After several weeks with no voting (other than a special election in New Jersey and some elections overseas), the primary season starts back up again on Tuesday with the Arizona primary followed by Tennessee on Thursday.

In Arizona, the key race is the Republican Primary featuring 100% insane Kari Lake against 90% insane Mark Lamb.  Despite the fact that Kari Lake has more that won out her welcome with swing voters, the Republican “establishment” seems to have unified behind her.  It’s been some time since there have been polls released in the race.  The last polls had Ms. Lake just short of 50% with a third candidate also on the race.  There were still enough undecideds that Sheriff Lamb could eek out the win, but most likely Ms. Lake will be the nominee.  And that is good news for the Democrats as Ms. Lake will spend half her time whining about how the 2022 governor’s race was “stolen” and how McCain Republicans are RINOs who need to get out of the party.  Those two tendencies will hurt both her and Donald Trump (who has the same tendencies except for substituting 2020 for 2022).

Moving to the Congressional elections, the First District (the northeastern suburbs of Phoenix is a swing district.  The incumbent Republican has token opposition, but the Democratic primary has six candidates, five of whom have raised over $1 million for the primary.  Not surprisingly, the latest polling shows nobody over 20% with one-third of the voters still undecided.  Basically, anybody could win the primary.

The next interesting primary is in the Third District currently represented by the next U.S. Senator, Ruben Gallego.  The Democratic primary, in this relatively safe seat that covers much of Phoenix looks to be a two-person race between former City Councillor Yassamin Ansari and former Democratic Leader in the State Senate/Former State Party Chair Raquel Teran.  The most recent poll has Ansari up, but other polls have shown Teran leading.  In all of these polls, there are enough undecided voters that either candidate could win.

The last primary to watch in Arizona is the Eighth District where three-term Representative Debbie Lesko is standing down.  While not completely lopsided, this is a district where the Republican nominee is very likely to win in November.  there are six Republican candidates including Representative Lesko’s predecessor (who retired mid-term) attempting to make a comeback.  As with everything else in the Arizona Republican Party, however, this race appears to be about the 2022 candidates — Blake Masters who lost the 2022 Senate election (endorsed by Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump) and Abraham Hamadeh who lost the 2022 election for state Attorney General (endorsed by Republican nominee for Vice-President J.D. Vance).  It is likely that one of those two will win the primary with less than 30% of the total vote.

Tennessee should see a mostly sleepy primary election.  Most of the incumbents have nominal challengers in the primary and, in the “opposition” primaries, at most one potential general election candidate has raised any significant money.  The one exception to this is in the Fifth District.   This district used to be held by the Democrats until the Republican chopped up the Nashville area to eliminate the Democratic seat.  Incumbent Andy Ogles (who has the support of the establishment) is being challenged by Courtney Johnson who serves on the council for the unified government of Nashville-Davidson County.  The fundraising between these two candidates is roughly even but there have been no polls of the race.  If this primary reflects a split between Davidson County and the rest of the district, there might be a chance for the Democrats to regain this seat.

In short, five races to keep an eye on.  In at least two and maybe three of the five, the primary will be the election.  In the other two — Arizona Senate and Arizona First District — the primary is simply the setup for the general election.