Tweet
Tonight is one of the biggest nights remaining on the primary calendar, with primaries in Colorado, Connecticut, and Minnesota. There also is a primary runoff in Georgia. All four states feature important contests at the top spots on their ballots.
Colorado
Senate – In the Colorado Senate race, we have competitive primaries in both parties. In both of these races, it appears that the insurgent candidate could defeat the candidate backed by the Washington establishment. On the Democratic side, it is Andrew Romanoff against appointed Senator Michael Bennet. Bennet has significantly out-raised and out-spent Romanoff. Bennet also has the support of the President and Washington establishment organizations such as the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Despite these disadvantages, Romanoff has managed recently to take a small lead according to some polls. (Another recent poll has him trailing slightly.) If Romanoff pulls off this challenge, it will be an impressive feat. This race should be extremely close and likely will be the source of much political navel-gazing tomorrow.
On the Republican side, it is a fight between Ken Buck and former Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton. Norton had the early lead in the race and much of the institutional backing, but has slipped steadily in the polls, allowing Buck to take a decent lead. Buck is the right-wing Tea Party-backed challenger to Norton, similar to Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky. He has been able to draw on a wealth of grassroots support. Interestingly, this primary fight pits Norton’s Chamber of Commerce endorsement against Buck’s Freedomworks endorsement. A recent SurveyUSA poll had Buck leading by nine percentage points, while a recent PPP has Norton leading by two.
Governor – The Republican primary for governor has turned into a nightmare for Republicans. Scott McInnis was doing well and seemed to be a good candidate until he was caught plagiarizing work that he had been paid several hundred thousand dollars to do. The race now has turned into a real fight between Scott McInnis and ultra conservative (and probably crazy) Dan Maes. Maes believes a decade-old Denver pro-bike plan might be part of a secret UN takeover plot. Add in Tom Tancredo’s decision to run on the American Constitution Party ticket, which could split the conservative vote, and it looks like Democrat John Hickenlooper might just be the luckiest Democrat this year.
Third District – The Republican primary is a fight between conservative Scott Tipton and ultra-conservative Robert McConnell. Tipton has raised nearly twice as much money as McConnell, but McConnell may benefit from an endorsement by Sarah Palin. The winner tonight takes on incumbent Democrat John Salazar.
Seventh District – Ryan Frazier has a huge 4:1 money advantage over Lang Sias in the GOP primary. The winner takes on incumbent Democrat Ed Perlmutter in this Democratic leaning district.
Connecticut
Governor – There are contested primaries in both parties for this open seat. On the Democratic side, Ned Lamont, best known for defeating Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Democratic primary for Senate, and Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy are extremely close. The latest poll has Lamont with a three-point lead.
On the Republican side, convention-endorsed Tom Foley has long been the front runner. Foley still has an eight point lead over Lieutenant Governor Mike Fedele in the latest Quinnipiac poll, but the poll found a large final surge for Fedele and a large number of undecided voters. If this trend continues, Fedele might pull off the win. Oz Griebel is also in the race, polling a strong third.
Senate – Polling indicates that self-financed millionaire Linda McMahon is set to win the Republican primary easily against Rob Simmons and Peter Schiff. Having a fortune to spend in a contested primary can pay off.
Fifth District – There is a three way GOP primary in the Connecticut 5th district featuring Mark Greenberg, Sam Caligiuri, and Justin Bernier. Caligiuri won the party’s endorsement at the state convention. The winner takes on incumbent Democrat Chris Murphy, who is probably favored to win in November.
Georgia Runoff
Governor – The big race here is the governor primary runoff between Republicans Karen Handel and former Representative Nathan Deal. In the first round, Handel had 34.1 percent of the votes and Deal had 22.9 percent. A recent poll by InsiderAdvantage had the race tied 46 percent-46 percent while a recent Mason-Dixon poll found Handel leading 47 percent to Deal 42 percent. Primary runoffs tend to very low turnout elections, making them very difficult to poll accurately.
Seventh District – In this deep red district, there is a runoff between Republicans Rob Woodall and Jody Hice. Woodall recieved 36.3 percent of the votes in the first round while Hice came in second with 26.3 percent. The winner tonight is almost assured to go on to win in the general election.
Ninth District – The great repeated battle between Republicans Tom Graves and Lee Hawkins will probably come to an end tonight. When Nathan Deal resigned to run for governor, he created a special election soon followed by the official primary. Tonight is the fourth time these two have been in an election against each other in only a few months. Incumbent Graves is the huge favorite. He received 49.5 percent in the first round and Hawkins got only 26.7 percent.
Twelfth District – The winner of this GOP runoff with go on to face incumbent Democrat John Barrow. Ray McKinney took 42.6 percent in the first round compared to Carl Smith who got 27.9 percent.
Minnesota
Governor – Tim Pawlenty’s retirement has created potential opportunity for for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. In the DFL primary, former US Senator Mark Dayton seems to have steadily increased his lead and is now the clear favorite. The latest SurveyUSA poll has him with 43 percent compared to Margaret Kelliher at 27 percent and Matt Entenza at 22 percent.
11 Comments
Right now, any one of the DFL candidates could beat Tom Emmer. My fear is that one or more of the primary losers will refuse to support the winner.
Heh. MSNBC headline: Obama tries to snap losing streak in hopes that Bennet can hold off Romanoff.
The TradMed is about as clueless as Robert Gibbs
Looks like nobody really believes the line that MN Forward is a truly bipartisan outfit as opposed to a media shop for Tom Emmer. Ever since the Target phase of his months-long dorkapalooza tour, corporate donations have all but dried up. Now that Emmer’s walking kryptonite, so is MN Forward, and no sane CEO wants to risk getting Emmer cooties by donating to that “bipartisan” group.
The republicans knew Emmer was going to have to talk at some point didn’t they?
Not to count un-hatched chickens or anything, but this guy does seem to good to be true.
The only one who may do that is Kelliher, since she’s the offical nominee. And she seems really invested in winning, all of her debate performances seemed to overemphasize her personal desire.
But I don’t think it will happen. I’ve been pleasantly amazed at how focused all three DFL candidates were on ripping on Emmer instead of each other. There were some legitimate policy flare-ups, but none of the crash & burn negativity we’ve sadly come to expect. And there’s also the hard lesson of Franken, who suffered in large part from bitter DFLers (like Betty McCollum) who weren’t willing to support him after the primary.
And HEY, I got to vote for Tarryl Clark today! I like her chances of beating Bachmann.
I’m not proud of the fact that my State could well be sending the wife of the founder of the WWE to the Senate. Her campaign commercials show her kicking some guy in the crotch repeatedly and that’s what’s contributing to her lead. It’s insanity and doesn’t speak well for us.
I don’t need the Senate to become any more of a circus than it already is and sending her is not going to improve anything.
The CEOs might run from him, but the Target flagship has already been infected. I’m running out of places to shop, but I do have to enjoy the irony that the Target Corp was formerly the family business of a Minnesota royal family named Dayton and Mark Dayton still retains most of his wealth from that association.
I’m on pins and needles about CO Dem Primary – I’m just itching for Bennet to lose!
I’ll never shop at that Macy’s. Very poor (minnesota) taste to remove that Dayton’s sign from the store. Then the new Macy’s guy tries to tell all us rubes how to run Hennepin avenue. GTFO. Plus, Macy’s is full of crap ‘fashion’ from NY or whatever. You could buy a $25.00 Calvin Klein merino wool socks at Dayton’s. No luxury wool socks at a Macy’s in Minnesota? Hell with it.
I loved Daytons.
That would be awesome, but if you’re from the area you know the folk. She continues to get support from the very conservative, religious factions of the region–flying completely in the face of any rational thought or logic. Those are the folks who persist in clinging to guns and religion, and they don’t actually care who says so as long as they have a sheet-bat crazy like Bachmann spouting things they like to hear. It’s still very close, but throwing a few dollars Clark’s way can’t hurt.
MN-CD6 is huge, the crazy fundies are only a part of it. There’s a lot of conservatism, but it’s more run-of-the-mill. Bachmann may have gone too far, and since Tarryl Clark is actually from the most conservative region of the district she’s got a good chance of nullifying some of Bachmann’s support.