As the calendar flips around to August, we are about to hit a rush of state and congressional primaries.  Some states (e.g., California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois) hold their state and congressional primaries on the same day as the presidential primary.  Others (e.g., Florida) hold a separate presidential primary with the state and congressional primaries occurring later in the year.  And most of the states with separate primaries will hold them between August 1 and mid-September.  (In addition, there is the postponed Connecticut primary.)

Earlier this week, I discussed the  two states holding primaries on August 4 that I am most familiar with (Kansas and Missouri).  (And if I hear another ad attacking a hardcore pro-life Republican for saying something even slightly pro-choice fifteen years ago, I may get physically ill.)  The other three states holding primaries on August 4 are Arizona, Michigan, and Washington.

In Arizona, the biggest race is the special election for the remaining two years of the Senator John McCain’s term.  Mark Kelly is the only candidate on the ballot on the Democratic side.  It is likely that interim Senator Martha McSally will be the Republican nominee.  She does, however, have primary opposition.  Her opponent has some money, but not really enough to run a successful campaign.  So unless there is a lot of silent opposition to her among Arizona Republicans, she should win the primary.  (There was one poll that compared Kelly against both McSally and her primary opponent, and the primary opponent did a little bit better but not much better against Kelly.)  In 2018, the Democrats won 5 of the 9 congressional seats and none of the races was particularly close.  At this point, I am not hearing anything out of Arizona that points to any of the primaries being interesting.

In Michigan, with Justin Amash having decided against seeking another term, the big primary is in Michigan’s Thirteenth District.  Back in 2018, this district had both a special election and a regular election.  The primary election for both elections was held on the same day.  However, the special election primary only had four candidates,  and the regular election primary had six candidates.  Brenda Jones won the special election primary by 2% and Representative Rashida Tlaib won the regular election primary by 1%.  Neither candidate was close to a majority in either election, and Michigan does not have ranked-choice voting.  This cycle, Brenda Jones is back to challenge Representative Tlaib.  While conventional wisdom want to frame this race as being primarily about Representative Tlaib’s “controversies” since her election, that is probably the wrong frame.  Representative Tlaib got less than one-third of the vote in the primary in 2018, and this primary is really the run-off that we never got in 2018.  Even if Representative Tlaib had been the best possible representative, this race was going to happen.  Current polls suggest that Representative Tlaib will win, but this race is really about the traditional African-American Establishment against the next generation of African-American politicians.

Finally, there is Washington.  Washington (like California) uses a top-two primary.  In a top-two primaries, all candidates from all parties run in one primary.  Even if one candidate gets a majority in the primary, the top two advance to the general election.  (Louisiana uses a variation of this, holding an open ballot general election with the potential for a run-off if no candidate gets a majority.)

Because of the top-two rules, it is theoretically possible in Washington for the general election to feature two candidates from the same party.  As such, it matters how many candidates from each party run.  Too many candidates can splinter a party’s vote and allow the other party to get its two candidates into the general even if total support for that party is well below 50%.  (It also makes it a little bit harder to defeat an incumbent in the primary.   Even if a candidate is able to finish ahead of the incumbent in the primary, the incumbent is still likely to finish second.)

One of the thing that is making Washington interesting is that candidates get to identify their party on the ballot.  (The party is stuck with whomever wants to claim to be a Republican or Democrat.)  You have some Republican candidates identifying themselves as “Trump Republicans” and one candidate identifying themselves as a “pre-2016 Republican.”  It will be interesting to see if these labels attract voters to these candidates.  I do not think any of the incumbents are at risk of being eliminated in the primary, and I am not sure that any of the races in Washington will be close in November.  Given the number of candidates who have filed, it is possible that you could have a Democrat only general in Washington’s 2nd District.

The seat that could potentially flip as a result of the primary in Washington’s 10th District.  This seat is held by the Democrats but is an open seat this year.  With an open race, there is a flood of candidates from both parties.  This district is centered in the area around the state capitol and is roughly a 55-45 Democratic district.  With the number of candidates, it is theoretically possible that the top four candidates  in one party could essentially be tied for third place with the top two candidates in the other party finishing first and second.  It would be nice to have public polling of this race to see whom is in contention.  Most of the money seems to be on the Democratic side of the race, but there are enough Democrats with adequate funding to raise some concern of three or four Democrats splitting the approximately 55-60% of the vote that will go to Democrats leaving room for lesser known Republicans to slip through the cracks and finish in the top two.

Needless to say there are downballot state legislative races in all of these states.  If you live in one of these states, it is important to get the right candidates for the general election in your state legislative races.  The candidates who win this year in state legislative races in most states (Washington and Arizona are exceptions) will have a roll in drawing congressional district lines in the Spring.