Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections. Democrats have tended to do well in special elections during the past two years.
If last night’s election returns were going to provide any surprises, they weren’t supposed to come out of Ohio’s 6th Congressional District.
In a special election race that got basically zero national attention, Republican state Sen. MICHAEL RULLI was thought certain to rout Democrat MICHAEL KRIPCHAK, a former Air Force officer and once-aspiring actor who quit a Youngstown-area restaurant job to run for Congress.
DONALD TRUMP, after all, had won the blue-collar, mostly rural district previously represented by GOP Rep. BILL JOHNSON by 29 points in 2022. Furthermore, Rulli raised nearly 30 times more than Kripchak’s shoestring budget.
Rulli, in the end, managed only a not-quite-10-point victory over Kripchak — a roughly 20-point swing toward Democrats versus Trump’s 2020 showing. More from AP
Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell at WP:
Rep. William Timmons (R-S.C.) defeated a primary challenger last night who had pledged to join the House Freedom Caucus, dealing a blow to the hard-right group’s efforts to expand its ranks.
More than a thousand miles away, North Dakota Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak easily beat another Republican who said he would join the Freedom Caucus, Rick Becker, in the race for the seat Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R) gave up to run for governor.
The results are the latest repudiation of hard-right candidates in GOP primaries this year, after Reps. Tony Gonzales (R-Tex.) and Mike Bost (R-Ill.) narrowly beat challengers to their right.
Timmons’s and Fedorchak’s victories are also a less than encouraging sign for Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), the Freedom Caucus chairman who is facing a tough primary of his own next week.
Good and several other Freedom Caucus members had endorsed state Rep. Adam Morgan — who lost to Timmons 52 percent to 48 percent — and Becker. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who isn’t a member of the caucus but is often aligned with it, also backed them.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) also easily survived her primary, defeating two challengers.
She was the first of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership to face a primary challenger. (One of the others, Rep. Ken Buck (Colo.), resigned in March, and another, Rep. Matt Rosendale (Mont.), isn’t running for reelection.)
Mace said before the results came in that she wanted her victory to embarrass McCarthy.
“I hope I drive Kevin McCarthy crazy,” she told the New York Times.
