(CNN) — Votes are being counted in Michigan, where Democratic voters are settling a Senate primary that has become the year’s most significant test of how the party’s electorate is weighing questions of ideology and electability.
Progressive former public health official Abdul El-Sayed faces the more moderate Rep. Haley Stevens in the race to take on Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers in November. Holding onto the seat, now held by retiring Sen. Gary Peters, is crucial to Democrats’ chances of the net four-seat gain they need in this year’s midterm elections to win a Senate majority.
The race was tight, with many votes left to count, as of early Wednesday morning.
“We knew this was going to be a close race, and that’s exactly what we’ve got,” Stevens told supporters at her campaign headquarters just before 1 am.
In remarks at his headquarters soon after, El-Sayed said he wished he was declaring victory, adding: “There is so much more that unites us than divides us. And so, to all of our supporters here tonight, watching on TV: Tomorrow we begin to mend fences.”
It was the most closely watched race — and one of multiple progressive vs. moderate contests — on Tuesday’s slate of primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington state
Voters set the matchups in the governor’s races in Michigan and Kansas. They also chose their nominees in key congressional races in Virginia. And an incumbent Democrat held off a democratic socialist former congresswoman vying to win back her old seat in Missouri.
Here are early takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries:
A progressive’s comeback bid falls short in Missouri
Progressives were unable to score a win in St. Louis, where moderate Rep. Wesley Bell easily fended off former Rep. Cori Bush, a democratic socialist and one-time member of the “Squad,” in a rematch.
This race, in a district where Black voters make up about half of the electorate, carried plenty of its own hallmarks beyond their ideological divide.
The two had faced off before: Bush defeated a Democratic incumbent in 2020, only to lose the seat in another primary four years later to Bell. And while the two have much different styles — Bush is a progressive brawler; Bell casts himself as a consensus-building problem solver — Bell doesn’t have the same long tenure in Washington that former Rep. Lacy Clay did when Bush ended his 20-year stint in the House in 2020.
There was also no generational-change factor in the race: Bush is 50 and Bell is 51.
Michigan Dems nominate a democratic socialist in a top-targeted race
At least one key November race in Michigan this November will feature a left-wing candidate allied with Bernie Sanders.
Democratic socialist and climate activist William Lawrence won a three-way primary in Michigan’s 7th District, after two more establishment-oriented candidates — former US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink and Navy SEAL veteran Matt Maasdam — split the rest of the vote.
Lawrence now advances to a place some in the Democratic establishment have worried he might cost them: in a top-targeted race against GOP Rep. Tom Barrett.
Lawrence’s campaign was heavily criticized by the Congressional Black Caucus and even House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, after the Huffington Post published Lawrence’s 2024 remarks saying that Black political leaders “defang the White left.”
The race sets up a rare test of a Sanders-backed, left-wing candidate in a swing race – similar to what El-Sayed would be in the Senate race.
A GOP effort to make ballot measures harder crashes and burns
Republicans keep responding to the success of left-wing ballot measures by asking voters to pass ballot measures that would make ballot measures more difficult.
The problem? Voters keep rejecting these gambits. And Tuesday brought a big rejection — a spectacular one, in fact.
Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly rejected Amendment 4. This was a GOP-led effort to require ballot measures proposed by voters to get a majority of every congressional district in the state. That would greatly increase the threshold for passing such measures, which currently only require a majority of the statewide vote, instead allowing heavily GOP districts to effectively veto them.
As of late Tuesday night, the amendment was receiving just 20% of the vote.
The margin was bigger than usual, but the outcome was familiar. Ohio voters in 2023 rejected by double-digits a GOP effort to raise the threshold for ballot measures to 60%. Similar efforts also failed by huge margins in Arkansas and South Dakota. South Dakota also rejected raising it to 55% back in 2018.
The one recent exception? Arizona, whose voters in 2022 narrowly passed a measure requiring a 60% threshold, but only for raising taxes.
Republicans also failed Tuesday on another ballot measure push, with Kansas voters rejecting an effort to make state Supreme Court justices popularly elected. (As it stands, they are appointed by the governor, and Kansas has elected plenty of Democratic governors despite being a red state.) The move was aimed at trying to overturn a 2019 ruling on abortion rights.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s pick loses in race to replace her
Michigan wasn’t the only place where Democrats were wondering whether they would get the right nominee.
That was also true of the Kansas governor’s race, where state Sen. Cindy Holscher defeated state Sen. Ethan Corson.
Corson had been endorsed by moderate term-limited Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly as well as by former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and other establishment figures. Holscher, while having something of a moderate record, ran with a more combative, populist style while promising to take Republicans head-on.
While Kansas is a red state, it has elected a number of Democratic governors over the years. Holscher now faces state Senate President Ty Masterson, who easily won the GOP primary with Trump’s endorsement.
The other gubernatorial primaries Tuesday night were in Michigan, and they turned out about as expected. Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson sailed to victory and will face Trump-endorsed GOP Rep. John James. James defeated businessman and former long-shot presidential candidate Perry Johnson.
Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited.
Could Democrats have a chance in Kansas Senate contest?
Adam Hamilton, a United Methodist megachurch pastor who has proven to be a prolific fundraiser, won the Democratic nod to take on Republican Sen. Roger Marshall — giving the party a long-shot chance at picking up a seat as they look for paths to the net four-seat gain they need to win a Senate majority in November.
He’s vying to be the latest example of Kansas occasionally showing a willingness to buck its deep-red reputation in recent years. Kelly twice beat Republicans in the red state during her two runs for governor in 2018 and 2022. And in the immediate wake of the US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in 2022 overwhelmingly rejected an amendment that said there was no constitutional right to abortion in the state.
Hamilton raised more than $3.6 million in the first two months of his campaign and closed the fundraising period that ended June 30 with $2.6 million in the bank. He bested 10 other Democrats on Tuesday, while Marshall also overcame nominal opposition.
The toughest task for Hamilton could be separating himself from a Democratic Party that is already unpopular in Kansas and rapidly shifting leftward.
To win, he could need huge numbers of voters to split their tickets between the Senate contest and a race for governor that represents potentially the GOP’s best opportunity to pick up a state executive seat in November.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday, Hamilton said he doesn’t know that democratic socialists who have knocked off several Democratic incumbents this year have “a momentum across the country.” Kansans, he said, are “centrist people.”
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