Election denier wins, bad behavior dooms Cawthorn
WASHINGTON (AP) — In Pennsylvania governor’s race, a candidate who has spread lies about the 2020 vote count won the Republican nomination, putting an election denier within striking distance of running a presidential battleground state in 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In Pennsylvania governor’s race, a candidate who has spread lies about the 2020 vote count won the Republican nomination, putting an election denier within striking distance of running a presidential battleground state in 2024.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump’s support was enough to elevate his Senate candidate to victory in North Carolina on Tuesday, though his pick in Pennsylvania remained in a tough fight in that state’s Senate primary. And in Idaho, with incumbency on his side, the sitting governor weathered a Trump-backed primary challenge from his far-right lieutenant governor.
In a key congressional race, a Republican congressman’s bad behavior finally caught up with him.
Takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Kentucky, Idaho and Oregon:
TRUMP WINS SOME, LOSES SOME
The former president entered the primary season on a high after JD Vance, his endorsed candidate in Ohio’s hypercompetitive GOP Senate contest, shot from third to first. But Trump’s tally Tuesday night included wins, losses and a marquee race too early to call. Trump had shocked party faithful in North Carolina when he endorsed U.S. Rep. Ted Budd, a little-known congressman, last June for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Republican Richard Burr. But after a rocky start, Budd easily captured his party’s nomination, passing a crowded field of GOP rivals that included the state’s former governor, Pat McCrory. And in Pennsylvania’s GOP race for governor, Trump’s endorsed candidate, the far-right Doug Mastriano, easily won the nomination — though he was already well ahead in the polls when Trump weighed in just days before the primary.
His nod was widely seen as an effort to hedge his bets and guarantee a victory in the state in case his endorsed candidate for Senate, celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, loses his race. Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick were virtually tied early Wednesday, with more votes left to be counted.
In North Carolina, meanwhile, Rep. Madison Cawthorn lost his reelection bid Tuesday even after Trump urged voters to “give Madison a second chance!” Trump also whiffed when Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, his pick, failed to defeat Gov. Brad Little in that state’s primary. Trump is facing down another possible defeat in next week’s high-stakes governor’s primary in Georgia, where his candidate is trailing in both polls and fundraising. Trump has made election denial a key loyalty test in the Republican Party, and that may have kneecapped his party in Pennsylvania with the victory of Mastriano, a vocal election denier.
Mastriano backed baseless reviews of the election results in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Joe Biden won by nearly 100,000 votes. He organized buses to ferry Trump supporters to Washington for the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection. And he says that if he’s elected, he’ll ferret out fraud partly by making every single voter in the state reregister