The primary season got off to an early start, with Texas going in early March. However, there’s an extended break through the remainder of this month and all of April.
Ohio will lead things off in May with a primary that everyone will watch closely. Seven Republicans have lined up for the race to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman. Two of them, Josh Mandel and J.D. Vance, have made the loudest overtures to the MAGA contingent. However, businessman Mike Gibbons leads in the latest polls. Ohio GOP Chairwoman Jane Timken and state Sen. Matt Dolan are well-known but lag behind in polling. With a crowded field and no runoff, Gibbons’s poll number of 22% would be enough to put him in the November general election.
Two other closely watched May primaries in Georgia and Alabama will test the “Trump effect” that Virginia Aabram reported on earlier. Will Brian Kemp prevail in Georgia, or will David Perdue, Trump’s favorite, win out? In Alabama, Trump endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks, but he’s in a tight battle with Katie Britt and Mike Durant.
Other May primaries include:
May 3 – Ohio, Indiana
May 10 – Nebraska, West Virginia
May 17 – North Carolina, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Idaho
May 24 – Alabama, Georgia
Dim Bulbs of the Week
Rep. Madison Cawthorn
While it is undoubtedly too early to compare Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to George Washington or Winston Churchill, it’s difficult not to admire Zelensky’s bravery amid the military onslaught from Russia. Yet, for whatever reason, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina thought it best to call Zelensky a “thug” and said the Ukrainian government is “incredibly corrupt and incredibly evil and is pushing woke ideologies.” We’re not necessarily aware of any wokeness coming out of the Ukrainian government, especially in the middle of a military battle. Still, it is clear that the only thug in all of this is Vladimir Putin.
Russian Embassy to the United Kingdom
While not necessarily related to politics, the embassy gets a special mention here after alleging on Twitter that an attack on a hospital in Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine, was staged. They specifically targeted a pregnant woman named Marianna Podgurskaya, calling her a crisis actor and saying the visible wounds in a viral photo came from “very realistic make-up.” Their proof? The victim has a relatively popular Instagram account. An account that has pictures of her clearly pregnant. Twitter removed the series of tweets, a step the platform takes infrequently with government accounts.
