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| Jon Ossoff (D-GA) |
Two of the biggest races last night were in Georgia, as the Democrats attempt to pickup a Senate and House seat in the Peach State. The Democratic primary for Senate, after months of the race being relatively even, had shown a clear frontrunner: Jon Ossoff, who ran a very high-profile special election in 2017 that he ultimately lost (the most expensive race in House history), only to have his opponent Karen Handel (R) ultimately lose in the general election in 2018 to now-Rep. Lucy McBath (McBath & Handel will face off in a competitive rematch in November, continuing once again 2020 being the "Year of the Rematch"). Ossoff as of this morning had 48.6% of the vote (with roughly 200 precincts still left reporting), with Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson in second place-Georgia state law requires candidates to hit 50% of the vote or else they must have a runoff. This could be a problem for the Democrats, as Ossoff & Tomlinson's Republican opponent, incumbent-Sen. David Perdue, already has a significant cash advantage here, and a runoff is going to force the Democrats to spend more money.
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| Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-GA) |
This is the case in Georgia's 7th district, one of the best pickup opportunities for Democrats in the country, though the cash-on-hand advantage here is currently held by the Democrats. The Republican, Rich McCormick, an emergency room technician, advanced to the runoff despite a seemingly competitive field, but Carolyn Bourdeaux, a former budget director in the state legislature who nearly won this seat in 2018, wasn't able to avoid a runoff, advancing with State Rep. Brenda Lopez Romero. Most had assumed Bourdeaux's name recognition would be enough to carry her over the finish line (particularly since she nearly defeated an incumbent in 2018 & this year was an open seat); she'll now have to face off in a runoff where she doesn't have the advantage of a splintered field. This is a district that Donald Trump won by 6.3 points, a huge dip from the 22-points Mitt Romney won it by in 2012, but still a victory; however, Stacey Abrams won the district in 2018 by 1.4 points, meaning that it's clearly Democrat friendly and capable of voting that way if the stars align here. A runoff is something the DCCC and Bourdeaux were surely trying to avoid, though.
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| Rep. Susie Lee (D-NV) |
Last night two Democrats who won GOP-held seats in 2018 (seats that were won by Donald Trump in 2016) got their opponents. In South Carolina, Rep. Joe Cunningham will now face State Rep. Nancy Mace in the general election. Mace was heavily favored by establishment Republicans (including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy), so this is a big win for the GOP leader, as he avoided nominating Kathy Landing, who was endorsed by the House Freedom Caucus. Cunningham won this race in a tight 2-point contest in 2018, and will have his work cut out for him as it's probable that Donald Trump will win this seat again in 2020 (he won the district by 13-points), so Cunningham is going to need A) Joe Biden to have some strength here, particularly in driving up the districts more Democratic-friendly voters near Charleston and B) to get at least some people who are willing to cast a ballot for both him and Trump in an era where ticket-splitting is out-of-fashion.
The same may be said for Rep. Susie Lee of Nevada, which Donald Trump won by 1-point in 2020, though considering President Obama won this seat in 2016, it's not entirely clear that Lee will need any crossover votes to win a second term. Though votes are still being cast, it does appear that Lee will go into the ring with former WWE wrestler Dan Rodimer. This is likely what the Democrats were hoping for-Lee starts this race with a serious cash-on-hand advantage (she's raised almost $2 million more than Rodimer), and Rodimer comes with serious baggage, including a 2010 arrest for misdemeanor battery that his primary opponents had tried to use against him. Considering Biden could well win NV-3 if he is also winning the national election, Lee will be favored to retain this seat even though Trump won it four years ago.
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| Paula Jean Swearengin (D-WV) |
One of the more common refrains from the left, particularly in red and rural areas of the country, is that "if you nominate a true progressive, they'll be able to get non-voters out who are turned off by politics." This has repeatedly been proven untrue (just as kRuss Feingold & Deborah Ross in 2016), but that doesn't mean it isn't a maxim that is repeatedly professed. The Democrats got that chance last night when Paula Jean Swearengin, an environmental activist who ran an unsuccessful primary against Sen. Joe Manchin, won the nomination to take on Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R) in the Mountain State over former State Sen. Richard Ojeda (who, after a House loss in 2018, an idiotic presidential contest in 2019, and now a humiliating defeat to Swearengin, has gone from "rising star" to "frequent candidate" in the matter of two years). This race wasn't expected to be competitive in the first place, but the Democrats in the state are about to see what would have happened if they'd decided to dump the conservative Manchin in favor of a more progressive candidate.
It's worth remembering, because some people have forgotten, that we're currently in the middle of a global pandemic. As a result, you'd think that a primary election (particularly with both of the presidential primaries set) would be getting little attention, but you'd be wrong. Similar to Iowa last week, Georgia saw record turnout, particularly in terms of absentee voting (over 1 million people voted that way, compared to just 37,000 who did so in the 2016 primary). For those that did vote in person, though, they were met with long lines, sometimes as much as eight hours long in Georgia & Nevada, lack of polling sites due to Covid-19, and in Georgia there were new voting machines that malfunctioned, particularly in the mornings.
This is unacceptable, but it is a problem that's going to need to be addressed, and one that Republicans seem less urgently concerned about because the problems are exacerbated in areas with dense populations (which tend to vote Democratic). The most obvious solution to this, though, is likely absentee ballots-if polling judges don't feel safe coming in, it's going to be difficult to staff as many precincts. States, and voters, need to push hard for expansion of vote-by-mail, and the DNC/RNC is going to need to make absentee ballots a centerpiece of their GOTV strategies for upcoming primaries and the November election, or fear low turnout as a result of Election Day issues.
This also means that we are less likely to know the victors on Election Day, something the media needs to prepare for. It's worth noting that Jon Ossoff and Dan Rodimer are people whose ultimate victories are in doubt as of this writing-thousands of ballots still need to be counted as absentee ballots generally take longer to tabulate. This is going to be crucial for the media to underline for fear that certain politicians (read: Donald Trump) will try to claim elections fraud. It's entirely possible that swing states like Arizona or Pennsylvania, notoriously slow at counting ballots in the first place and even more so if most of the state is voting absentee like Georgia, Nevada, and Iowa saw the past week, won't know who won a close election until a week after Election Day. If the electoral college hinges on one of these two states (entirely possible), that could create chaos, particularly since absentee ballots tend to hue Democratic, so Republicans could see Trump go from slightly ahead to slightly behind, and try to influence their followers that the election was "stolen." Don't be too skeptical-Martha McSally went from being behind to ahead in a similar fashion in 2018, as did a number of California House Republicans. If the election is close (which polls don't indicate it is currently, but history states it likely will be), this is a legitimate concern.
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