Jonathan Jackson, a son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, won a crowded Democratic primary on Tuesday for the Chicago-based seat held by retiring Rep. Bobby Rush, setting him up to succeed the longtime lawmaker in Congress next year.

Jackson beat out a long list of rivals in the Democratic primary for Illinois’s 1st Congressional District, including state Sen. Jacqueline Collins, Chicago alderman Pat Dowell, anti-abortion pastor Chris Butler, and Rush-endorsed attorney Karin Norington-Reaves. Winning the primary is tantamount to winning the general election in the heavily Democratic 1st Congressional District, which encompasses most of Chicago’s South Side while extending out to cover many of the city’s southwestern suburbs.

Rush has served in Congress continuously since he was first elected in 1992. Prior to pursuing a career in public office, Rush was a civil rights activist and Black Panther. He founded the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968, and while he was involved with the organization, he served six months in prison on a weapons charge. He left the Black Panthers in 1974 and was eventually elected to the Chicago City Council, where he served for a decade before winning a seat in Congress.

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Republican state Sen. Mike Flood won the special election in Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District to replace former Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry.

Flood beat out Democratic state Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks for the seat that was left vacant after Fortenberry was convicted of lying to the FBI about campaign contributions and resigned in March. Flood and Brooks are also facing each other in the general election in November for a full term in the solidly Republican district. Republicans backed Flood against Fortenberry when he was still on the ballot for the regular primary.

“Today, our nation is at a crossroads,” Flood said on his campaign website. “More so than at any other point in our lifetimes, we face a choice between prosperity and socialism; traditional values or liberal wokeness; and greater freedom or bigger government. The radical Left wants to fundamentally reshape America in ways that will destroy the nation we love. We can’t let that happen.”

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Democrat Eric Sorensen and Republican Esther Joy King have won their respective party nominations to replace the retiring Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) in Illinois’s 17th Congressional District in a crowded and competitive primary process for the soon-to-be-open seat.

The Democratic primary in the district in the northwestern part of the state attracted candidates from various factions of the Democratic Party, from centrists to liberals.

Eric Sorensen, a former television meteorologist who campaigned on addressing climate change, emerged victorious from a field of six candidates. Sorensen would be Illinois’s first openly gay congressman.

King, an Army judge advocate general officer who pledged bipartisanship and an effort to bridge political divides, defeated Charlie Helmick, who sought to tie himself to former President Donald Trump, for the Republican nomination.

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Illinois Republicans are divided over state Sen. Darren Bailey’s win in the GOP gubernatorial primary, as state Democrats spent millions to sink his centrist primary rival.

Richard Irvin, the mayor of Aurora, lost to Bailey after incumbent Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Democrats backed Bailey in the primary because they believe him to be an easier opponent to beat in the general. The situation is exposing rifts in the state Republican Party, according to NBC News.

“This is the biggest debacle I’ve ever seen. It’s the biggest screw-up I’ve ever seen and the biggest waste of money I’ve ever seen,” former Illinois Republican Party Chair Pat Brady told the outlet.

Though former President Donald Trump endorsed Bailey and he gained favorability among GOP voters, some Republicans think the party blew its shot to end the Democratic control of the state with a centrist candidate who had a chance in the general election.

“It’s the most epic political failure of all time,” state Rep. Blaine Wilhour, who supports Bailey, said of the state GOP’s push for Irwin early on. “It’s a total repudiation of the political establishment from the voters.”

Colorado state Rep. Barbara Kirkmeyer beat out three Republican primary challengers Tuesday to secure the GOP nomination in a highly competitive general election that could determine which party wins a majority in the House of Representatives.

Colorado’s 8th Congressional District primary saw fierce faceoffs between Kirkmeyer, Weld County Commissioner Lori Saine, Thornton Mayor Jan Kulmann, and former Army Green Beret Tyler Allcorn.

Kirkmeyer will face off against Democratic challenger state Rep. Yadira Caraveo, who won her party’s nomination in April.

The Republican candidates all ran their primaries as staunch conservatives. They have vowed to stop the “far Left’s radical agenda,” blown up boxes labeled “gun control” in campaign ads, and said proudly they would not fly a gay pride flag. However, Kirkmeyer will now most assuredly have to pivot and appeal to more moderates in the general election.

Saine, the only candidate who qualified through the party assembly (the others submitted petitions), is also the most conservative of the bunch. If elected, her top priority would be to stop President Joe Biden’s agenda.

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Rep. Lee Zeldin has won the Republican nomination for New York governor after a contentious yearlong campaign.

Zeldin, who represents New York’s 1st Congressional District on Long Island, will face incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in November. He beat out competitors Andrew Giuliani, the son of former New York Mayor and Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani, and 2014 Republican gubernatorial nominee Rob Astorino.

Zeldin was attacked by his Republican competitors for not supporting Trump enough and attacked by Democrats for being too close to Trump. The four-way primary, which also included businessman Harry Wilson, was unexpected after most Republican leaders in the state said they would support Zeldin when he announced his run in April 2021, according to Politico. At the time of his announcement, Zeldin expected to face former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the seat, but Cuomo resigned after a series of sexual harassment allegations in August of last year.

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Colorado Republicans on Tuesday rejected Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, an election skeptic who has been barred by state courts from her role managing elections in the county due to a security breach of voting equipment data, for their secretary of state nomination. Former Jefferson County Clerk Pam Anderson, who is also a former head of the state’s county clerks’ association, won the Republican nomination in the race.

Anderson defended the state’s vote-by-mail system and the legitimacy of the 2020 results. Without any recent polling in the race, Anderson’s victory is something of an upset as she was out-fundraised by Peters.

Peters was one of series of Republicans to seek the nomination for their state’s top elections role after denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election or circulating false claims about the results, but she was arguably the most controversial of these candidates, as she currently faces criminal charges.

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The GOP primary for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma will head to a runoff after the top two candidates advanced in a contest to succeed retiring Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK).

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) and candidate T.W. Shannon, who was the state’s former speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, will now face each other in a runoff election slated for Aug. 23.

Now in his fifth house term, 44-year-old Mullin said he believes the only way to change Washington, D.C., is to “start changing the resume you send up here,” in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

“My life experience has been quite broad, but it’s been business. And if you want to change the way we do things up here, then quit making political decisions and let’s start making business decisions,” said Mullin, who operated his family plumbing business, was once a professional mixed martial artist, and has repeatedly touted himself as an outsider from Washington politics.

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Conservative firebrand and freshman Rep. Mary Miller managed to edge out Rep. Rodney Davis in the heated Republican primary battle for Illinois’s 15th Congressional District on Tuesday.

Her win comes in the wake of former President Donald Trump holding a rally in the district on Saturday in an effort to boost her odds in the neck-and-neck race.

Trump opted to endorse Miller in the race despite House GOP leaders urging him to stay neutral earlier this year.

The race was seen as a litmus test for the power of the former president’s endorsement after a mixed record in prairies this cycle.

Davis conceded the race late Tuesday.

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Firebrand freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert has won renomination in Colorado’s 3rd District’s Republican primary.

She is heavily favored for reelection in her solid red district. Boebert has billed herself as one of former President Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters.

Construction executive Joe O’Dea won the Republican nomination for Senate in Colorado to challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Michael Bennett.

O’Dea is a first-time candidate, and was able tobeat primary opponent Ron Hanks. The Democratic Party gambled by boosting Hanks and his election fraud theories in the past weeks, but thereby painted O’Dea as a centrist and likely helped him secure the nomination.

“All of these shady SUPER PACs controlled by Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Michael Bennet have spent millions upon millions of dollars trying to take me out…trying to make sure this moment never happened,” O’Dea said in his victory speech.  “Me. Joe O’Dea. A carpenter and a contractor who has never run for any office in my life.”

Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) has been defeated in a runoff election amid a campaign finance investigation.

Palazzo was defeated by Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell for the Republican nomination in the 4th Congressional District, which spans the southeastern region of the state between Louisiana and Alabama.

After Ezell qualified for the runoff election, he was endorsed by all of the other primary challengers.

Palazzo was forced into a runoff election earlier this month after a crowded field of primary challengers ran against him as he faced allegations he misused campaign funds.

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Chicago had a low voter turnout in Tuesday’s primary elections, with about 20% of residents casting votes as of 7 p.m. local time.

ABC News also reported that voter turnout is on the rise in the Chicago suburbs.

A state lawmaker with key endorsements from the Left won a primary election for Illinois 3rd Congressional District on Tuesday, strongly positioning her to win a seat in Congress this fall.

State Rep. Delia Ramirez, who was backed by a laundry list of high-profile liberals including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), defeated Chicago Alderman Gilbert Villegas to win the Democratic nomination for the western Chicago-area seat.

The 3rd district, which is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Marie Newman, was redrawn by the Illinois General Assembly to shed majority-white suburbs in southwestern Chicago and pick up parts of the 4th Congressional District in order to become a Hispanic-majority seat. The seat’s partisan makeup is heavily Democratic, so Ramirez is expected to cruise through the general election in November.

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Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) won a runoff election on Tuesday for the Republican nomination in Mississippi‘s 3rd Congressional District after he voted for the creation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, sparking criticism from some in his party that he was disloyal to former President Donald Trump.

Guest, first elected in 2018 to represent the Jackson-area district, defeated Michael Cassidy, a former Navy fighter pilot.

In the initial primary race earlier this month, Guest narrowly led Cassidy 47.5% to 47%, with a third candidate also in the race. But Mississippi law requires a candidate to win a majority of the vote rather than a plurality in a primary in order to be the outright winner. Without a majority, the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff election. The results surprised some political observers who had considered Guest safe.

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State Sen. Darren Bailey has won the Republican nomination for Illinois governor, and will face incumbent Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in November.

He beat out several primary opponents to win the nomination. Bailey represents a district in southern Illinois, and sued Pritzker over his pandemic restrictions in 2020.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has won renomination in the Democratic primary.

She was largely expected to win the primary as she campaigns for her first full term in the office. Hochul assumed the role of governor after her predecessor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, resigned from office in the midst of sexual harassment allegations.

Sen. James Lankford easily won the GOP nomination for another term as an Oklahoma senator.

The Associated Press called the race with only 6% of the vote reported and the incumbent pulling over 73%. Lankford’s Democratic opponent has yet to be determined.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has won the Democratic primary in his reelection bid.

He had one primary challenger who he easily beat back. Pritzker is potentially eyeing a presidential run, having recently visited New Hampshire. He also pledged to make Illinois a safe-haven for women seeking abortions from nearby states where the procedure is banned.

As national Democrats attempt to turn the electorate’s focus to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Florida’s Senate race seems poised to put the viability of that strategy to the test.

Rep. Val Demings, the likely Democratic nominee to challenge GOP Sen. Marco Rubio for his seat in November, is attempting to reset her struggling campaign by putting Rubio’s views on abortion front and center. Demings’s campaign is the first, but likely not the last, Democratic effort to adopt this tactic in the 2022 cycle.

Wasting no time after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which found that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to an abortion, Demings launched a campaign website titled “Rubio’s Plan for Women” and is running a digital ad attacking the senator for his stances on abortion and other women’s issues.

Accusing Rubio of seeking to “control women” and supporting “forced pregnancies,” the ad highlights the senator’s previous opposition to abortion from the point of conception, even in cases of rape and incest.

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SPRINGFIELD, Illinois — In the final stretch of the heated GOP primary battle against a Donald Trump-endorsed rival, Rep. Rodney Davis said he feels good about his odds of winning reelection.

Davis, first elected to the House in 2012, is battling freshman Rep. Mary Miller for the Republican nomination in this safe-red seat stretching from the state capital down to Illinois’s conservative lower tier. The former president is set to hold a rally with Miller on Saturday near Quincy, Illinois, a Mississippi River community. But polling shows the lawmakers in a virtual dead heat just days ahead of Tuesday’s 15th Congressional District primary.

Davis is the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, a city council of sorts to manage operations on the south side of the Capitol. Davis has earned a reputation as an affable deal-maker in the chamber. He has embraced a localized campaign strategy, placing emphasis on meeting with voters and business leaders in the area to tout his record and discuss their policy concerns.

It’s an approach he feels will provide him with an edge on Tuesday.

“I feel really good. Our internals, our data on the ground is very positive. We’re on track to hit [knocking on] 100,000 doors, and that to me, as somebody who used to run campaigns for other people running for office, you’ve got to look at the entire picture,” Davis told the Washington Examiner in an interview, referencing his earlier career as a campaign manager and then as a staff member for former Rep. John Shimkus, an Illinois Republican who represented much of the same region from 1997 to 2021.

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Former Arizona Rep. Matthew Salmon announced Tuesday he is dropping out of a crowded GOP primary race for governor, calling a win in the Grand Canyon State “no longer a mathematical possibility.”

Salmon, who co-founded the conservative House Freedom Caucus, was among five Republicans vying for the position.

He said his decision was “incredibly difficult” but that he felt “it is the right thing to do.”

“This campaign has never been about me,” Salmon said in a written statement. “It is about you — and Republicans deserve more than having their votes split in the primary.”

The rest of the Republican candidates, Kari Lake, Karrin Robson, Paola Tulliani, and Scott Neely, will square off in a debate Wednesday. Arizona’s primary elections are slated for Aug. 2.

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The battle for Senate control will hinge on campaigns in any one of six states, maybe seven, as Republicans aim to net the single seat they need to reclaim the majority in the midterm elections.

Democrats are defending the barest of advantages. Their rule over the evenly divided, 50-50 Senate exists courtesy of the tiebreaking vote Vice President Kamala Harris wields in her constitutionally designated role as Senate president. That leaves Democrats little room for error in a 2022 election cycle shaping up as a Republican wave and correspondingly leaves the GOP multiple options to reach 51 among the six to seven states where the parties are duking it out.

Interviews with the Washington Examiner Monday revealed extraordinary consensus regarding the Senate battlegrounds, with Democratic and Republican strategists agreeing on the states with the most competitive campaigns. They are listed here in alphabetical order, to account for the evolving nature of each contest.

What appears most competitive today, or winnable for either side of the aisle, could change at a moment’s notice, especially in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Unlikely to change is the defensive crouch Democrats find themselves in. The map simply offers the GOP more offensive opportunities to reach the promised land than it does for Democrats to block them from getting there.

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