The nominations for president are already locked but there are still primaries happening today in five states, including Arizona, Florida, Ohio, Illinois and Kansas. We’ll include Decision Desk HQ widgets below where you can track all of the presidential results plus down-ballot races.
The big contest today is the GOP primary for the Senate in Ohio. There are three candidates vying for a chance to take on Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Mr. Trump’s preferred candidate, Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer from Cleveland, has repeatedly cast himself as an outsider while playing up his endorsements, including his backing from Ohio’s other senator, J.D. Vance. Frank LaRose, the Ohio secretary of state, has presented himself as a “battle-tested” candidate who has already won a statewide race. And Matt Dolan, a wealthy state senator, has occupied a more moderate lane to promote his support for “Trump policies” without explicitly endorsing Mr. Trump in the primary.
One of the issues that has come up in the race is immigration:
The candidates sparred across several debates over who was toughest on immigration, even though their platforms are fairly similar.
They all cast border control as a pressing concern, calling for heightened immigration enforcement and saying they would support finishing the border wall Mr. Trump promised and failed to complete. None expressed support for the bipartisan border deal in Congress that collapsed after Mr. Trump intervened.
That did not stop them from taking shots at one another. While Mr. LaRose and Mr. Moreno have both said they support deporting all undocumented immigrants, they exchanged attacks at a debate last month, highlighting past remarks that they said showed the other man was soft on that proposal.
In Florida, there is no Democratic Primary ballot for president because Biden was the only name the Florida Party submitted. Under Florida law, you can’t run an uncontested race. But there is a GOP primary, though again, the outcome is already settled. I guess you could make a parlor game out of how many votes DeSantis will get but he’s been out of the race for two months so I’m not sure what it would show.
There are some House races happening in the Illinois primary.
Let’s start with Illinois’s 12th Congressional District, in the southern part of the state. Mike Bost, a Republican and Marine Corps veteran, was first elected to the House in 2014. Democrats tried to tar him as “Meltdown Mike,” highlighting his angry outbursts in the State Legislature and warning, “He’d make Washington worse.”…
His primary opponent, Darren Bailey…Bailey is calling Bost “Amnesty Mike,” an insufficient apostle of Trump’s “America First” agenda. But Bost has Trump’s endorsement. And to make matters even more interesting, Bailey has been endorsed by Matt Gaetz, a high-profile Trump ally and firebrand, who has had heated run-ins with Bost…
Just up the road, in Illinois’s Fourth Congressional District, two Mexican American Democrats, Representative Jesús “Chuy” García and Alderman Raymond Lopez of Chicago, are squaring off in a primary that has revolved around immigration and the influx of migrants — many of them bused or flown into Chicago by Republican governors…
Lopez has pressed for the revocation of Chicago’s sanctuary city status and much tougher border security, positions that would have once been unthinkable in his progressive city. García, holding fast to the more traditional Democratic position, wants more work permits for migrants, the decriminalization of undocumented immigrants and a pathway to citizenship for those brought to the country as children.
Finally, there’s a contest in the 7th Congressional District between 82-year-old incumbent Danny Davis and two challengers, Chicago’s treasurer, Melissa Conyears-Ervin, and a community organizer named Kina Collins. The Democratic Party is behind Davis, possibly in part because suggesting an 82-year-old is too old for public office is not something Democrats can do this year.
Below are the promised Decision Desk HQ widgets which will allow you to keep up with these races. Let’s start with Ohio.
Florida – Remember, no Democratic presidential primary because the race was uncontested in Florida.
Illinois – Note the “change race” tab on the House results so you can navigate to the races mentioned above.
Arizona
Kansas