Last Night's Primaries-- Justin Amash Kicks Boehner's Ass

I knew it was coming but I'll still amazed it came. The teabaggers couldn't even save one of their incumbents, Kerry Bentivolio in the suburbs west and northwest of Detroit in Oakland and Wayne counties. Boehner's Chamber of Commerce wing of the party recognized he was weak and they moved in for the kill. But what was so startling was that the Republicans of the district picked this monstrosity to replace him. Watch that video up top made by some Bentivolio supporters. This guy Dave Trott's going to be the worst piece of crap in the whole Congress. And he nearly beat Bentivolio two to one-- 40,421 (66%) to 20,572 (34%). Trott wrote himself a check for $2,423,402, collected another $921,196 from big donors and went up against Bentivolio's relatively puny $570,022.

MI-11 is a winnable district too. Even at R+4, Obama won it narrowly in 2008 and lost it narrowly to native son Mitt Romney in 2012. But Israel recruited some ex-CIA spook, Bobb McKenzie, who's not going to beat anyone. He barely even won the primary last night against an Indian-American urologist, Anil Kumar who's doesn't seem to be an actual Democrat as far as I could tell from chatting with him. The DCCC pushed for McKenzie, who raised $375,432 but urologists and the Asian community helped Kumar who took in $756,973. McKenzie won by a few hundred votes, 12,765 (34%) to 12,094 (32%) and with progressive radio host Nancy Skinner, who raised virtually no money at all, taking 9,960 votes (27%). Trott, the weakest Republican candidate in years, will probably annihilate McKenzie in November.

The other libertarian-oriented incumbent the Boehner wing tried really hard to destroy was Justin Amash in MI-03 (Kent, Calhoun, Barry, Ionia and Montcalm counties). Boehner got the Chamber of Commerce to run a wealthy self-funder, Brian Ellis, who wrote his campaign a check for $1,007,214, raised another $555,145 in big donations and outspent Amash $1,230,307 to $840,370. (Club for Growth spent $510,588 attacking Ellis while the Chamber of Commerce tried bolstering him with around $200,000.) In the end Amash beat him comfortably 35,309 (57%) to 26,498 (43%). And Boehner has another target on his back in the eyes of the Liberty Caucus. Amash was quoted saying "To Brian Ellis, you owe my family and this community an apology for a disgusting & despicable smear campaign… I ran for office to stop people like you." He also unleashed the rhetorical kracken on Ellis backer and Republican ex-Congressman Pete Hoekstra pretty harshly too: "I want to say to lobbyist Pete Hoekstra, you're a disgrace. I'm glad we could hand you one more loss before you fade into total obscurity and irrelevance." But he didn't call out Boehner (yet)-- unless you count this as an attack on Boehner: "My race should give confidence to people in Congress. There are a lot of people who are bullied by the leadership. They're bullied by lobbyists. I'm giving confidence to them that they can do the write thing. That they can stand up for regular people. That they can follow the Constitution."

Kansas had some Republican primaries but nothing or progressives to spend any time thinking about. As expected, Brownback won his primary (63%) but is neck and neck-- or losing-- for the November battle with moderate Democrat Paul Davis. Racist icon Kris Kobach was renominated for his Secretary of State job. beating Scott Morgan 65-35%.

In the Kansas House races Tim Huelskamp had a relatively close call against Alan LaPolice but won renomination 54-46%. And in KS-04 the congressional Koch employee, Mike Pompeo, beat back a challenge from the former congressman from the district, Todd Tiahrt, 63-37%. Probably time for Tiahrt, a radical right extremist, to start thinking about getting some honest work and to forget about this whole politics thing. As expected, confused old Pat Roberts was renominated by beating a serious challenge from right-wing superstar Milton Wolf, 48-41%.

Washington state's jungle primary is all mail-in-ballots. No real surprises that matter for progressives. Good news was that in WA-08, Jason Ritchie beat the other Democrat in the race 24,368 to 7,540. If Steve Israel allows the DCCC to help him now-- which isn't likely-- he might be able to beat Republican Dave Reichert in this R+1 district Obama won both times. I'm guessing Israel wants Ritchie to lose so the Republican wing of the Democratic Party can slip a conservative in in 2016 when Hillary's landslide coattails will make Reichert a sitting duck.

Nothing interesting happened in Missouri, but no one thought anything would. Next up: Saturday's big deal races in Hawaii, where two progressives-- Brian Schatz for Senate and Stanley Chang for the open House seat-- face up against corrupt conservatives from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party.