An endorsement from President Donald Trump is worth a lot in Republican primaries. But can it propel a congressman past an insurgent outsider in Alabama? Is it worth more than $100 million in Georgia? Can it transform a candidate into a front-runner in Oklahoma? Trump has been at the center of this year’s midterm campaigns, and his influence will be tested in different ways Tuesday as four states and the District of Columbia hold primaries.
The president’s endorsed candidates have mostly done well so far in the midterm primaries. But the open U.S. Senate race in Alabama will be another test of his endorsement power. U.S. Rep. Barry Moore, a three-term congressman, faces former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson in the GOP runoff. Trump endorsed Moore early in the campaign, but he's been forced into a heated race with Hudson, a political newcomer.
Hudson, borrowing a page from Trump’s original playbook, has tried to depict Moore as a political insider and has urged voters to send an outsider to Washington. Trump held a telephone rally for Moore last week. The candidates are seeking the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who's running for governor. The winner will face the Democratic nominee in November.
Among Democrats, the primaries will hinge on longstanding divides between progressives and moderates as the party tries to chart the best path forward to November.
In Georgia, the outgoing Republican governor passed on a Senate bid and recruited his former football coach Derek Dooley. Kemp’s spent months saying it’ll take an “outsider” to defeat Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.
Meanwhile, until Sunday, Kemp sat out the Republican tussle to be his successor. That runoff pits the sitting lieutenant governor against a first-time candidate. Rick Jackson, a billionaire businessman, labels himself an “outsider” in his ads and plastered the word on his campaign tour bus.
Yet Kemp opted for Burt Jones, the Capitol insider. Campaigning with Jones on Monday, Kemp said there’s no contradiction in his message.
His reasoning, essentially: Georgia state government has been run by Republicans for a generation and things are great, whereas in Washington, where Dooley would go, Congress is often deadlocked and has atrocious approval ratings. But Kemp did not note that Republicans have a trifecta with Trump as president and GOP majorities on Capitol Hill.
There are two elections being held to determine the winner of Eric Swalwell’s U.S. House. There’s the regular race in November that will determine who'll be sworn in come January and serve a full, two-year term in the U.S. House. But since Swalwell resigned early following sexual assault allegations, there’s also the special election that will decide who will serve out the rest of his current term until January.
Tuesday’s primary will decide the top two candidates for the special general election on August 18. But if one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, they’ll win outright and there won’t be a general election.
Texas senator Ted Cruz has gotten more active on the Republican campaign circuit. In Republican governor’s races in South Carolina and Georgia, Cruz finds himself on the opposing side from the president. Cruz was in Georgia ahead of Tuesday’s runoff to stump for billionaire Rick Jackson. Trump backs Jackson’s rival, Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. In the upcoming South Carolina runoff the GOP governor nomination, Cruz backs longtime state Attorney General Alan Wilson over Trump’s pick, Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette.
Cruz, who finished second in Republicans 2016 presidential nominating fight, insisted he’s not picking fights with Trump.
“Not remotely,” Cruz said Monday. He noted he and Trump have both endorsed former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu in his U.S. Senate bid.
“The president and I agree on the vast majority of races,” Cruz said. “What I try to do in every race is endorse the strongest conservative who can win.”
Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson choked up a bit in the closing hours of his GOP runoff campaign explaining why he’s spent nearly $100 million of his own money on the race. Jackson called his wealth “God’s money” that he directs “the best I can.” And he compared his campaign spending to his years of philanthropy, especially to help children in foster care, where he spent part of his childhood.
“I want our kids, our foster kids and everybody else, to have hope, you know,” he told a lunch crowd Monday.
“I have lived in poverty,” Jackson continued. “When you, when you have not eaten, you never forget that you don’t forget the people that are struggling.”
It was a stark contrast to Jackson’s tone in some of his television ads, including a promise that migrants who are in Georgia illegally and commit crimes will be “deported or departed.”
Voters in the nation’s capital are selecting party candidates for mayor and the district’s delegate to Congress. Mayor Muriel Bowser, who isn’t seeking reelection, has walked a fine line between staying in Trump’s good graces and responding to the concerns of constituents, many of whom said she didn’t push back hard enough on Trump’s actions. The district’s long-serving congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is also stepping down. The election is taking place as Washington undergoes major change under the Trump administration.
Washington has limited autonomy and federal leaders retain significant control over local affairs, including the approval of the budget and laws passed by the D.C. Council.
In 2020, a Georgia state senator named Burt Jones was part of Donald Trump’s alternate Electoral College slate and backed the president’s scheme to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has referenced Jones’ “loyalty” many times since, including when endorsing his bid for governor. Jones, now the lieutenant governor, faces billionaire businessman Rick Jackson in a Tuesday runoff for the Republican nomination.
“Burt was strongly committed to my Campaign in 2016, 2020, and 2024, and worked tirelessly to help us WIN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on the eve of the runoff. “He has been with us from the very beginning.”
A day earlier, Trump endorsed Rep. Mike Collins in a Senate runoff over former football coach Derek Dooley. The president chided Dooley for saying (months ago and not as a feature of his campaign) that Trump did indeed lose Georgia in 2020.
Collins, meanwhile, has consistently echoed Trump’s false claims of a “rigged” election.
GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt is term-limited, and former U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin vacated his seat to replace Kristi Noem as Homeland Security secretary. Republican Alan Armstrong, an energy executive, is filling the U.S. Senate seat for now, but state law prohibits him from seeking a full term as an interim appointee. Rep. Kevin Hern, a four-term congressman endorsed by Trump, is running against four other candidates of lesser profile in the Republican Senate primary.
The GOP primary for governor is more crowded, with nine names on the ballot, including several prominent Republicans. That could lead to an Aug. 25 runoff if no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote to win outright.
