In May, I provided my takeaways on the highest profile primaries of the month. If anything, June was an even busier month, featuring not only primaries but a handful of special elections that provided heartening results for both parties. We won’t be able to touch on all of them in this article (for a comprehensive overview of the state of the midterm elections in Nevada, check out our Politics Editor Lars Emerson’s series on what may be the most important swing state of the cycle), but after a few vacation induced delays, I’m back to discuss more embattled incumbents, intra-party strife, and read a little bit too much into every margin and percentage point. Keeping in mind that things could change a lot in the next four months to make a lot of my observations moot, here are my biggest takeaways of the past month.

Ethics investigations: still a liability

Remember last month when Henry Cueller, an incumbent congressman whose house was raided by the FBI, narrowly defeated left-wing challenger Jessica Cisneros in their increasingly Republican-leaning South Texas district? Well, scandal plagued incumbents of both parties weren’t so lucky this past month – two incumbent representatives who’ve weathered ethics probes both lost renomination, a sign that even in the post-Trump world, there are some lines that politicians can’t cross without incurring an electoral penalty. In Mississippi, Republican Congressman Steven Palazzo, who’s been accused of using campaign finances to purchase a riverfront home and using his office to benefit his brother, lost a June 7 runoff against Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell, who was endorsed by literally every other Republican candidate in the race.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, Democrat Marie Newman lost an incumbent-on-incumbent matchup against colleague Sean Casten in the redrawn 6th district by an overwhelming margin. It’s tempting to view Newman’s overwhelming defeat in the broader context of the ideological struggle underway within the Democratic Party (Casten was endorsed by moderate, at risk Democratic incumbents like New Jersey’s Tom Malinowski and Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger; Newman by progressives like Washington’s Pramila Jayapal and Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib), but a more likely explanation for her dismal showing is her ongoing ethics investigation, in which she stands accused of literally signing a contract that promised a potential 2020 primary opponent a job if they dropped out of the race. Never leave a paper trail, folks!

The Trump brand has been diluted in Georgia…

In the second article of this feature, I wrote about the resounding defeats of former President Donald Trump’s endorsees for Georgia governor, attorney general, and secretary of state, all of whom were challenging incumbents who refused to acquiesce to Trump’s demands to interfere with the state’s electoral vote. Well, his losing streak in the Peach State continued into June, when Jake Evans and Vernon Jones, Trump’s picks to represent Georgia’s 6th and 10th congressional districts, respectively, lost their runoff elections to physician Rich McCormick and trucking executive Mike Collins. From a policy perspective, the distinction between the Trump endorsees and their opponents is more or less moot – McCormick and Collins both support completing construction of the border wall and have harped on the importance of “election integrity” – but the idea that a Trump endorsement can hand a candidate a Republican primary win has been more or less debunked. Granted, the failure of the Trump insurgents in Georgia may have something to do with Democratic voters who crossed over to vote in the Republican primary, but the notion that the former president’s brand simply does not carry the same cache it once did seems to have some purchase…

…But it’s as strong as ever in the rest of the country

…Or does it? After the January 6th riot at the Capitol, ten House Republicans took the unprecedented step of voting to impeach a president from their own party – and they’re all poised to be punished for it. Every one of the ten representatives who voted to impeach Trump has either retired or is facing a primary from at least one fan of the former president, and the loyalists claimed their first victim this month when incumbent Tom Rice fell to state representative Russell Fry by a staggering 51%-25% margin. Rice is hardly a moderate – he co-sponsored a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act and initially endorsed efforts to overturn the 2020 election (apparently, he doesn’t think anyone should be president) – but ever since January 6th, he’s remained a staunch critic of Trump, calling him a “would-be tyrant” and saying that he would wear his vote to impeach “like a badge.” Fry, on the other hand, was endorsed by Trump himself, which is likely what helped him overcome not just Rice, but five other challengers to ultimately secure the nomination. A small civil war has been simmering within the Republican Party ever since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, and Rice is just its most recent casualty, a staunch conservative whose defeat almost doubles as a referendum on Trump’s influence on the party.

South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace, who did not vote for Trump’s impeachment but still found herself in the former president’s crosshairs after making a series of critical statements after January 6th and voting to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress, nearly met the same fate as Rice, narrowly avoiding a runoff against Trump endorsee Katie Arrington (who defeated Mark Sanford, another Republican Trump critic, for this district’s nomination in 2018, only to lose to Democrat Joe Cunningham, who would then go on to lose to Mace in 2020) for the right to represent their Charleston-area district. Illinois Republican Congressman Rodney Davis was not so lucky, losing a redistricting-spurred showdown against fellow incumbent Mary Miller in the state’s new 15th district by nearly 15 percentage points. Like Mace, Davis has tried to straddle the fence when it comes to Trump – he voted against impeachment, but voted to approve the 2020 election results and for the creation of the January 6th committee – but it wasn’t enough to overcome Miller, a hardliner who’s quoted Hitler and called the Dobbs decision a victory for “white life” (that last comment was delivered mere feet away from Trump himself). 

How should one square these results with Trump’s losses in Georgia? Follow the votes! Rice, Mace, and Davis are all on the record of either explicitly voting against Trump (the aforementioned support for impeachment, the January 6 panel, etc.) or supporting moderate policies (Mace on LGBTQ rights and criminal justice reform, Davis on LGBTQ rights and immigration). Trump may not have endorsed McCormick or Collins in Georgia, but they also didn’t do anything that would make voters think that they’re enemies of the former president, either. In other words, it may not matter to voters how much Trump likes a candidate – but it does seem to matter to them how much they like Trump, a sign that congressional Republicans who’ve felt comfortable bucking the former president in recent years may have to sweat out a few close primaries.

Progressives bounce back in Los Angeles

It’s been a rough few months for progressives in San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in the country. In February, three progressive members of the city’s school board were recalled after a series of controversial decisions that included attempts to rename about a third of the city’s schools, a slow reopening after the COVID-19 pandemic, and ending the merit-based admissions system at Lowell High School. In June, Chesa Boudin, the city’s district attorney and a leading figure in the criminal justice reform movement, was also recalled after a series of high profile hate crimes against Asian-Americans and what critics said was an increase in homelessness and open drug abuse. The extent to which Boudin’s policies (which included an end to cash bail and an emphasis on diversion programs over incarceration) had an effect on the city’s crime rates, and the extent to which the city is even experiencing an increase in crime at all, has been fiercely debated, but observers and journalists pounced on these two successful recall efforts as indications that the progressive movement is facing a significant backlash, even in the friendly confines of San Francisco.

Things have played out a bit differently about 383-mile down the coast, however. While early vote tallies in Los Angeles’ mayoral election indicated that Rick Caruso, a Republican-turned-Democrat real estate developer who wants to “get real” about crime, led left-leaning Congresswoman Karen Bass in the top two primary, Bass pulled ahead once all of the mail-in ballots were counted. Elsewhere on the ballot, Kenneth Mejia, who committed to cutting the LAPD’s budget, and Faisal Gill, who’s pledged to institute a 100-day moratorium on misdemeanor filings, led their primaries for city controller and city attorney, respectively, while prison and police abolitionist (and Democratic Socialists of America member) Eunisses Hernandez defeated incumbent city councilmember Gil Cedillo outright, taking 53.20% of the vote. Elsewhere in LA, DSA-endorsed Hugo Soto-Martinez leads incumbent councilmember Mitch O’Farrell in the 13th council district, while progressive Erin Darling currently leads moderate Traci Park in an open race for the 11th. With the exception of Hernandez, all of these progressive candidates still need to defeat their centrist counterparts in the general election in November – but their early leads (and primary victories by progressives in other large cities) suggest that the left wing of the Democratic Party poses a threat to incumbents and outsider centrists alike. 

A big domino falls for the Republicans in South Texas…

In 2020, Democratic dreams of a blue Texas were dashed in part by the defection of ancestrally Democratic Latino voters to Trump, allowing him to win a handful of counties in South Texas that had not voted for a Republican in nearly 50 years (and in the case of Zapata County, 100 years). While every incumbent Democratic representative in the state retained their office, Republicans smelled blood, and finally had a chance to swipe a seat when Democrat Filemón Vela Jr.’s resignation triggered a special election in Texas’ 34th Congressional District. The Republicans found their perfect candidate in the form of Mayra Flores, an evangelical, Mexican-born former Democrat who’s dabbled in right-wing conspiracy theories and would end up defeating Democrat Dan Sanchez by over seven points. This was a massive swing to the right for the district, which Vela won by 14 points in 2020, but in fairness to Sanchez, he didn’t get a lot of support from the National Democratic Party, which was outspent by the Republicans by a 20-to-1 margin. In fairness to the national Democratic Party, they likely held off on spending too much money on the 34th’s special election because a victory there would mean that Sanchez would have to run against Vicente Gonzales, a Democratic incumbent drawn into the district thanks to Texas’ new congressional map. It’s entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that Gonzales will defeat Flores in the redrawn 34th, which according to FiveThirtyEight is over ten points more Democratic than the old district, but giving the Republicans an incumbent that eats into their already slim House majority makes that election much more difficult than it needs to be, and could be taken by some Latino voters in South Texas as a signal that the party has given up on them.

…But they may have to contend with a Dobbs effect going forward

When the Supreme Court ruled late last month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the right to an abortion was not protected by the Constitution, some Republicans began to worry that it would put the party on the defensive and energize the Democratic base. The decisions did correlate with polling bumps for Democrats in key Senate races, but things got really interesting in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District, which held a special election shortly after the ruling was made. Democrat Patty Pansing Brooks framed the election as voters’ first chance to “fight back at the ballot box” against abortion restrictions, and wound up overperforming Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign in the district, losing the R+17 district to Republican Mike Flood by just over five points. Pansing Brooks did especially well in suburban Lancaster (which she won outright) and Sarpy counties, the kind of areas that will be key in Republicans’ quest to retake the House. It very well may be that Biden’s performance on the economy and immigration, two issues that Republicans would much rather campaign on than abortion, are frustrating swing voters so much that Dobbs will be a non-factor. But the Supreme Court handed a vulnerable party an issue that they could rally around, and if other districts see the same kind of swing that Nebraska’s 1st did, it’ll be enough to save some at-risk incumbents and even flip a few Republican-held seats.