Vince Fong, a California lawmaker and former aide to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, won a special election Tuesday to fill his seat — representing the most conservative district in the deep blue state. Mr. Fong succeeds Mr. McCarthy, nearly five months after he resigned from Congress after being ousted as president.
Mr. Fong will now serve until his term expires in January and will run again in the fall against his Republican opponent — Mike Boudreaux, the longtime Tulare County sheriff — to seek a full term.
Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon also held primaries on Tuesday, with the presidential primaries in Kentucky and Oregon producing notable protest votes against President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump.
Here are some takeaways.
Biden faced significant opposition in the Kentucky primary, and a protest vote against him in Oregon failed.
Nearly 30 percent of voters in Kentucky’s Democratic primary supported an option that was not Mr. Biden, a notable underperformance by the president among Democrats in the state. Protest votes against Mr. Biden there were almost twice as high as against Mr. Trump, who won about 85 percent of the vote in the Republican primary. Voter turnout in the Democratic primary also fell to around 184,000 votes, compared to more than 537,000 in 2020.
In Oregon, a write-in campaign to protest Mr. Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza fared significantly worse: Less than 5 percent of all votes in the Democratic primary went to write-in votes. In neighboring Washington state, the non-binding voting option received almost 10 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary at the end of March. Mr. Trump was unopposed in the Oregon Republican primary.
Fani T. Willis, the top prosecutor for Trump’s Georgia criminal case, won her primary in a landslide.
The Democratic primary for district attorney in Fulton County, Georgia, ended in a remarkable defeat. Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Mr. Trump and others over his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, edged out her opponent Christian Wise Smith, winning with 87 percent of the vote.
Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing Mr. Trump’s case in Georgia, also won re-election by a yawning margin: 83 percent of the vote. He and Ms. Willis were considered favorites in their respective races.
The result for Ms. Willis signaled confidence among Democrats in her performance after a romantic relationship with a lawyer she hired to lead the prosecution came to light in January. Mr. Trump’s defense attorneys said the relationship posed a serious conflict of interest and they had asked Judge McAfee to remove Ms. Willis from the case. The Georgia Court of Appeals will review Judge McAfee’s decision to allow her to remain in the case.
A progressive candidate in Oregon loses in a closely watched Democratic primary.
Jamie McLeod-Skinner, a progressive candidate for Oregon’s Fifth Congressional District, lost to Janelle Bynum in the Democratic primary, two years after she narrowly lost to a Republican opponent for the swing seat in 2022. Ms. Bynum, who endorsed Gov. Tina Kotek, faces Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who ran unopposed in the Republican primary, in one of the most closely watched House races this year.
Mike Schmidt, the progressive district attorney for Multnomah County, which includes Portland, trailed challenger Nathan Vasquez, a prosecutor in his own office.
Mr. Vasquez, who was previously registered as a Republican, blamed Mr. Schmidt for Portland’s recent problems with drugs and crime. Mr. Vasquez vowed to prosecute even minor crimes as murders, homelessness and overdose deaths rose during Mr. Schmidt’s time in office.
Mr. Schmidt, who previously campaigned on making low-level crime a lower priority in 2020, recently toughened his stance on drugs and shifted staff to prosecute more violent crimes in response to constituent concerns.
Source link
2024-05-22 13:29:39
www.nytimes.com
