| Dear Readers: This is the latest edition of Notes on the State of Politics, which features shorter updates on campaigns and elections. Today we are focusing on last night’s down-ballot primaries in New Jersey, Iowa, and Montana.
— The Editors |
Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating change
New Jersey
In New Jersey, the state’s most visible contest, the race for the Democratic nomination for Senate, was probably more notable for what it wasn’t than for what it was: just moments after polls closed, Rep. Andy Kim (D, NJ-3) was declared the winner, a decisive outcome that would have seemed improbable just mere months ago.
Kim, who was the first major Democrat to call on the embattled Sen. Bob Menendez (D) to step aside last year, got into the race because the senator did not do so. But for much of the campaign, Kim faced a tough opponent in New Jersey First Lady Tammy Murphy (D), whose connections to the party’s higher-ups helped earn her the line in counties representing a majority of the electorate (the “line” refers to preferential ballot positioning that has been historically helpful, and often determinative, in New Jersey primaries). Eventually, the Kim campaign challenged the line system itself, and won—the arguably archaic system was thrown out for this year’s Democratic contests, but it could be on its way out altogether. Perhaps sensing that, Murphy withdrew from the race in late March, leaving Kim the de facto Democratic nominee, and rendering yesterday’s vote something of a formality.
The line system, for this cycle, was used in the Republican primary and led to a nationally-notable result: the Trump-endorsed candidate lost. Former President Trump, and several MAGAworld figures, backed Mendham Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner, but businessman Curtis Bashaw, who could be considered more moderate, seemed to have better local support and secured the line in more counties. Bashaw rolled up heavy margins in South Jersey, which helped him to a 46%-39% win.
Earlier this week, the aforementioned Menendez, despite the optics surrounding his ongoing corruption trial, filed to run for reelection as an independent, following through on something that he had floated months ago.
But we hardly consider the Senate contest a true three-way race. For one thing, it doesn’t seem like residents are exactly clamoring to vote for Menendez: since his name became associated with gold bars last year, his approval rating has frequently been in the single-digits. Aside from having the lean of the state on his side, we consider Kim a strong candidate in his own right—in 2020, he was reelected with relative comfort in a marginal Trump-won seat—so Menendez won’t be in a position to draw votes from an unattractive Democratic nominee. Though its gubernatorial races have been more competitive, it has been more than two decades since a Republican took more than 45% in a New Jersey Senate contest—one of their better showings was in 2018, where Menendez faced a well-financed challenger and was under a similar legal cloud, but he still managed to win by 11 points. So looking to the fall, Menendez would have to earn close to 10% or so of the vote to jeopardize Kim’s chances. We don’t see this scenario panning out, especially if the senator’s campaign operation remains a team of one. So all of this is to reaffirm that we are holding our Safe Democratic rating for the contest.
Kim’s victory against the line did not necessarily mean that establishment-friendly Democrats had a rough night.
In the state’s heavily-Democratic 8th District, Rob Menendez Jr. (D) won renomination by a comfortable 54%-36% over Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla, who tried to tie the younger Menendez to his more unpopular father. But much of the local and national party apparatus stood behind Menendez. Bhalla carried Hoboken and Jersey City, but Menendez’s backing from local leaders like Union City’s state Sen. Brian Stack—a formidable practitioner of retail politics who also serves as the city’s mayor—helped him run up large margins elsewhere in the district.
The NJ-8 primary result breaks what seemed like a trend of voters registering their discontent with some incumbents by punishing their family members who were also on the ballot. In North Carolina last year, state Rep. Tricia Cotham switched parties to give the GOP a veto-proof majority in the state legislature. In March, her mother, veteran Mecklenburg County Commissioner Pat Cotham (D), was denied renomination. In South Texas, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D, TX-28) was recently indicted, leading us to make his race a little more competitive. Last week, Cuellar’s sister lost a runoff for a legislative seat by 15 points.
In Kim’s open, Burlington County-centric NJ-3, Democrats also nominated the most “established” candidate: Herb Conaway, a long-serving member of the state legislature, who took about half of the vote in a five-way field. Before the courts became involved in the primary, Conaway had secured the line in all counties covering the district. Though Conaway’s fundraising has not been stellar, his newly-minted GOP challenger had just $35,000 in the bank as of last month, and this just doesn’t seem like a district that Republicans are making a credible play for. With that in mind, we are moving our rating for the seat from Likely Democratic to Safe Democratic—as it was, this Biden +14 seat was the bluest district in our Likely Democratic category.
Iowa and Montana
While 4 other states besides New Jersey held down-ballot primaries yesterday, the most consequential were in Iowa and Montana.
In Iowa, which has had an all-Republican delegation since the 2022 elections, a pair of incumbents were pushed.
In the southeastern part of the state, two-term Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R, IA-1) was held to just a 56%-44% margin over a poorly funded challenger, David Pautsch. Pautsch ran citing some of the incumbent’s breaks from Trumpian orthodoxy, such as her vote to fund Ukraine’s war efforts. Though Pautsch was from that part of the district, as of this writing, he was carrying IA-1’s most populous county, Davenport’s Scott County. Looking towards the general election, we have this Trump +3 seat as Likely Republican, although that could be seen as somewhat charitable to Republicans, as the Democratic nominee, Christina Bohannan, has fundraised on par with Miller-Meeks this cycle. This is a rematch of a 2022 race that Miller-Meeks won by about 7 points; Miller-Meeks famously won her seat by just 6 votes in 2020 (although that was under different district lines).
Moving to the opposite side of the state, Rep. Randy Feenstra, who represents northwestern and western Iowa’s 4th District, was renominated 60%-40% against another poorly funded challenger. Though there was likely an ideological angle at play, as in the IA-1 primary, the challenger, Army veteran Kevin Virgil, also brought up some more parochial concerns. Feenstra has been on considerably better terms with party leadership than his predecessor, the far-right Rep. Steve King, whom he ousted in a 2020 primary. Feenstra had the national party’s support, but Virgil amassed some local endorsements, including that of King. In any case, the 4th is the most Republican district in Iowa, so Feenstra is a sure bet for a third term.
But with these two Iowa results, more than 20 members of the House have won renomination with less than 70% of the vote.
Going further west, the Republican primary for Montana’s Senate seat was much like the Democratic primary for New Jersey’s seat: a contest that was more notable for what didn’t happen. Last year, veteran and businessman Tim Sheehy entered the race to challenge Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), and the national party worked to telegraph that he was their guy. But this did not stop a “will he or won’t he” game from Rep. Matt Rosendale, who represents the deep red 2nd District and was the unsuccessful GOP nominee against Tester in 2018. In February, Rosendale, considered the less electable of Tester’s possible opponents, finally launched his Senate campaign—but he dropped out less than a week later. In the interim, Trump endorsed Sheehy.
With Rosendale set to leave Congress altogether next year, Sheehy easily clinched the GOP nomination by defeating former Montana Secretary of State Brad Johnson 74%-19%. With both Montana and Ohio’s primaries settled, the contests for what are arguably the two most critical Senate contests are now both in general election mode.