Minnesota! Wisconsin! Here are some of the results, and by all means, discuss! But let’s start with my home state of Connecticut:
Yeah, Larson lost. And/but Gov Ned Lamont easily beat back a progressive challenger, with the race being called minutes after the polls closed.
And there’s South Carolina:
It’ll be Ralph Norman vs the new Graham.
In MN, it’s Peggy Flanagan for US Senator, easily over Angie Craig. From Minnesota Star Tribune:
Six ways Minnesota’s primary upended political assumptions
Progressives gained momentum, Republican voters bucked party leaders and Trump and Minnesota set up a historic race for governor. Here are six takeaways from Tuesday’s primary.Tuesday’s election delivered a series of rebukes to the political establishment, undercutting the power of big outside spending, party endorsements and even a last-minute intervention from President Donald Trump. Democrats handed progressives a major statewide victory, while both parties nominated candidates who scrambled assumptions about what it takes to win a primary in the Trump era.
The results also set up a historic November election, guaranteeing Minnesota will elect its first woman governor.
Here are the six biggest takeaways from Tuesday’s results:
Minnesota gave progressives a statewide proof point
In Minnesota, Democratic voters were offered a fairly clear choice between competing theories of how to win elections. They chose the more progressive one.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s decisive U.S. Senate victory gives national progressives another major win in a Democratic primary and adds Minnesota to a growing list of places where voters have embraced the party’s left flank. Flanagan defeated Rep. Angie Craig despite Craig’s argument that her record of winning a competitive congressional district made her the safer bet in November. Flanagan campaigned on a more progressive vision for the party and argued for a more forceful response to Trump.
Running against Trump wins.
And in Wisconsin… well… POLITICO for a free link, and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
David Crowley pulls off stunning comeback victory over Francesca Hong
David Crowley pulled off a victory in Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor on Tuesday that was both a stunning upset and an unheard of comeback, defeating the field’s frontrunner with a Hail Mary effort in the final weeks of a race that was seen as a test of whether new democratic socialist victories in deep blue states could be replicated in Midwestern battlegrounds.
Crowley defeated Francesca Hong by less than half of a percentage point in an election outcome that none of the statewide polls predicted. In every survey, including one Crowley’s campaign paid for, Hong carried a double-digit lead in the race.
Look, if you are a pollster, stop underestimating seniors. Or Boomers. Or Uncs and Aunties. They/we pretty reliably vote. So model us in. Oh, and Gov. Tony Evers still has juice. His Crowley endorsement paid off.
Some pre-election background:
New York Times:
Will the Left Keep Winning in the Midwest? What to Watch in Tuesday’s Primaries.
The left and the middle continue to battle in Democratic primaries for governor in Wisconsin and Senate in Minnesota. In South Carolina, all eyes are on Darline Graham.The front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor of Wisconsin is State Representative Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist. While her victory on Tuesday is assured by most accounts, where she does well — or less well — could reveal clues as to whether the socialist brand can work in a general election in a purple state. More moderate Democrats worry that candidates with “socialist” by their names would struggle to win in America’s heartland, risking the party’s chance at a governorship in November.
Dan Shafer/The Recombobulation Area:
Wisconsin’s Democratic primary is not your typical proxy fight
Francesca Hong is not a typical democratic socialist candidate and David Crowley is not a typical “establishment” candidate. That’s what makes Wisconsin’s Democratic primary so fascinating.Take your proxy fights elsewhere, national media. They don’t quite fit here.
Hong is not a typical candidate, and she has run an unconventional campaign. There are echoes of progressive campaigns past, but her campaign is truly something distinct. It’s been about her relentless ground game and service-industry hustle. It’s been about seizing on an issue that resonates — opposition to AI data centers — ahead of the rest of the field. It’s been about owning the online conversation and dominating with younger voters at a precise moment when generational change has arrived in the Democratic Party, whether the party likes it or not.
She has unapologetically outflanked every other candidate from the left, running as an unabashed democratic socialist, but did so in a way focused on the issues, not as a vehicle to Finally Elect A Progressive/Socialist. To be sure, there are echoes of progressive campaigns past — and the moments when the campaign has appeared to seek that socialist-media-rising-star perch have been where it has faltered most — but the nuance of this campaign reveals something distinct.
Kevin Robellard/HuffPost:
The Socialist Threatening A 15-Year-Long Political Comeback
The state party establishment fears Democrats are throwing away a once-in-a-generation chance at a trifecta.It’s culminating in 2026: In the words of Milwaukee political journalist Dan Shafer, this year’s election is the “first realistic chance for a Democratic trifecta — control of the Senate, Assembly, and the governorship — in a generation.” He goes on to call it “the big one.”
Despite an ultra-favorable political environment, the Democratic establishment in the state is now incredibly nervous about completing the comeback, which would enable them to expand healthcare, increase education funding and perhaps even rebuild the state’s labor movement.
POLITICO:
For months, the administration laid low on vaccines. On Monday, Trump went there.
Earlier this year, the White House tried to tamp down Kennedy’s appetite for vaccine overhauls.With Kennedy by his side in the Oval Office, the president signed an executive order laying out his administration’s “gold standard” vaccine recommendations, which calls for children to get fewer vaccines and reduce multi-vaccine dosing.
He linked vaccines to autism, saying he thought giving children fewer vaccines would have a “huge impact” on the rise in diagnoses, said the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine can be “lethal,” and likened the amount of childhood vaccinations to “the size of a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s body.”
“Bad things happen in too many cases,” Trump said.
Dozens of scientific studies have refuted a link between autism and vaccines.
Two people familiar with Trump’s effort, granted anonymity to discuss the genesis of the executive order, said Trump is fighting for the issue because it’s what he has long believed is right, irrespective of the strong public support for vaccines, even among Make America Healthy Again voters, and has been frustrated by a lack of progress.