The last ten days of June are going to be busy — 20+ Supreme Court opinions, maybe the first (and only) presidential debate of the cycle, and the last of the “Spring” primaries.  The last Tuesday in June features three states (along with the runoffs in South Carolina).

In South Carolina, the only congressional race to make it to the runoff was in the third district.  This was expected given the number of candidates running.  In the first round, Mark Burns finished 4 percent ahead of Sheri Biggs.  As he only had 33% of the vote, in theory, that meant a very competitive runoff would follow.  But Donald Trump has put his thumb on the scale behind Mark Burns, a wannabe theocrat.  In similar situations, in other states, the second place candidate has opted to stand down.  Apparently, Ms. Biggs is not conceding, but her chances do not look good.

In Colorado, the big news is the open primaries in all three Republican-held seat, especially the game of muscial chairs in the third and fourth districts.  The current representative in the third is Lauren Boebert.  Representative Boebert managed to tick off enough of her neighbors with her personal misconduct (google Beetlejuice and Boebert) and her utter lack of seriousness in Congress.  So she was looking at a competitive primary and a serious general election challenger.  Fortunately for her, she also annoyed ultra-conservative Representative Ken Buck enough that he could not take wasting another day in Congress with folks like Boebert throwing away the Republican majority.    So he decided that he was not only not going to seek another term, but that he was also going to resign.  Now for state and local politicians from the Fourth District, this decision was the opening that they had been waiting for.  They had built up their reputations in their own part of the Fourth District and were ready to try to step up a level.  But for Representative Boebert, it was a lifeline.  You don’t need to reside in the district that you represent; so she decided that she was going to switch districts.  As a result, there are open primaries in  both the third and fourth district rather than just the fourth district.  There is also the nasty need to hold a special election in the fourth.  Representative Boebert could not run in the special election because that would require giving up her current seat.  But the special election is on the same day as the primary.  If one of her opponents had gotten picked by the party to run in the special election, that might give them an edge in the primary.  Representative Boebert managed to convince the Colorado Republicans to go with somebody who was not seeking the full term as the candidate in the special election.

After all of the musical chairs, the race for the Republican nomination in the third district seems to be between Ron Hanks (who has the support of the activists) and Jeffery Hurd (who has the support of the traditional establishment).  In the fourth district, Boebert’s advantage is name recognition, and she is currently getting 35-40% of the vote in polling.  But there apparently is an equally large, anybody but Boebert undecided vote.  The problem is that, like in the Republican presidential primary, no consensus alternative has emerged for this vote to go to.  It is very possible that Boebert will win the primary with only 35% of the vote.  There is also an open primary in the Fifth District.  Both candidates seem to be Trumpy and they seem to be evenly matched.    You also have two candidates for the Republican nomination in the Eighth District, the one swing district in Colorado which is currently held by the Democrats.

When we were last in New York, the state legislature had screwed up the redistricting process.  Republicans brought their challenge to the redistricting map in a court with a Republican judge who drew a map that, while within the realm of acceptable lines, were more favorable to the Republicans than other legally acceptable maps.  After the 2022 election, the New York Court of Appeals (the state’s highest court) clarified that the lines (which they had approved for the 2022 election) were interim lines and that the process could be restarted to draft permanent lines.  As such, we have new lines for 2024 which are somewhat more favorable for Democrats (although not as favorable as the lines that the legislature had originally put forth for 2022).  New York’s laws make it somewhat hard to get on the ballot for the primary, and there are only a handful of primaries on the ballot. The big race to watch is the Sixteenth District.  The incumbent, progressive Representative Jamal Bowman, has drawn a significant opponent in the Westchester County Executive, George Latimer.  The question for the race is whether Representative Bowman has gone too far to the left for this suburban district.

Utah is a little bit different than most states.  While several states use a party convention system as a means of gaining access to the primary ballot, the usual rule is that candidates who get a certain percentage at the convention make the primary ballot.  In Utah, only the top two at the convention make the primary ballot and even then you need enough votes to qualify.  It is possible to petition onto the ballot if you do not finish in the top two.  For U.S. Senator, with Mitt Romney stepping down, you have a relatively robust four candidate primary.  The favorite is probably the current congressman form the third district, John Curtis.  However, Trent Skaggs is the candidate of the Trumpy wing of  the party and did finish first at the Republican convention. Only one candidate qualified for the primary on the Democratic side but the odds of Utah electing a Democratic senator is practically nonexistent.

At the Congressional level, the Second District has a new representative, Celeste Malloy chosen in a special election last year.  She has some opposition from the Trumpy wing of the party, but Donald Trump is supporting her.  In the third district, you have five candidates running, the two top candidates appear to be Stewart Peay (a member of the Romney family) and the pick of the convention, Mike Kennedy.  There is also an open primary for state Attorney General.  Given the recent tendency of state attorney generals to see themselves as political actors rather than the attorney for the state, the winner of the primary might make some difference.  However, there are enough insane Republican state attorney general that one more or less will not impact the types of legal challenges to federal policy that will get filed even though, on almost every issue, state attorney generals lack standing.

So that’s a wrap on the June primaries.  There will be a special primary election in mid-July in New Jersey to fill the vacant seat in the tenth district, and the “fall” primaries begin on July 30 in Arizona.  There is also the forthcoming chaos of nine days in which the U.S. Supreme Court might toss a couple of major bombs into the November election, maybe the first presidential debate, and, in mid-July the sentencing of Donald Trump and the Republican national convention in which, for the first time since World War II when the nominee might not be able to accept the nomination in person.