June is a jumbo primary month, so we've once again brought Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer on this week's edition of The Downballot to preview all of the major races. There's the perennial loser (but one-time winner!) Danny Tarkanian's quest to oust a sitting GOP congressman in rural Nevada; Republican Rep. Mo Brooks' attempt to come back from the dead in the Alabama Senate runoff; two very different member-vs.-member House primaries in Illinois; and a whole heck of a lot more.

Of course, there were also primaries this week, so naturally co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recapped the biggies: two Republican congressmen in Mississippi who were forced into runoffs, a high-profile former Trump cabinet official who might lose a comeback bid, and a crushing defeat for a South Dakota ballot measure designed to make it harder for progressives to pass other ballot measures.

Please subscribe to The Downballot on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard:

Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir:

And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. The Downballot is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency, from Senate to city council. You can email us thedownballot@dailykos.com or find us on Twitter at @dkelections.

David Beard:

And please subscribe to The Downballot wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review, if you don't mind. But let's go ahead and jump into today's episode. What are we going to be covering?

David Nir:

It is primary season. June is a huge month for primaries. We had races in seven states on Tuesday night, so we are going to be recapping some of the most notable outcomes, including some true shockers on the Gulf Coast. And then we will be joined by Daily Kos Elections editor, Jeff Singer, to give us a preview on all of the many, many interesting races, including a whole bunch of crazy Republican primaries that we have on the docket for the rest of the month. Please stay with us. This is going to be a packed episode.

David Beard:

Great, let's get started.

David Nir:

We had a ton of primaries in seven different states on Tuesday night, including a few shocking results out of a state that often doesn't get a ton of attention on the national scene, and that was Mississippi. Beard, what the heck happened?

David Beard:

Well, Mississippi, as you said, is not a state that you think about a lot in general election, so most of its action is in primaries. But there wasn't really an expectation that there was going to be a ton of news out of Mississippi from Tuesday night, but in two different congressional primaries, a Republican incumbent was pushed into a runoff election, that's going to take place three weeks later, by challengers.

And so we'll start in Mississippi's 3rd district where incumbent representative Michael Guest was expected to just breeze through his primary but was forced into a runoff, didn't even take first place. He's sitting at 47% of the vote to his opponents, 47.5% of the vote. And his opponent is Navy veteran Michael Cassidy.

Now, Cassidy has attacked Guest for voting for a Jan. 6 commission, which of course, in this deep red Republican district, is just a terrible thing to have done according to the electorate. And Guest really has admitted that he ran a bit of a complacent campaign. He didn't think that this was going to be a serious campaign that he had to really go after Cassidy. And so we'll see if that changes in the intervening three weeks, if Guest is able to ramp up a really aggressive campaign, go after Cassidy and turn this around. Obviously it was very close. There was a third candidate that took a small portion of the vote, which is why we're going to a runoff, so there's every chance that Guest can turn this around, but you also wouldn't be surprised to see Cassidy keep his lead into the runoff and take Guest down.

David Nir:

One possible wrinkle that might wind up being to Guest's advantage is that, in runoffs in Mississippi in the past, we have seen the more establishment types or the more pragmatic types of Republicans who get pushed into these runoffs try to woo voters, in particular Black voters because they make up almost all of the Democrats in Mississippi, who don't otherwise have an election to worry about. And we saw this in particular with former Senator Thad Cochran in 2014. In fact, Cochran very narrowly trailed his challenger in 2014, Chris McDaniel, and then came back from the dead to win the runoff three weeks later, so we'll see if the incumbent here winds up trying a similar tactic.

David Beard:

Yeah, I really think that race is going to be an absolute tossup until that runoff happens. That may not be the case in the other district, in Mississippi's 4th district where incumbent Steven Palazzo only took 32% in his primary against two challengers, which is why he gets to go to a runoff and didn't just lose outright if there had just been a single challenger, which very well may have happened.

He's facing Jackson County sheriff Mike Ezell, who got 25% of the vote and who's also been endorsed already by the third-place candidate, Clay Wagner, who ended up with 22% of the vote narrowly behind Ezell. Palazzo has been known as an absentee Congressman ever since he was elected, and the most iconic issue of this was when he abruptly canceled a campaign forum. And his staff told folks that it was for meetings dealing with national security. He's a Congressman, these things happen. You have an important national security meeting; you have to go to it. The only issue was a few hours later, Palazzo posted a picture on Facebook of himself and his son at a restaurant in Mississippi, which doesn't really seem like the kind of important national security meeting you would normally cancel meetings with constituents for, but to each their own.

Now, Ezell's gone after Palazzo's absenteeism aggressively. He held an entire "I'll show up" tour of the district, and so what we've really seen here is a really a more classic challenge to an incumbent in a primary—not about MAGA, not about some sort of specific ideological issue, but about the basics of being a Congressman, showing up, doing the job. And Palazzo has not been doing that, and he's facing the consequences from people who just want a Congressman to have constituent services, be available, do the basics that they elected him to do.

David Nir:

In a way, this is a bit similar to Madison Cawthorn's loss. Yeah, we all enjoyed the headlines about coke and orgies among the GOP leadership, allegedly, but really, the hardest hitting attacks seemed to be that he just didn't care about his constituents, and that can be almost deadlier than these MAGA type attacks as evidenced by the fact that Palazzo didn't even get a third of the vote, though it's also worth noting he has been the subject of long running ethics investigation.

It's the sort of ethics investigation that you see most frequently, which is using campaign funds for personal purposes. The kind of guy who blows off constituents to go have dinner with his kid and then stupidly post a picture on Facebook seems like the kind of guy who probably is also misusing campaign funds. Anyway, after getting 32% in the first round, it seems like it would be shocking for him to somehow survive in the runoff, so Steven Palazzo may just be a dead man walking here.

David Beard:

And I really think you're right comparing him to Cawthorn because even in the Republican electorate, as much as they praise this extremism, this MAGA extremism that is increasingly terrifying, honestly, there is still a desire for just the basic competencies of being a Congressman that in some ways they care more about, so Palazzo has clearly failed at that and will probably soon be a former Congressman.

David Nir:

We're going to head across the country for what is a surprising result in Montana's first congressional district. Let me preface this by saying this is the first time in decades that Montana has had two congressional districts, so this is their brand new map, and the first district is an open seat in the western part of the state. It's the far less Trumpy of the two districts. It would've only gone for Donald Trump by about a 52-45 margin. And Trump backed one of his former cabinet secretaries, Ryan Zinke, who also represented the entire state in the House before he joined Trump's cabinet in 2017.

Zinke seemed like he had every reason to just walk over this race. He, like I said, already represented the entire state, so shouldn't be too much of a stretch to win a primary for half of it. Trump's backing. He was a prominent cabinet Secretary, albeit for many of the wrong reasons, but right now he is only leading former state Sen. Al Olszewski by a 41 to 40 margin, maybe around 1,000 votes. Now, most of the votes have been counted, but I don't think anyone really expected the race to be this close.

Now, Zinke gained a lot of notoriety in Trump's cabinet for many, many ethics investigations. In fact, it's not even clear just how many he was the target of. There's a Washington Post article that says it was 15, the ethics watchdog CREW says it was 18, but I'm going to guess that what probably really did him in is the constant reporting that he didn't actually seem to be spending that much time in Montana. Politico had a big piece a while back indicating that Zinke actually spends most of his time in Santa Barbara, California, which is little bit outside the district, and not just geographically, but also culturally. Zinke's wife, it's her hometown, and apparently was spending a lot of time there. She has a yacht there. Also not really kind of a Montana thing.

And that sort of disconnect from your home state, from your home district is another one of those much more traditional things that really can alienate voters from a candidate. We saw this sort of thing happen, for instance, with former Indiana Senator Dick Lugar in 2012 who got crushed in a primary as a result. And this really does relate to the sort of Palazzo and Cawthorn neglect of their districts. Of course, Zinke's not the incumbent now, he's trying to regain his incumbency, and he may well. This district, Democrats are hoping to compete here. Monica Tranel easily won her party's primary on Tuesday night, and someone with Zinke's flaws could create an opening despite the lean of this district, so it will be interesting to see what happens here next.

David Beard:

And we've seen, even in tough years for a party, individual races can break when there is an issue with a candidate, and the other party has a strong candidate, that can overcome a bad year. So it's certainly a race to keep an eye on to see if something like that develops going forward.

Another really interesting race that took place on Tuesday was in South Dakota where the legislature put a constitutional amendment on the ballot to basically try and sabotage a future initiative that's going to take place in November. The amendment known as Amendment C, that was voted on, on Tuesday, would've required a supermajority for any future ballot initiative that would require 10 million dollars of expenditures over five years or more. And that's seen as a target for the Medicaid amendment that's going to be on the ballot in November because that would've applied to that amendment and would've increased the percentage that the vote would need to pass from 50% to 60%.

The state legislature put it on the ballot here in June to try to make it so that would be more difficult to pass. But voters in South Dakota defeated it by a very wide margin, 67% to 33%. And we've seen even in a lot of states where Republican legislatures have gone after these direct democracy provisions, as Progressives have used them to pass things like minimum-wage increases or Medicaid expansion, voters still strongly support them when given a chance to say do you want to keep these direct democracy provisions as they are. Voters are often very supportive of them.

So it was really great news that the amendments failed. Medicaid will still be voted on in November and will just need a 50% majority to pass. One notable group that supported the amendment was the Koch Brothers Americans for Prosperity. They framed it as an anti-tax measure to make it more difficult to pass expenditures, but they've been fighting against Medicaid expansion in a number of states, so almost certainly this was being pushed due to the Medicaid expansion coming up. So that's definitely something we'll keep an eye in November as that vote takes place.

David Nir:

And lastly, we have to mention the biggest state of them all, California, which held its unusual top two primaries on Tuesday night. And we're going to hold off on discussing these races because there are many, many votes left to be counted and therefore many races that haven't been called. California recently transitioned to becoming an all vote-by-mail state. And as long as ballots are postmarked by primary day, they are still valid if they are received by election officials up to a week later. So it's going to be a bit of time before we know the final results in California, but there is an almost even bigger caveat that we want to caution every election observer about.

And that is because of the partisan breakdown in preferences for voting methods and timing, we are now seeing batches of votes come in that differ dramatically from the batch counted before and the batch counted after. And what's happened here is that Republican voters, thanks to Donald Trump's war on mail voting, simply don't want to vote early. They don't want to vote by mail. They don't want to put their ballots in the mail, even in an all-mail voting state like California.

What you can do, you can take your ballot and turn it into voting officials either before the election day or on election day. And the later you turn in your ballot, the later obviously it's going to be counted. So what you have are Democratic-leaning voters voting on the earlier side. These ballots get counted first. Then you have the Trump-leaning voters who turn in their votes on election day.

Those ballots get counted afterwards. We saw this play out on Tuesday night in almost every race on the docket. An hour after the polls closed, the results in most races were much more favorable for Democrats overall than they were the next day, 12 hours after that. And this is something to be mindful of because, for instance, early on in the night, we saw Congresswoman Katie Porter winning 58% of the vote in her primary. Twelve hours later, she was down to 51% of the vote, and California uses top two primaries. All candidates from all parties run together on a single ballot. And the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advance to the November general election. And the top two primary, therefore, can be something of a possible preview of how the vote is going to look in November. Typically, Democrats do better in November than in the primaries where they turn out at lower rates.

But if you are looking at the numbers and you think, "Oh, Katie Porter's at 58%. If she does that well in November, she'll be fine." Well, you have to wait till all the votes are counted because if she's a 51%, then that augurs a much, much closer race. So we will be keeping a very close watch on these ballots. And one further thing to note, historically speaking, it's been common for the latest-counted ballots to actually lean more liberal.

For whatever reason, more liberal voters tend to wait until the last minute to put their ballots in the mail. So it's possible that the remaining votes could actually swing things a bit back towards Democrats in the end, but as more and more votes are counted, it becomes harder and harder for any further batch of ballots to affect the total results.

So please, please keep this in mind as you watch the California results. Wait until the bitter end. I know it's frustrating. I know no one wants to wait, but please wait until we have all the votes tallied before we make any prognostications about what this means for November.

David Beard:

And as you said, the California primary results are one of the really interesting augurs. Obviously it's not a perfect translation from the June ballot to the November ballot, but it's in a really interesting look when you can total up the Democratic vote and the Republican vote in various districts, see how things turned out, see how things might change in November. But as you said, we want to see all of the votes before you start pulling from that to see what that might augur for November.

David Nir:

That wraps up our weekly hits, but please stay with us. After the break, we are going to be joined by Daily Kos Elections editor, Jeff Singer, to preview the many primaries and runoffs coming up in the rest of the month of June. Stay with us.

David Nir:

Well, we just recapped last night's key primaries, but we have many more states on the docket ahead in the month of June. And joining us to preview the key primaries in all of these states is Daily Kos Elections editor, Jeff Singer. Welcome back on the program, Jeff.

Jeff Singer:

Thank you, Nir. It's great to be back.

David Nir:

So starting on Tuesday, we have primaries in another four states: Nevada, South Carolina, North Dakota, and Maine, but we want to start out west. Tell us what's going on with the Nevada Senate race, because this is one of the key seats that Democrats have to defend in November in order to have any shot at preserving their majority.

Jeff Singer:

Correct. Catherine Cortez Masto is the Democratic Senator. She won a close race in 2016. This is going to be another very expensive, probably very close contest. From the beginning, the front runner has looked like Adam Laxalt. He's the former attorney general. He ran for governor in 2018, lost a close race to Democrat Steve Sisolak. Laxalt has Donald Trump's endorsement. He has the endorsement of the Club for Growth, which spends plenty of money for its candidates. He's long looked like the front runner, but there's a bit of a snag.

Army veteran Sam Brown has raised a surprisingly large amount of money, and he's focusing on portraying himself as an outsider while Laxalt is the insider. And Brown has actually tried to out-Big Lie Laxalt. Laxalt in 2020 sued to try to overturn Biden's victory in Nevada. Brown's going after Laxalt, not for doing that, but for not doing it successfully. Brown's faulted him for just not doing a very good job stealing the election. So that's the type of primary we have here. Every poll we've seen still shows Laxalt ahead. It would be a surprise if he lost, but as we just saw in Mississippi, surprises happen.

David Nir:

That's really something that there is absolutely no satisfying the MAGA base, that even suing to overturn a valid election is simply not enough these days. And it really makes you wonder, will they only truly accept an actual stolen election? Is that the only thing that will satisfy them? And the answer is probably yes, but Singer you also mentioned Steve Sisolak, who was the candidate for governor that Laxalt lost to in 2018. And he is up for reelection as well.

Jeff Singer:

Correct. And there's a big Republican primary to take him on. The frontrunner looks like Clark County sheriff Joe Lombardo, who has Trump's endorsement. Lombardo's the top lawman in the county that contains Las Vegas, its suburbs, and really about 70% of the state of Nevada's population. Lombardo has some notable opposition. One familiar name is former Senator Dean Heller who lost a close 2018 reelection campaign to now Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen, who's up in 2024.

Heller's tried to revive his career by winning the governorship, but the polls and the fundraising show he's far behind. Another familiar name is North Las Vegas mayor John Lee, who's a former conservative Democratic state Senator who switched parties just before running for governor. He's also tried to out-MAGA the Trump-backed Lombardo, but we haven't seen many polls. But they've all shown Lombardo's ahead, so this is another one where we have a clear but maybe not secure favorite.

David Nir:

And now there is one House race in Nevada that we have to talk about because it involves one of our all-time favorite candidates. I want to be very clear when I use the word favorite. I mean, favorite losers to make fun of. So please catch us up on what's going on in Nevada's second district.

Jeff Singer:

So Nevada's 2nd district includes Reno, Sparks, Carson City, most of northern Nevada. There are four districts in Nevada. Three of them are based around the Las Vegas area. This is the fourth. This is a heavily Republican area. Republican Congressman Mark Amodei has been safe for a long time, but he faces a notable primary challenge from Douglas County Commissioner Danny Tarkanian.

Now, Tarkanian, he's a character. He has run unsuccessfully statewide or in the Vegas area six times, starting from 2004 until 2018. He's come close sometimes, he's lost badly sometimes, but he's kept on trucking. After his 2018 loss in a different congressional district, he decided to take his fortunes up to rural Douglas County, and he won a tight county commission race there. He seems to have decided, "Hey, people in northern Nevada like me. I'm going to go for the big prize." So he's challenging Mark Amodei for renomination.

And we could spend a whole podcast talking about Tarkanian, but the big thing to note is that for a long time, he was sort of a joke in Nevada politics because of how many times he'd ran and how he never won. But that sort of changed in 2020 when he did finally win. But Amodei and his allies are still going after how terrible a candidate he's long been, about how his track record is terrible, how he's an interloper. Tarkanian though is arguing Amodei is too liberal. He's portrayed him as an establishment figure. He went after him for blaming Trump for the January 6th attack, although Amodei didn't vote for impeachment or go beyond that. There's been no reliable polling here. Tarkanian's an outsider, but he has a lot of money. Amodei is getting some real backup from the House leadership. This one could be interesting. And if it's not and Tarkanian loses, well, that's another one for the book.

David Nir:

And if that name, Tarkanian, is familiar to you listeners, that's because Danny Tarkanian is the son of the late legendary UNLV coach, Jerry Tarkanian, who had great success as coach of the Running Rebs, a lot more than his son, who sometimes derisively in the press has been referred to as Little Tark.

Jeff Singer:

Amodei even did an ad where Amodei is wearing a University of Nevada-Reno shirt, which is the rival of UNLV.

David Nir:

That's some great trolling.

David Beard:

So let's take it over to the East Coast and South Carolina, where there are a couple of very competitive Republican primaries at the House level, where two incumbents are being challenged by Trump-backed challengers. So what's going on in South Carolina's first district?

Jeff Singer:

So this is a coastal seat that includes part of the Charleston area. Republican, Nancy Mace, won in a close 2020 general election against Democrat Joe Cunningham, who's running for governor right now. Mace was a Trump loyalist. She was part of his campaign in 2016, when the GOP establishment was still against him. But she made the mistake of criticizing him over the January 6th attacks. She got quiet after that, but that was enough.

And Trump is endorsing a interesting candidate, former state representative, Katie Arrington. She tried successfully to primary a different congressman here, the one and only former governor, Mark Sanford, who, if we talked about him, we'd have to devote an entire other podcast to. But she beat him in 2018 in the primary.

Joe Cunningham comes along, beats Katie Arrington. Mace beats Cunningham two years later. Mace is now arguing, "If you give the nomination to Arrington again, she'll lose this." That may not really be true, because the Republicans gerrymandered the seat to make it so that anyone, including Arrington, couldn't lose it. But it might still be competitive enough at 54 to 45, Trump, that maybe the Democratic nominee, Annie Andrews, she's a well-funded physician, could win. And Mace is counting on that argument. She's arguing, "Nominate Arrington, we're taking a huge risk." Arrington is going all in with Trump, on the other hand.

We've seen one poll from a pro-Mace organization. It showed Mace at 44 to 24, but that's still short of the majority she'd need to avoid a runoff two weeks later.

David Beard:

Now, the other race in South Carolina that we're going to cover involves one of the more surprising congressmen who voted for Donald Trump's impeachment from the Republican side, Tom Rice, who I don't think really anybody expected at the time when the lists were coming out to be one of the few Republicans to actually vote for Trump's impeachment. And of course, that has brought the heavy hand of MAGA world in against him in this race.

David Nir:

Yeah. In fact, I remember when that roll call came out, people wondered if Tom Rice had voted for impeachment by mistake. Sometimes people cast ballots the wrong way. But he quickly confirmed that no, he did in fact mean to impeach Donald Trump.

Jeff Singer:

Yeah, and it's brought him an even bigger world of pain than Mace's criticism has brought her. This is an even more conservative district, so the electability argument really doesn't work.

Rice's main opponent is Trump's guy, state Representative Russell Fry. There's a few other candidates running. Some of them have money. It's unlikely any of them are going to pull ahead of Fry, but it's possible they could keep Rice and Fry from taking the majority they'd need to avoid a runoff on June 28th.

Rice is arguing Fry is not the conservative he appears to be. Fry, though, ran this very weird attention-grabbing ad a little while ago, where he had this room full of villains, including the Joker, a pirate, Dolores Umbridge from Harry Potter, saying, "Well, Tom Rice, what are you doing here with our assembly of villains?" And the actor playing Rice said, "Well, I vote to impeach Trump," and they're all horrified, even Maleficent in that ad. So that's the kind of campaign he's running.

David Beard:

And it's such a strange ad because it aligns voting against Trump's impeachment with the villains. So the idea that the villains are horrified by Trump's impeachment, which is just I don't know which way we're trying to go around here to make this argument. It doesn't make any sense.

David Nir:

Right. Shouldn't the villains be cheering him on because he's one of the bad guys? He's so bad, he's even worse than the villains? It's a total, total mess. And yet, he could very well win.

So that covers South Carolina. The following week, we then head into an election night where four states are on the docket, including three that have runoffs. Virginia has its primaries, but we also have runoffs in Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas. Alabama is going to be hosting one of the most fun, in a perverse way, and unexpected and weird and rising from the dead, like one of those monsters in that ad, runoffs. Tell us about what's going on with the Senate race.

Jeff Singer:

Yeah, so on May 24th, Alabama had the first round of its Senate race to succeed retiring senator, Richard Shelby. Katie Britt, who's both a former Shelby chief of staff and the one-time head of the local Chamber of Commerce, took 45% of the vote in the Republican primary, a little below the majority she needed, but pretty good for such a crowded race.

The second-place candidate was a surprise. Congressman Mo Brooks. Brooks was Trump's guy, then Brooks started to do badly in the polls, continued to do badly with fundraising. In March, Trump just unendorsed him, something he almost never does. Just left Brooks for dead. But Brooks wasn't dead. He snagged 29% of the vote. Enough for second place, but still well behind Britt's 45%.

So now the question is can Brooks complete his comeback? Can he return completely from the dead and take the Republican Senate nomination, which in Alabama, almost always means you're going to win the November general election.

Brooks, though, needs a lot to go, right? He's tried to get back in Trump's good graces by campaigning, again, heavily on the Big Lie. He's outright calling for Trump to re-endorse him. So far, that hasn't happened, but you never know with Trump. But there's just a lot out of his control.

To begin with, Mike Durant, the army veteran who finished a close third, he initially said he was going to endorse Brooks. Then a few days later, he says, "I'm not going to endorse either of them. I don't like either of them." So that's a big block of votes that Brooks is going to have a harder time winning now.

Also, ominously, Brooks's allies at the Club for Growth, they cut some of their ad spending, which groups normally don't do unless they're feeling very, very good or very, very bad about what's about to happen. And the Club probably isn't being stingy because they feel like Brooks has this. So he's the underdog. He was the underdog before and lived to fight another day, but he really, really needs a miracle here.

David Beard:

Then finally, on June 28th, we have a very big primary day. We've got seven states that are holding some kind of election. We've got Colorado, Illinois, Oklahoma, Utah, all holding their primaries. We've got New York holding their primary for the races that didn't get delayed due to their court problems. And then we've got runoffs in Mississippi and South Carolina. So let's start with Illinois and the governor's race on the Republican side, where a ton of money has been put in.

Jeff Singer:

There's a crowded Republican field to take on Pritzker. The front-runner looks like Aurora mayor, Richard Irvin, who would be the state's first black governor. Irvin so far has received $50 million in support from Ken Griffin, who is Illinois' richest man. And because the state has almost no campaign finance laws, Griffin can just write him as many checks as he can afford, and it goes straight into Irvin's campaign. No super PACs needed. Just write him a check, Irvin gets the money.

Now, Democrats don't really want to go against Irvin, partially because he has a moderate reputation from his time as mayor, also because he has access to just so much money.

Democrats are trying a little chicanery here. They're trying to help get far right state senator, Darren Bailey, who, among other things, once sponsored a bill to try to throw Chicago out of the state of Illinois. Chicago's still there, so you know how well it went. They're trying to get him nominated. And Bailey does have some support from another big conservative mega donor, Dick Uihlein, but Uihlein's contributions, while normally a lot, pale in comparison to what Griffin's put down.

Now, when I say the Democrats are trying to help Bailey win, they're not outright running ads saying, "Vote for Bailey." What they're trying to do is run ads that say Darren Bailey is too conservative, while Richard Irvin isn't conservative enough. And the idea is that Republicans watching that will say, "Hey, I want the more conservative candidate. Screw you, Democrats."

This is a tried and true tactic that's been around for decades, but in 2012, Missouri Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, really wrote the book on this when she ran ads saying that the Republican that she really wanted to face, the one and only Todd Akin, was too conservative for Missouri. Voters nominated him a few weeks later, Akin did his legitimate rape comments and his campaign imploded from there. So every Democrat now wants to be like Claire McCaskill, and they want to pick their opponent. It's a tough tactic. It's hard to pull off, but Democrats are really going for it this time.

David Nir:

One of these days I really want to, well, maybe not meet, but maybe I want to read an article interviewing Republican voters who watch these ads from Democratic organizations that pretend to "attack" their candidate as too conservative or too anti-abortion or whatever, and then they decide, oh yeah, that's the guy for me. I really want to know how they feel about being played like that, or whether they even realize what's going on. But, Singer, we've seen some polls in the Illinois governor's primary that suggest that it's possible Democrats plan to boost Bailey is actually going to work.

Jeff Singer:

Yeah, we have. They've shown Irvin ahead, but not buy that much. But at the same time, Irvin has so much money and, unlike a lot of candidates, he has the money to inform voters, hey, Democrats really don't want me to be your nominee. Doesn't that say something?

David Beard:

And of course, whoever wins this, there's probably going to be a ton more money spent on the general election with Pritzker's funds and in either direction here. So look out for a lot of TV ads if you live in Illinois. Now, we've covered a ton of Republican primaries, but we do want to get to a Democratic primary. This one, between two incumbents who got thrown together, thanks to redistricting. What's going on in Illinois's 6th district?

Jeff Singer:

This pits two democratic House members against each other, Marie Newman, who represents about 41% of the population here in what's currently the 3rd congressional district, and Sean Casten, who represents just 23%. You'd think on paper, Newman would be the favorite because of that, but she has some problems. She's facing an ethics charge that she sought to keep a potential primary opponent out of the race in 2020 by offering him a job as her top aid if she won. That's really dogged her.

But she's not giving up. She ran an ad a few weeks ago where she told the audience, "I had an abortion at 19. I wasn't ready to have a family." And then she said, "Sean Casten has supported anti-abortion Republicans, like George Bush." Casten did vote for George H.W. Bush in 1992 when he was 20, but that was a long time ago. Casten hasn't really gone negative against Newman, but some of Casten's allies have. They've highlighted the ethics investigation to argue she shouldn't be their Congresswoman.

David Nir:

And so we have another member versus member primary in a totally different kind of district, and a totally different part of the state, that threw two Republicans together. And I'm talking, of course, about the 15th district, which seems to be another classic intra-GOP battle.

Jeff Singer:

Yep. This is sort of a battle between what used to be the Republican establishment and the new establishment, the Trump wing of the party. In one corner, we have Rodney Davis. He's not a moderate, but he's had to take some moderate votes at times, because his old district was really competitive turf. And he won reelection against some serious Democratic opponents, but that could dog him now.

The other corner is Mary Miller, who is a far-right favorite. Trump's in her corner. The Club for Growth is also for her. Miller is a freshman. In her very first week in office, she said, "Hitler was right on one thing. He said, whoever has the youth has the future." She backed away from those comments, but gives you an idea of what kind of person she is. And this is one where Rodney Davis has most of the money.

He has Kevin McCarthy and the House leadership behind him. He has an endorsement from the Illinois Farm Bureau, which has some weight in rural areas like this. But Miller might just be a better representative of what the Republican party is today.

Unlike in the 6th, this is not a seat where either candidate really has geographic advantage. Miller represents about 31% of the population and Davis is just behind with 28%. So a large plurality of people here don't have either one of them as their representative. And unlike Davis's current district, which has been very competitive turf for a while, this is a super red, rural Illinois district. Whoever wins this incumbent versus incumbent primary is going to win the general election, no question.

David Beard:

And then the last race we want to talk about on June 28th is the Oklahoma Senate primary. Now this is the primary for Jim Inhofe's seat, who is resigning at the end of the year, and so a special election is being held to replace him. So, who all is running in that primary on the Republican side?

Jeff Singer:

So this is a very packed race in a very red state. This is another one where you need to win a majority of the vote to avoid a runoff. That's very unlikely with so many candidates, so voters are probably be back in the polls on August 23rd. Inhofe is pulling for his former chief of staff, Luke Holland, but Holland's never run for office before. He's an unknown. Inhofe has run ads with his super PAC, where the Senator himself has made the pitch for Holland, but those might only be able to do so much.

There's several other candidates here, including some very familiar faces. One that we've all heard of, although maybe have forgotten, is Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General, and Trump's first head of the EPA, who resigned because of, well, one of the many, many scandals that have engulfed Trump administration officials. But Pruitt wants his comeback. He's running again.

Another big name is Congressman Markwayne Mullin, who represents a very red area in the eastern part of the state. Another candidate to watch is T. W. Shannon. He's a former speaker of the state House. He actually ran in 2014, the last time there was a special election for Oklahoma's other Senate seat. He lost by surprisingly wide margin to now-Senator James Lankford. There's also some other candidates, including state Senator Nathan Dahm, who is getting some support from Rand Paul's super PAC. But this is one where, barring a huge surprise, two candidates are going to face off in August 23rd.

David Nir:

And this was a strange election. Beard, you alluded to this a moment ago, where Inhofe made what is termed a "irrevocable pledge" to resign at the end of the year, but there's no enforcement mechanism. He could conceivably change his mind. That's not going to happen, but it could happen. It's a completely ridiculous situation. In fact, an attorney filed a lawsuit, still underway, challenging this whole system of sort of having preemptive special elections. But given that the race is already underway, it would be a real shock to see it derail, but you never know.

Well, that was just a small sampling of the many, many races on the docket this month. You should definitely subscribe to our newsletter as well, dailykos.com/morningdigest, for coverage of all of these races and many more every Tuesday night. We also liveblog all of the primaries. Jeff Singer, thank you so much for joining us and enlightening us about all of these fascinating races.

Jeff Singer:

Thank you. And as they used to say in Illinois, vote early, vote often.

David Beard:

That's all from us this week. Thanks to Jeff Singer for joining us. The Downballot comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts, and you can reach us by email at thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please like and subscribe to The Downballot, and leave us a five star rating and a review. Thanks to our producer, Cara Zelaya, and editor, Tim Einenkel. We'll be back next week with a new episode.