Tmess gave a great overview of the upcoming primary season.  This week, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia are up. In addition to Tmess’s information, here’s a little local color.

We’ll start in West Virginia because it’s just plain the most fun. There is a contested Republican Senatorial primary. The candidates are Don Blankenship, Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey. Now, the fun part here is that while there hasn’t been any polling to speak of, the “common wisdom” says that Blankenship has a real chance. And here is the part that will make you chuckle. Not only does Don not live in West Virginia, he lives in Vegas, as does his parole officer, AND he needs permission from his parole officer to travel out of state. I’m personally pulling for him to win — Mitch McConnell’s PAC (Mountain Families) recently spent $1.3 million on anti-Blankenship TV ads, as well as digital ads. This worked SO WELL for Mitch in Alabama a few months back. And by the way, Don refers to Mitch’s father-in-law as a “Chinaperson”. Very feminist of him. Bottom line, if Don can pull it off, Joe Manchin will breathe a sigh of relief. Joe is a mixed bag: we’d like to keep the seat to keep it blue, even though Joe’s is not a solid vote, but if it gives us the majority, there’s a lot of good in terms of process, not to mention Dick Schumer as Senate Majority Leader in lieu of Mitch. As an aside, one of Joe’s daughters is Heather Bresch — you remember her.  She’s the person for whom there is a special ring in hell because of upping the cost of EpiPens by 400%.  There are other races, as in, ALL the Congressional seats, but there is little chance any will change parties. But political junkies can look forward to 2020 when Governor Jim Justice is running for re-election — he was elected in 2016 as a Democrat and then came out in love with Donald Trump and changed parties.

In Ohio, there are two marquee races: Senate and Governor. Sherrod Brown (D) is looking to keep his Senate seat, and his primary challenger will be decided on Tuesday.  Smart money says it will be current House member Jim Renacci.  The seat leans Democratic. At the Congressional level, there is one open seat, the 12th, which will also generate a Special Election in August with the same cast of characters. The seat was held by Pat Tiberi (R), a member of Ways and Means who announced last year that he would leave Congress in January of 2018 (which he did) – conventional wisdom says he did so to enter the private sector AND avoid having to be involved with writing the Trumpkin tax bill. “They” say the seat leans Republican (it’s part of the Columbus suburbs) but in a wave year….. Continue Reading...