Yesterday's Election Results

Mostly uninteresting run-of-the-mill candidates who will make no difference to anyone won their primaries, but not entirely. Let's start with some good news in North Carolina. Durham County has just over 310,000 people, one of North Carolina's most populous. Last night the county elected the first African-American in its history, Clarence Birkhead, who beat the racist incumbent , Mike Andrews. And he beat him in a landslide-- 69-31%. Birkhead vowed to not cooperate with ICE and to get guns off the streets. There were no statewide races. There were two Republican primaries which saw far right lunatics challenging more mainstream conservatives. In the 3rd district Walter Jones, Congress' most independent-minded Republican, fended off two opponents, Phil Law and Scott Dacey.

• Walter Jones- 20,862 (43.0%)
• Phil Law- 14,266 (29.4%)
• Scott Dacey- 13,380 (27.6%)

The other contest was in the 9th district, from south Charlotte, along the southern border of the state up into Fayetteville. This was another 3-way contest but this time the extremist defeated the incumbent.

• Mark Harris- 17,223 (48.5%)
• Robert Pittenger- 16,409 (46.2%)
• Clarence Goins- 1,862 (5.2%)

The DCCC has a worthless right-wing Blue Dog, Dan McCready, who won his primary against a low-profile Berniecrat, Christian Cano. As of the April 18 FEC reporting deadline, McCready had raised the most money of anyone from either party-- $1,905,269. He also has a $1,220,648 warchest now to face Harris, who has just $70,804 left. Interestingly, McCready's 37,823 votes were more than Pittenger, Harris and Goins combined!

Sadly Berniecrat Jenny Marshall, the only North Carolina candidate endorsed by Blue America lost out to a garden variety Democrat DD Adams 15,428 (54.4%) to 12,919 (45.6%). DD spent $127,795 to Jenny's $105,874. In Indiana the one Blue America candidate in that state also suffered a defeat. That was the 9th district, where a run-of-the-mill Democrat from Inside-the-Beltway beat Dan Canon 66.4% to 30.7%, having outraised him $585,706 to $433,401.

The big race in Indiana, though, was the Republican Senate primary. Two congressmen, both right-wing nuts, Todd Rokita, the more right-wing of the two, and Luke Messer, gave up their seats to run for the nomination. They both lost out to someone even more extreme-- a wealthy Trumpist businessman Mike Braun.

• Mike Braun- 207,977 (41.2%)
• Todd Rokita- 151,306 (30.0%)
• Luke Messer- 145,853 (28.9%)

Mike Pence's older brother, Greg, won the nomination in a 5-way race in a landslide (65.3%). There were no other surprises on either side of the aisle.

West Virginia was far more interesting. In the first Congressional District, the northern third of the state, 3 Democrats lined up to run against Republican incumbent David McKinley and progressive Kendra Fershee won.

• Kendra Fershee- 23,030 (47.3%)
• Ralph Baxter- 18,542 (38.1%)
• Tom Payne- 7,131 (14.6%)

And in the 3rd district, the southern third of the state, state Senator Richard Ojeda, had a huge victory, not just beating beating his 3 Democratic opponents combined, but beating the 4 top-running Republicans combined as well! Ojeda was the guy who supported Bernie in the 2016 primary and then switched to Trump in the general. Now he feels Trump let his voters down.

• Richard Ojeda- 29,837 (52.0%)
• Shirley Love- 14,251 (24.9%)
• Paul Davis- 9,063 (15.8%)
• Janice Hagerman- 4,176 (7.3%)

The biggest news in West Virginia though was how badly Don Blankenship wound up doing after surging all week. It was probably the anti-Blankenship tweet from Trump Tuesday morning that did him him. Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, the McConnell-preferred candidate who came in first.

• Patrick Morrisey- 47,571 (34.9%)
• Evan Jenkins- 38,888 (29.3%)
• Don Blankenship- 27,153 (19.9%)

It doesn't auger well for November that despite a surprisingly strong primary from Paula Jean Swearengin, who took 30.3% of the Democratic vote, the incumbent, Joe Manchin took 111,589 votes basically the same number of votes as Morrisey, Jenkins and Blankenship did together (111,612)! And that's in a state where Trumpanzee beat Hillary 489,371 (68.5%) to 188,794 (26.4%)!

That leaves Ohio, whose Democratic Party passed away, unnoticed many years ago. There were no interesting results on the federal level or in any statewide races, except for a decision to stop partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts. The other interesting race was for a state legislative seat. Remember Rachel Crooks? She was one of the women Trump molested. No one ran against her in the primary so she will be in the November general election.

In the gubernatorial race, Richard Cordray beat Dennis Kucinich 423,264 (62.3%) to 155,694 (22.9%). On the Republican side Mike DeWine beat Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor 494,766 (59.8%) to 332,273 (40.2%). And the Republican who will face Sherrod Brown in November will he multimillionaire Jim Renacci, who beat Mike Gibbons 360,474 (47.4%) to 241,109 (31.7%). There was not a single congressional race worth noting-- and there isn't likely to be in November either.