probably did not like a male candidate Kind of just writing off the primary and writing off Nixon and just kind of immediately focused focusing on the general election that it seems sort of arrogant i think you know not spending those both loads of cash i i just i i don't really fully understand it and they must have had polling that showed this was not going to be uh. super simple patterns nixon and i'm winning it wasn't even close to you won by more than twelve percentage points yeah i mean thematically i wonder do we have a sense of was this really d_s_a_ verses moderate or was the message not even really the point it was just one person was actually actively asking for people's votes yeah i that's a good question i mean it's complicated by the fact that angi nixon did join d_s_a_ she did don't join the democratic socials of america during the campaign she wasn't endorsed by the group and you know she didn't really like highlight the connection to the group during her campaign this didn't come up at all so the other thing is like this just didn't get a lot of media attention so this didn't get framed in that way so i don't know if the the race was even proposed to voters in that manner uh. i think a lot of it came down to who do you know and who do you who don't you know like it was actually very simple it may not have come up immediately in the primary but this is going to come up a lot leading up to november because gonna have mosquits talking about this d_s_a_ connection clearly distancing himself from it you're going to have nixon running as an explicitly progressive candidate for senate and then we haven't even talked about the governor's race but we can now we can now david jolly easily one he's a former republican now turned independent turned democrat who won the nomination for governor running as a democrat and he is running as a moderate he is said he is not a socialist and so you're gonna have all of these competing dynamics all in the same ballot in florida and byron donald's got the republican nomination he was endorsed by president trump it was a bit of a cake walk for him though uh. you know we were watching the margins there yet he ended up with less than fifty percent of the vote which i mean again it was a multi-way primary not terribly shocking but definitely gonna have some work to do in terms of getting all these factions together all right we're going to take a quick break and when we come back alaska's primaries welcome back and i'd like to head to alaska like truly i'd love to be there right now because i think the weather is better but let's go to alaska where voters had primaries for the states governor and one of its senate seats and i think we should start by explaining the unique primary system in the great state of alaska yeah which of these election nerds wants to take this i'll take it because i do like reporting on primaries and this and alaska is one of a few states that has this very interesting system is called a non-partisan primary system basically all candidates are on the same ballot regardless of party al voters regardless of party have access to it which is different in some states sometimes you have to be a democrat in order to vote on the democratic ticket anyways this is a place where it's open to everyone they basically move on the top four vote getter so four people who get the the highest number of votes move on to the general so it's a pretty large ballot for general election i was looking at the primary ballot and it was like a dozen 15 names in some of these races i mean and it's likely that some people will end up in the general election that got like what like less than 10% of the vote because it's top four in some states when they have non-partisan primaries it's top two i also want to point out alaska takes a little bit longer to count votes because a lot of people use mail and ballots there it's a big state where people live far away from pretty much everything so i i think it's really interesting to have florida and alaska together on the same primary night because you got one of the fastest states and yeah one of the slowest to count votes yeah and it didn't have 80 percent count of this one air was proud of them though yeah that's pretty good yeah i'm sure that number was going to be in the 40s or 50s you know but they were there up to 80 so good for them yeah so i i will say that at one 25 p.m. eastern time on Wednesday as you say miles we have about 80 percent of the votes in in alaska uh ap has called the top two in the senate race but we're still waiting to find out who the other two lesser known uh and and lower vote getting uh candidates will be to run round out the top four but tell us about who made it well uh Mary peltola the uh democratic candidate this is the the candidate that i think democrats are hoping will help them flip this seat in their favor as they're trying to regain control of the senate um then there's dan Sullivan this is confusing because technically there are two dan Sullivan's on uh on the ballot the incumbent is the one who has definitely made it to the next phase of this to the top four the open question is whether the other dan Sullivan will get on the ballot which could be um uh uh spoiler for for the incumbent dan Sullivan i mean at this point the second dan Sullivan has been facing accusations that he is specifically running to uh be a spoiler candidate though he has denied those allegations he's got more than 3,200 votes at this point which calculates only 80 percent votes cast but more than 2 percent of the total vote so if that were to be the case in november depending on it is also we should know ranked choice voting in november where it's not ranked choice in the primary so if you vote for the second dan Sullivan but then you give your second choice to the other dan Sullivan it's possible that it could not end up playing as simple as a spoiler as it would in a more traditional voting method but it still could could be a big deal i would imagine though Mary peltola's campaign still looks the results regardless of all the dan Sullivan and is is pretty heartened at the fact that she mean she got close to 50 percent of the vote she is a former house member she was the first native elected in to congress in alaska she was the first woman elected to the house of representatives in alaska she's raised a lot of money though i will also note there's been reports about campaign shake up in her campaign last couple weeks so a little bit of uncertainty leading up to the primary but getting close to 50 percent here obviously not terribly surprising but they've got to feel good about coming ahead of dan Sullivan at top four and she really is running her own race uh her purple campaign slogan is fish family freedom and and a big part of her agenda relates to fish which is extremely alaska it is and she's like disconnectes she's really explicitly trying to disconnect from the lower forty eight i mean there was also this other controversy were cum laude sent out an email fundraising for her and she distanced herself from that fundraising effort which is pretty shocking for somebody running as a democrat to distance yourself from the person most recently ran for president your party but she is trying to kind of be her own person in that race let's turn now to Wyoming they also had primaries for governor and a senate seat were there any surprises there i mean we're really watching the republican primaries as a very solidly republican state and so um interesting result in the center race republican senate race harry hegemann who is a name that might be familiar to people she's the person who ousted list chaney back in 2022 decided to run for senate and is now won that nomination and will most likely be the next senator from Wyoming but the surprise is really in the race for governor where state senator erick barlow defeated megan deganfelder who's currently the state superintendent of public instruction and the only reason this matters is because deganfelder had the endorsement of president trump and she is the most recent not the only the most recent case of a gubernatorial candidate being endorsed by trump and losing and she lost pretty big it does raise the question of where are the limits of president trump's endorsement power uh you know his full and total support was thought to be a golden ticket in republican primaries but we've now seen several where that hasn't worked and i'm looking ahead to next week where you'll have the runoff in the senate primary the special senate primary to replace senator lensi gram in south carolina and president trump's chosen candidate darlene gram lensi gram's sister is not having a cakewalk let's say uh and president's even going to campaign for her later this week i mean i'd be curious to see how effective his endorsements are over time like maybe in the earlier primaries they had like a little bit more weight but remember he is getting less popular every month every day and i wonder if as as as his numbers keep sliding if his influence gets a little bit of a hit also i mean we've talked about this a lot it depends when he endorses um it has to be super early for it to be effective so far it seems that way uh we could talk about a good example of that um for uh with a final race in florida we were watching because that's a pretty good example of a late endorsement often does not work out in his favor yeah that was the florida 19 right where he endorsed at the very end this woman cattalena lauf and she did not end up winning again in other case it wasn't terribly close lost by a few percentage points to a businessman there a conservative radio station owner jim shortzel yeah an actual florida man because a lot of the folks we talked about this yesterday a lot of the folks who were running in this very crowded primary had uh tenuous if non-existent ties to florida which you know i mean it's interesting to see that a state that has a lot of transient uh folks coming in and out they still care about stuff like that i think that's interesting especially in that part of uh florida where a lot of people retire all right well that is a great lesson to end on i'm tamer keep i cover politics i'm miles apart so i cover voting and i'm actually low pes i cover politics and thank you for listening to the impure politics podcast [BLANK_AUDIO]