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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

KY, OR, PA Primary Results Open Thread

Posted by DavidNYC

Kentucky, Oregon and Pennsylvania all have primary elections today. The main events:

PA-08: Patricky Murphy vs. Andy Warren. I'm rooting strongly for Murphy.

KY-03: Andrew Horne vs. John Yarmuth. Horne, like Murphy, is also a Fighting Dem, but I don't really have a dog in this fight.

OR-Gov: Incumbent Ted Kulongoski faces a surprisingly strong primary challenge. This race hasn't been especially prominent on my radar, though from what I've read, it looks like Kulongoski will have a fight on his hands in November even if he prevails tonight.

Results: KY | OR | PA.

Posted at 09:37 PM in 2006 Elections, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania | Technorati

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Comments

Yarmuth beat Horne by a healthy margin--54% to 32%.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at May 16, 2006 09:59 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The Pennsylvania results seem to be coming in later than usual due to the introduction of the electronic voting machines. If anyone's interested, there seem to be faster-updating results here.

http://kdka.com/electionresults

Posted by: Rob at May 16, 2006 10:31 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Holy crap.

If anyone didn't think Don Sherwood (PA-10) was vulnerable, look again:

Kathy Scott, Sherwood's GOP challenger (and former guidance counsellor), has 47% to Don's 53% with 153 of 543 precincts reporting! Whoa. If this guy isn't knocked off in the primary tonight, look for Chris Carney to have a great shot in November--better than most suspected. (Sherwood, if you recall, is most recently famous for having a 5-year extramarital affair and allegedly choking his mistress in his DC apartment in 2004.)

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at May 16, 2006 10:33 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Okay, Kathy is down a little bit to 45.7% with 186 precincts reporting. My lean is that a very bloodied Sherwood is the best result for Chris Carney, so I hope she holds around that percentage. This is one race that's going to heat up to at least Sestak-Weldon levels, at least.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at May 16, 2006 10:36 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

With about half of the precincts reporting, Murphy has a 66-33 lead on Warren. I think it's safe to call this one for the Murph.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at May 16, 2006 10:46 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Another Fighting Dem goes down (Andrew Horne). This storyline is slowly slipping away from us with the loss of Paul Hackett, Tim Dunn, Joe Sulzer, and now Horne.

Posted by: Mark at May 16, 2006 10:54 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Good point. How many Iraq vets are left standing now?

I can only think of David Harris in Texas.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at May 16, 2006 10:56 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Wow. That Sherwood challenge IS nuts. However, if Sherwood loses, I think Carney's chances might actually get better. He'd be running for an essentially open seat, against someone with name rec no higher than his.

Some people argue that Lampson's chances, post-DeLay, are not as good because DeLay was such a toxic name on the ballot. I'm not so sure - incumbency and name rec are powerful tools.

Posted by: DavidNYC at May 16, 2006 10:56 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

That's true, David--it does cut both ways. But we'll have the chance to see both alternate scenarios play out in Texas and PA this November. It looks like Sherwood is going to survive tonight.

Posted by: HellofaSandwich at May 16, 2006 11:00 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

I don't see how how the "storyline is slipping away from us" when there are some 70 Fighting Dem candidates. And the four most prominent - Duckworth, P. Murphy, Sestak, Massa - are thriving. (And don't forget Webb on the Senate side.)

I've seen people express this opinion before, and I just don't get it. There's no way you can take any randomly assembled group of dozens of candidates, who are united only by one common thread, and not expect quite a few to lose.

I should also add that a number of lower-profile Fighting Dems have won primaries, including Ted Ankrum in TX and John Laesch in IL.

What I will agree with is that the Fighting Dems idea isn't turning out to be as powerful as some people, myself included, had hoped, in large part because very few of these candidates are running anything approaching even mid-major status races. Yeah, there are a few nice profiles here and there in the tradmed every so often, but I don't think this is going to be as big as some of us thought.

Posted by: DavidNYC at May 16, 2006 11:03 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

David, you're right that there is still some life in the Fighting Dems theme, but it's unsettling to build yourself up for the candidacy of Fighting Dems who you expect to play in a way most Democrats wouldn't in conservative districts (such as Dunn, Horne, and Sulzer), only to see the party end before it starts for them. The Fighting Dems storyline is compelling, and when I see would-up opportunities handed to Zack Space, Steve Kissell and John Yarmuth, whose story is less likely to be instantly appealing, it concerns me. Not to demean those guys. I don't know anything about them. The problem is that neither does anybody else.

Posted by: Mark at May 16, 2006 11:12 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

A few points about Fighting Dems, Mark:
- If they were not able to win their primaries under neutral conditions (discluding Ohio), they were probably not the best candidates after all.
- The fact that the non-Fighting Democrats won, such as Zack Space and John Yarmuth indicate that they both have very strong grassroot support that will likely transcend into the general election.
- For a lot of these Fighting Dems in formely-thought unwinnable conservative districts, they now find themselves within a great chance of winning. Take the 2 Colorado Dems, Bill Winters and Jay Fawcett, where Bill Winters leads against Tom Tancredo when biographies are compared (He has a 9% name ID, FYI), and Jay Fawcett already acquires around 47% of the vote in Dobson land. VERY encouraging if you ask me.

Posted by: KainIIIC at May 17, 2006 12:01 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

The gov race for Oregon is a mixed bag. The good news is that Mannix lost to Saxton in the GOP primary. This is good because Saxton is a moderate republican and this signals that the wide-right is losing steam in Oregon and we might be returning to the days of moderate and sensible republicans (Sen. Hatfield). The bad news is that the dem candidate Kulongowski is not popular and a moderate republican will push him in November.

Posted by: zoregon at May 17, 2006 12:42 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Did Dertinger get the 1000 he needed to get on the ballot. Politics1.com seems to indicate barr and Dertinger got the numbers, but that isn't usually enough. Nice to see Patrick Murphy set and Sherwood 57 is fabulous, they needed Bush and Santorum robo calls just to save his butt, and incase they didn't see the Washington Post poll, that just might not work after all.
We have at least 4 clear possible PA pick ups, and I like Altmire a bunch. Hard to get a read on Kluko.

Posted by: Democraticavenger at May 17, 2006 01:38 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Well, here's a booster shot of good news from Pennsylvania: The top 2 Republicans in the Pennsylvania Senate were defeated by their primary opponents, along with 9 GOP incumbents in the House and 3 Democratic House incumbents. It's pretty clear that the pay raise scandal hurts the majority GOP far more than the Democrats.

On top of that, in a special election, Andrew Dinniman has defeated Republican Carol Aichele to become the first Democratic state senator from Chester County in memory. This cuts the GOP margin in the state senate to 29/21.

Posted by: X Stryker at May 17, 2006 09:21 AM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

PA results analysis:
Casey at 85% alleviates the few concerns I ever had regarding his chances against repugnant Rick, nice to see he even bested Santorum in the raw vote despite having two challengers. And Rendell outpaced Swann in raw vote however, interesting to note though that Rendell got about 100,000 less votes than the Dem Senate candidates combined. As far as the republican spin that the only contests were on the Dem side…they weren’t much of a contest were they? And please remember all those State House, local contests and Congressional Primaries that caused the repubs to actually have a turnout. To turnout 11 republican statehouse incumbents.
Swann running 4% better than Santorum Statewide should be noteworthy especially as Santorum ran 3% ahead of Swann in metro Philly, a sign that Rendell will do very well in that area. If anyone thinks Weldon is on his way to a win in Nov because he had double the vote of Sestak be sure to look at CD-4 where the Dem challengers combined had almost double the vote of Cong Melissa Hart or CD-6 where the Dems had 20% more of the vote than Cong Fitzpatrick and CD-18 where the Dem contenders combined got 80% more votes than Cong Tim Murphy. By comparison, Dem Statewide turnout exceeded GOP turnout by 12%.
Really bad news for Sherwood, who gets a 44%…we don’t want your ass rating. If this had been against a republican of the same or close philosophy I could see the sole punishment angle, but against a lefty Dem who converted to run as a republican and didn’t accept contributions or actively campaign?? The retribution will carry over to November, Carney’s chances of replacing Sherwood have just increased exponentially.
BTW, it wasn’t just “extra-marital affair” Sherwood was involved in, evidently it was a domestic violence scandal too, this by a hypocrite who had worked the “family values” issues to his advantage in past elections.
So much for the sanctity of marriage bunch. Does anyone think Sanctity Santorum and Sherwood will appear on the campaign trail together?

Posted by: Predictor at May 17, 2006 12:46 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

John had the most name recognition in KY-3 and is a good friend of mine. He knows the base and I expect him to win in November.

Posted by: Daniel at May 17, 2006 05:54 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

Well, CQ Politics has read the results and has just moved PA-10 from Republican Favored to "Leans Republican"
Here is the headline and the link:
"PA 10: Lingering Scandal Puts Sherwood on At-Risk List
By Greg Giroux | 5:03 PM; May. 17, 2006"
http://www.cqpolitics.com/2006/05/pa_10_lingering_scandal_puts_s.html

Carney's going to need some cash to pull this off, here's an excerpt:
"Like many first-time candidates in districts that lean to the other party, Carney hasn’t been breaking any fundraising records: He reported $185,000 in receipts and $84,000 still in the bank as of April 26. But that should pick up as state and national Democratic Party officials — who have showered increased attention on Carney in recent weeks — sense an unexpected opportunity in the district. Sherwood had $801,000 in receipts and $474,000 in available cash as of April 26."

Posted by: Predictor at May 18, 2006 02:21 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment

This is good because Saxton is a moderate republican and this signals that the wide-right is losing steam in Oregon and we might be returning to the days of moderate and sensible republicans

Not hardly. Saxton won the primary by out-right-winging Mannix.

Don't take my word for it, listen to Democratic gubernatorial candidate Pete Sorenson.

Posted by: Kari Chisholm at May 20, 2006 06:07 PM | Permalink | Edit Comment | Delete Comment