Conway Leading in Race to Fill Devin Nunes’ Vacant Congressional Seat by Dustin Manduffie
June 7, 2022
Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — Republican Connie Conway was poised to win the race to replace Devin Nunes in representing California’s 22nd Congressional District as of late Tuesday evening.
Former California Assembly leader Connie Conway, a Republican, faced off against California Department of Water Resources operations manager Lourin Hubbard, a Democrat, in Tuesday’s special runoff election to determine who will finish out Devin Nunes’ congressional term.
As of 10:30 p.m. Pacific Time Tuesday, Conway led second-place candidate Hubbard by 8,399 votes, 57.6% to 42.4%, with 34.2% of precincts partially reporting.
Whomever replaces Nunes will only spend a few months in Congress because District 22 is disappearing on January 3, 2023, after being redrawn based on the 2020 census and absorbed into neighboring districts. Governor Gavin Newsom scheduled a special primary election for April 5 to fill Nunes’ vacant seat, but no candidate in that race received a majority of votes, setting the stage for the June 7 runoff.
California Primary Election Results: Alex Padilla, Mark Meuser Advance in Both U.S. Senate Races June 8, 2022
Introduction:
(KCRA 3) SACRAMENTO, Calif. — This year's primary elections is something of a political anomaly for one of California's U.S. Senate seats.
Voters will decide on who they want to serve the rest of the Senate seat left vacant by Kamala Harris when she became vice president. Alex Padilla, who was appointed to temporarily fill the position, will advance to the November election for the seat that expires Jan. 3, 2023.
Republican Mark Meuser will also advance to the special election and general election.
The same seat is also on the ballot, the second one being a full six-year term that begins after the partial term expires. Padilla will advance for this race as well.
Gov. Newsom Cruises to Easy Primary Victory, Will Face GOP's Dahle
June 8, 2022
Introduction:
(KCRA 3) SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom cruised to an easy victory in Tuesday’s primary barely one year after surviving a recall attempt, advancing to the November general election where he will be an overwhelming favorite to defeat a little-known Republican state senator.
Early returns Tuesday showed Newsom receiving just over 60% of the votes. He'll face second-place finisher Brian Dahle, a Republican state lawmaker and farmer from the sparsely populated northeast corner of the state. He had about 15% of the votes.
The Pa. Senate race recount is complete and the results show how accurate the vote count was
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Pennsylvania’s recount is over, and the results are clear: The vote count was accurate the first time. Mehmet Oz beat David McCormick by less than 1,000 votes in the Republican Senate primary — roughly the same margin as after the votes were first counted. The numbers budged ever so slightly in some counties. But they didn’t change in any significant way. The recount didn’t magically find new votes, or expose major errors or any fraud.
Elections officials and experts said the fact that the numbers barely shifted — in counties big and small, Democratic and Republican — should build public trust. “The recount tells us that we should absolutely have faith and confidence in our elections,” said Lisa Deeley, the Democratic chief of elections for Philadelphia, the state’s largest and bluest county. “Every election, I make sure that those numbers are right. So the recount’s really not going to change anything,” said Florence Kellett, the Republican elections director for Wyoming County, a red county that’s one of Pennsylvania’s smallest.
“People can be really confident that the results are the results, and they’re not going to change very much,” said Thad Hall, a registered independent who runs elections in Mercer County, a mid-sized Republican county. Oz gained one vote in Philly, none in Wyoming County, and two in Mercer. McCormick lost two votes in Philly and saw his numbers stay exactly the same in Wyoming and Mercer.
This was Pennsylvania’s second statewide recount in a row, but the two took place under very different circumstances. This one was a GOP primary, the other was a general election between Democrats and Republicans. This one was a high-profile U.S. Senate race, the other was a low-key judicial contest. Both recounts affirmed the initial results and underscored the accuracy of the system.
This Christian Nationalist Won 3.4 Percent of the Vote in Georgia’s GOP Gubernatorial Primary — and Refused to Concede by Alex Henderson
June 9, 2022
Entire article less photograph:
(Alternet) In Georgia’s 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary, one of the candidates was even more extreme than former Sen. David Perdue: Christian nationalist and far-right conspiracy theorist Kandiss Taylor, whose campaign theme was “Jesus, guns and babies.” Taylor campaigned on ridding Georgia’s government of Satanic influence, winning only 3.4 percent of the vote when the primary was held on May 24. But Taylor, in true MAGA fashion, is claiming that the election results are false — and in order to prove it, she is asking Georgia residents to sign notarized affidavits saying that they voted for her.
The primary was a humiliation for former President Donald Trump and a colossal victory for incumbent Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who defeated Perdue by 52 percent. Perdue, endorsed by Trump, campaigned on the Big Lie, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and slamming Kemp for acknowledging that now-President Joe Biden legitimately won in Georgia.
But after his loss, Perdue wasted no time congratulating Kemp — and he is now urging Georgia Republicans to vote for the conservative Georgia governor, who is competing with Democratic nominee Stacey Abrams in the general election. Kemp narrowly defeated Abrams in Georgia’s gubernatorial election of 2018.
For Some GOP Primary Losers, Total Loyalty to Donald Trump Wasn’t Enough
by Alex Henderson
June 9, 2022
Extract:
(Alternet) Former President Donald Trump continues to insist that he has the golden touch where GOP primaries are concerned, bragging that an endorsement from him is the key to victory.
…
Discussing some Republican primaries held on Tuesday, June 7, Petrizzo observes, “In New Jersey, MAGA-aligned candidates floundered in their quest to take down incumbent Republicans, who found victory without too many headaches from their fervently pro-Trump challengers. Nowhere was this more evident than in New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District, where former Right Side Broadcasting Network host Mike Crispi lost to long-time Republican Rep. Christopher Smith…. Elsewhere, in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District, Republican candidate and former State Sen. Thomas Kean, Jr. left both more-MAGA-loving candidates Phil Rizzo and former local Assemblyman Erik Peterson in the dust.”
…
“In California’s 40th Congressional District, which includes parts of Orange County, voters overwhelmingly supported Republican Rep. Young Kim (CA),” Petrizzo observes. “While the votes are still being counted, Kim is expected to pull out a win and clinch the run-off slot, which would knock off hardcore MAGA candidate Greg Raths. Raths campaign has been plagued by accusations that he made anti-Semitic comments.”
…
Mark Rozell, a dean of politics at George Mason University, discussed the June 3 primaries with the Beast, arguing, “There is a message here to many Republican incumbents to stop fearing being primaried, that the power of incumbency remains formidable, and that many voters in the party are looking past Trump now. Quite simply, the diminished ex-president doesn’t command the same power within the party that he did a few years ago.”
How Democrats Plan to Win Big in Georgia Again by Nicole Narea
June 10, 2022
Introduction:
(Vox) Grassroots groups have helped turn the once reliably red Georgia into a battleground over the course of the last two election cycles. Now, Democrats are hoping that they — and the multiracial coalition they assembled — can deliver another miracle in 2022.
Groups like the voter registration group New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter have worked for years, some for more than a decade, to mobilize the political power of Black voters and other voters of color in the state. Those minority voters make up 40 percent of the electorate, but have historically been neglected by both parties. Grassroots groups have long struggled to draw investment from funders and campaigns, many of whom believed their efforts to be in vain.
In 2018, their years of work paid off when Democrat Stacey Abrams ran for governor, rewriting Democrats’ playbook in a narrow loss powered largely by nonwhite voters. Organizing modeled on Abrams’s run helped Joe Biden flip the state by a less than 12,000 vote margin in 2020, a critical win in his path to the presidency. And it assisted long-shot Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in surprise victories in their US Senate races, handing the party narrow control of Congress.
With Abrams’s second campaign for governor against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, as well as Warnock’s reelection — and Democrats’ prospects of maintaining control of the Senate — in the balance, Democrats and their grassroots allies are hoping to once again organize their way to victory.
Inspired by the critical role that grassroots groups have played in turning Georgia purple, national Democrats launched what party officials say is their largest ever statewide coordinated campaign for a midterm election last month.
Palin, Begich, Gross and Peltola are early frontrunners in Alaska's special U.S. House primary
Source: Anchorage Daily News
Early results in Alaska’s 48-candidate special primary election for U.S. House Saturday showed Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich III taking the lead, followed by independent Al Gross. Democratic former state Rep. Mary Peltola, in her first statewide campaign, was in fourth.
Palin, in her first campaign since resigning as Alaska governor in 2009, was the clear leader with 30%. Begich, a businessman and investor who launched his campaign before the March death of longtime Alaska U.S. Rep. Don Young — which prompted Saturday’s special election — was in second with 19%.
Gross, an orthopedic surgeon who ran unsuccessfully as an independent for U.S. Senate in 2020, with the Democratic Party’s nomination, was in third with 12%.
Peltola, a former state representative from the Southwest Alaska rural hub of Bethel who’s on leave from her job in fisheries management, was in fourth with 7%. The top four candidates from the special primary will advance to an August special general election, which will be Alaska’s first using ranked choice voting.
weatheriscool wrote: ↑Sun Jun 12, 2022 6:23 pm
Palin, Begich, Gross and Peltola are early frontrunners in Alaska's special U.S. House primary
Source: Anchorage Daily News
Bass pulls ahead of Caruso in latest vote count for L.A. mayor
Source: Los Angeles Times
Mail-in votes are helping Rep. Karen Bass pull ahead of developer Rick Caruso in the primary election for Los Angeles mayor.
Bass leads Caruso, 41% to 38%, respectively, according to results released Tuesday by the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk.
Election officials continue to count mail-in ballots, and the final tally won't be known for days or weeks. The next update from the county is expected Friday.
Both candidates are assured of a spot in the Nov. 8 run-off because they are the top-two vote-getters in the field.
N.M. Supreme Court intervenes after GOP commission refuses to certify primary results by Rebecca Shabad and Zoë Richards
June 15, 2022
Introduction:
(NBC) WASHINGTON — New Mexico's Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered a GOP county commission to certify primary election results after the panel refused to do so, citing concerns with voting machines.
Chief Justice C. Shannon Bacon issued an order compelling the Otero County Commission to certify the results of its June 7 election by Friday.
The order came a day after New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, said the GOP-controlled commission was "appeasing unfounded conspiracy theories and potentially nullifying the votes of every Otero County voter who participated in the primary."
In a 19-page filing, Toulouse Oliver had asked that the state Supreme Court order the county commission to certify primary election results in Otero County, whose southern line is near the U.S.-Mexico border.
"At the meeting they identified no deficiency in the election results, but rather made unsubstantiated claims about the voting systems in use throughout the state," Toulouse Oliver wrote.
caltrek's comment: Ok, these guys need to either lead (certify the results) follow (certify the results) or get out of the way. This “well we can’t certify because we are not absolutely sure there was positively no fraud involved,” in the absent of actual evidence of fraud, is so much bovine excrement. It is clearly calculated to bring us down the road to fascism. Let us hope the ruling of the judge stands and is implemented.
As Late Mail-in Ballots are Tallied, LA’s Election Results Skew to the Left by Hillel Aron
June 17, 2022
Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — As the late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots are counted, Los Angeles’s primary election, held last Tuesday, is looking more and more like a progressive victory.
According to the results of the latest batch of votes tallied by the county clerk and announced on Friday, Congresswoman Karen Bass leads mall developer Rick Caruso by 40,000 votes in the race to become the city’s next mayor. The result is somewhat academic, since the two will face each other in the November runoff. But whereas Caruso woke up Wednesday morning with a robust-looking 5% lead, he now trails Bass by 6.5 percentage points (Bass has 42.9%, while Caruso has 36.3%) — a deficit which appears likely to grow when the rest of the ballots are counted — showing that he has much ground to make up in the next five months.
Further Extract:
In other races, the progressive wave looks even more pronounced. Pakistani-born Faisal Gill is running for city attorney on a platform of police and criminal justice reform. After Friday’s update, Gill holds a four-point lead over his next two closest rivals, Marina Torres and Hydee Feldstein Soto. Torres leads Soto by just 173 votes in the race for second place and a spot in the November runoff.
Kenneth Meija, a former Green Party member, holds a commanding 19-point lead over City Council Paul Koretz in the race for city controller.
Perhaps most surprisingly, two incumbent city councilman are in danger of losing their seats to candidates who were endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America’s LA chapter, both of whom have proposed slashing the LAPD’s budget to pay for housing and social services.
caltrek wrote: ↑Thu Jun 16, 2022 11:38 pm N.M. Supreme Court intervenes after GOP commission refuses to certify primary results by Rebecca Shabad and Zoë Richards
June 15, 2022
New Mexico County Certifies Primary Election Per State Supreme Court Order by Amanda Pampuro
June 17, 2022
Introduction:
(Courthouse News) (CN) — Four days after voting against certifying its 2022 primary election results, a southern New Mexico county’s election officials voted two to one to certify the election within the state supreme court’s Friday deadline.
Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin cast the Otero County Canvassing Board’s lone dissenting vote, citing vague concerns that the county’s Dominion voting machines were insecure. In addition to repeating unsubstantiated claims of 2020 election fraud putting the wrong president in the White House, Griffin was found guilty of entering a restricted area during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Griffin telecommuted to the meeting from Washington D.C., where he was sentenced to 14 days in jail and fined $3,000 for the charges.
During Friday’s emergency meeting, Griffin reiterated that he had wanted to inspect the voting machines for a modem and to hand-count the ballots.
“I am relieved that the Otero County Commission finally did the right thing and followed their duty under New Mexico law to certify the free and fair results of the 2022 primary election,” said Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver in a statement.
Republicans flip a Democratic-held House seat in South Texas, at least for now.
Source: NY Times
A U.S. House district in South Texas will send a Republican to Congress for the first time in its 10-year history.
Mayra Flores, a Republican and respiratory-care health aide, scored a significant victory in a special election on Tuesday for the party, which has been trying to capitalize on its successes in 2020 in the Democratic stronghold of the Rio Grande Valley. She will be the first Latina Republican from Texas in Congress.
Ms. Flores defeated three opponents in the special election to replace former Representative Filemon Vela, a Democrat who retired this year before the end of his term. She captured more than 50 percent of the vote in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, according to The Associated Press, and will avoid an expected runoff with Dan Sanchez, a Democrat and former commissioner in Cameron County.
Her win may only be temporary, however.
The special election was held to determine who would fill the remainder of Mr. Vela’s term until the end of this year. Voters in the general election in November will decide who will become the district’s permanent representative beginning in January. Representative Vicente Gonzalez, who currently represents a neighboring district, is the Democratic nominee for November, and is widely favored to win the race against Ms. Flores, who is also running to fill the seat permanently in November.
Bernie Sanders Backs US House Hopefuls Jonathan Jackson and Delia Ramirez by Jessica Corbett
June 18, 2022
Introduction:
(Common Dreams) U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders rallied with Jonathan Jackson and Delia Ramirez, a pair of progressive congressional candidates, in Chicago on Saturday.
"We desperately need more leaders in the Congress who understand the need to stand up and fight against the corporate greed that is running rampant in this country," said Sanders (I-Vt.), arguing that Jackson and Ramirez "are those leaders."
"I was proud to have Jonathan Jackson as my state co-chair in 2020 and I'm proud to endorse Jonathan Jackson for Illinois' 1st Congressional District," the two-time presidential candidate previously said in a statement. "He has long been a fighter for working people and he will be a champion for Medicare for All and a Green New Deal in the Congress."
Jackson—the son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson—is among several Democrats running in a district that has been represented for decades by retiring Democratic Congressman Bobby Rush.
If Desantis lost I'd guess he'd be free to run for president but it wouldn't be a very good sign that he could hold onto much of the country....As in get anyone from the democrats to vote for him let alone moderates.
