Under the radar primary races you should be following three months until midterm elections

Monday marks exactly three months until the midterm elections. There are still several outstanding primaries that will be pivotal in not only determining control of both chambers of Congress but also shaping the direction of the Democratic and Republican parties. The remaining primary calendar is headlined by the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, where on Tuesday, leftist Abdul el Sayed appears to be the front-runner against Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI), despite millions in outside support and backing for Stevens. Most of the intrigue in the primaries to come is on the Democratic side, as Republicans have sorted out most of the major races left on the calendar. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN), who, after redistricting, faced a primary challenger from former state agriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher, could be in a competitive race, but he’s expected to win. A Hatcher-aligned group released a poll last week showing the controversial Ogles leading by just 4 points in the primary. In Alaska, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) will appear on the ballot alongside former Rep. Mary Peltola and spoiler candidate Dan Sullivan, but the top-four candidates, regardless of party, advance to the general election in Alaska, meaning catastrophe would need to occur for the senator to miss the general election. Consequential primaries can be roughly sorted into three categories: races that feature competitive general elections; races in which older Democratic candidates may lose; and races where socialist candidates could defeat the establishment. Wisconsin’s gubernatorial primary Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary is the marquee race to watch, where socialist State Rep. Francesca Hong appears to be running away with the race. The field has consolidated in recent weeks, with current Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes suspending their campaigns in an effort to coalesce around Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who rejoined the race after Rodriguez dropped out. But polls have shown Hong’s lead steady, and she may be inevitable. How she fares statewide in a battleground state, however, is an entirely different question, and her winning could be a best-case scenario for Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI), the presumptive GOP nominee. Her nomination could have major ripple effects. “There is a real potential for down-ballot consequences, because Republicans will try to make Democratic candidates answer for Hong’s ideological label and her controversial past positions,” Anthony Chergosky, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, wrote to the Washington Examiner in an email. Chergosky said the downballot consequences could be most felt in the state legislative contests, as Democrats “have been engaged in a long, arduous battle to work their way back into a position where unified control of state government is even possible.”A Hong nomination in the Aug. 11 primary might not just hand the governorship back to Republicans, but it could threaten Democrats’ chances in races across the state. Missouri’s 1st District Former Rep. Cori Bush is eyeing a comeback against Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) in St. Louis, two years after Bell took her out, due in part to significant outside help from AIPAC and its allies. Bush, who ran into ethics issues involving allegations she used campaign funds to hire her husband as security, has run on Bell’s support from AIPAC, an issue that has continued to roil the Democratic Party over the last two years. AIPAC is once again supporting Bell. The primary is Tuesday. Michigan’s 13th District In Detroit, state Rep. Donavan McKinney may unseat Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI), who first won a splintered primary in 2022 thanks to his self-funding. Thanedar, whose 2022 victory marked the first time in more than 50 years Detroit didn’t have a black representative, is seen as an underdog heading into Tuesday’s primary. Both Bush and McKinney are backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, whose endorsed candidates have notched a number of key victories this year. Scott Rasmussen, a Republican pollster and president of RMG Research, said he’s not necessarily surprised by the socialist surge. “A small, well-organized campaign, an energized campaign, is a threat in any kind of a small turnout, low turnout election,” he said. “Primaries are internal battles fought by the factions of the 10 percenters,” he said, referring to a term he described as the 10% of voters in either party who are in a “bitter war” with each other. Competitive general elections Michigan’s 7th District Three Democrats are battling it out in Michigan’s 7th District for who will face one of the most vulnerable Republicans this cycle — Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI). Former Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink are considered two of the stronger recruits for the Democratic Party this cycle, but now also face an uphill challenge from progressive candidate William Lawrence, as the Aug. 4 primary is just days away.“One of the more interesting storylines is that Democrats haven’t had a coronation in one of their top pickup opportunities,” GOP strategist Dennis Lennox told the Washington Examiner. “Instead, they ended up in a three-way.“Matt Maasdam and Bridget Brink come from DCCC central casting,” he said. “William Lawrence, who comes from the hard left, depends on Abdul el Sayed’s coattails.”The bitter battle to secure the nomination has been upended by Lawrence’s momentum in the weeks leading up to the primary, something that could result in Lawrence prevailing if Brink and Maasdam split the more moderate vote among Democratic primary voters in the district.As attack ads run against both Brink and Maasdam in the closing weeks, this could be yet another way Lawrence could end up as the beneficiary, especially as a plurality of votes could be enough to clinch the nomination to take on Barrett, who flipped the seat in 2024 when Slotkin gave it up to run for Senate.“I don’t think if this was just a two-way race between either Lawrence and Brink or Lawrence and Maasdam, I think he’d [Lawrence] would be the underdog,” Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey told the Washington Examiner.But these factors don’t mean that Michigan’s 7th District is just a write-off for Democrats at this point.“In these primaries, the voters are aware of the stakes of the general election and are hyper concerned about electability above all else,” Covey said. Florida’s 7th District A litany of scandals plaguing Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL) put this suburban Orlando-area seat on the map for Democrats. That is, if their preferred candidate, Bale Dalton, gets through the primary. Dalton, a Navy veteran and former NASA chief of staff, has raised plenty of money while Mills’s campaign coffers run low — he had less than $100,000 on hand at the end of the second quarter. Dalton faces former Rep. Alan Grayson, a perennial candidate in Florida elections, in the primary. Democratic operators say it’s a make-or-break primary for the party. “That’s a really good example of Democrats having a chance to nominate somebody to put the seat in play or not,” veteran strategist and former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Executive Director Jesse Ferguson told the Washington Examiner. “I’m watching that one to make sure that Democrats nominate somebody that keeps that seat on the board,” said Ferguson, pointing to Dalton’s biographies and Mills’s scandals, which include investigations into alleged campaign finance violations and sexual misconduct. Democrats take on the gerontocracy Connecticut’s 1st District A handful of Democratic incumbents have lost across the map, and Connecticut’s 1st District could prove to be no different. As Rep. John Larson (D-CT) faces former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, it could serve as yet another shake-up for the sitting Democratic House caucus. A change in the old guard and sweeping progressive movement have shaken up the Democratic landscape this cycle, but the nuances of Bronin challenging Larson go beyond the shifts seen in the Democratic Party. “I think that it’s a bit more complicated in Connecticut’s First District because, in some ways, Larson is to the left of Bronin,” Cook Political Report’s Erin Covey said. “It’s also different because Bronan is coming in, unlike most of these challengers, as the former mayor of Hartford, with a lot of name ID and with a kind of pre-existing base of support.”Larson is serving his 14th term in Congress and is often known for his progressive voting record.“I think Larson, what he does have that some of these other incumbents don’t have is like real progressive credentials and progressive endorsers who are backing him,” Covey said. “I think it’s a little bit similar to like the Markey primary from a couple years ago against Joe Kennedy, where you had the generational gap, and you had a you know very well funded, well connected younger opponent, but one that was not running to his left, and so that kind of complicated his path to victory.”But it will be up to the voters to decide how this will shake out on Aug. 11.“I think the ideological component here really complicates the typical assumptions that you would make about the primary,” Covey concluded. Hawaii’s 1st District State Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole, 42, is taking on Rep. Ed Case (D-HI), 73, in a race that has largely flown under the radar in the lead-up to the Aug. 8 primary. Keohokalole has argued it’s time for a new generation of elected officials, a plea that has been heard in multiple Democratic primaries throughout the cycle. Keohokalole has run to the left of Case, a former Blue Dog, who was one of four Democrats to vote for the SAVE Act earlier this session. Meanwhile, Case, a 13-year veteran of Congress, has run on his seniority, appearing in a direct-to-camera ad to say, “Our Hawaii is a very small and very different state, 5,000 miles from Washington, D.C. Without good representation in Congress, we’d just get lost.”Keohokalole’s challenge is part of a broader trend in which older, sometimes more centrist lawmakers fall to younger and more progressive lawmakers. Rasmussen told the Washington Examiner the trend is the “Democratic version of — they’re viewing their older members as what Republicans would call RINOs,” or Republican In Name Only. HOW THE BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL BECAME LAW: GETTING THE VOTES IN THE HOUSE“It’s more than policy,” Rasmussen said and that activists are upset about the direction of their party. “It used to be that [that] was primarily a Republican function,” said Rasmussen, but growing unrest within the Democratic base has led to a series of upsets against long-tenured members.