2010 Primaries Thread (It's all over now, baby blue)

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

How can someone be "openly black"?

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

What's going on with WA-02? The results were far closer there than I'd have expected.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I presume that the people who are the most motivated to pull an absentee ballot are precisely the type of people who would be voting Miller than Murkowski, so I don't think the Senator is going to get much love on that front.

This result here should be a serious wake-up call to anyone following the November 2010 elections -- voters are pissed, and they're doing crazy things at the ballot box to show it. Don't think that "oh, x is safe because his district is too Democratic," or "y would never flip, the incumbent is just too entrenched."

I kinda wish the tea party would have tried taking out Don Young. Now there's someone who deserves to lose.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I presume that the people who are the most motivated to pull an absentee ballot are precisely the type of people who would be voting Miller than Murkowski, so I don't think the Senator is going to get much love on that front.

This result here should be a serious wake-up call to anyone following the November 2010 elections -- voters are pissed, and they're doing crazy things at the ballot box to show it. Don't think that "oh, x is safe because his district is too Democratic," or "y would never flip, the incumbent is just too entrenched."

I kinda wish the tea party would have tried taking out Don Young. Now there's someone who deserves to lose.

Alaska is especially karazee tho

Especially true, considering they were acting on the advice of Ms. Palin.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Can Miller win a general election or is he crazy like Angle?

A better question: Can you even name his Democratic opponent?

If the answer is "no," then the answer to your questions are "yes" and "it doesn't matter" respectively.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Alaska Republican primary voters = electorate at large? Not exactly.

Oh, please don't make the mistake that I'm talking about Alaska alone. We've already seen a near unprecedented number of frontrunners lose their primaries, including numerous incumbent Senators. This goes far deeper than just one seat.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Johnny, I like Malone and would be supporting him if I was a MA-10 voter, but I'm expecting him to get crushed by Perry.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Johnny, I like Malone and would be supporting him if I was a MA-10 voter, but I'm expecting him to get crushed by Perry.

So the stuff about Perry's illustrious career as a cop hasn't hurt him?

I doubt it. Perry is the more conservative "tea party-ish" candidate in the race, he has the excitement, he's kept up in the money race, and he has most of the endorsements despite Malone being an "establishment" candidate.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Well, since the smoke has cleared here in Massachusetts, let me run down some of the key race.

Overall, surprisingly good turnout for Republicans, who had only one statewide primary (that ended in a lopsided romp).

MA-10
On the Republican side, it looks like my predictions of a Perry romp were accurate. He scored 31,361 votes -- that's 62% -- to Malone's 14,875 (29%) with a couple others bringing up the rear. In fact, Perry got more votes than the Democratic nominee, Norfolk DA Bill Keating (28,617), who narrowly edged State Sen. O'Leary (27,817). Democratic turnout barely outpaced Republican turnout, despite both sides having highly competitive primaries (and despite this being, you know, Massachusetts). That's a dead canary kind of warning in a D+5 district.

MA Attorney General
Martha Coakley was unopposed. The real news here is that Republicans were able to get someone nominated -- Jim McKenna -- via write-in ballots. (That's no small feat, considering 10,000 people had to write him in statewide.) McKenna's presence on the ballot means Republicans have fielded a candidate for every constitutional office here in Massachusetts for the first time in a long while. This race has potential, if only because McKenna is gifted with Coakley's huge negatives and benefits from a strong GOP environment nationally.

MA Treasurer
Grossman (D) won with 61%. Not much surprise here. He faces State Rep. Karyn Polito (R) in November. Grossman is the early favorite, of course, but Polito is unusually well funded for a GOP challenger.

MA Auditor
Democrats got their best nominee in Suzanne Bump, who won 50% against two opponents. On the GOP side, Mary Z. Connaughton slaughtered her opponent, Kamal Jain, with 87% of the vote. This one, I think, has the potential to be an interesting race -- Connaughton has a great message in that she's the candidate for auditor who is actually an auditor.

Elsewhere in the Commonwealth
There were a few other interesting races here and there. Golnik (R) beat Maes for the right to face Rep. Niki Tsongas (D) in MA-05. A few state reps lost their primary, including Pam Richardson (D) out in Framingham.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

How many people voted in the 1996 Delahunt-Johnston match? I can't find that number anywhere. That would be a good point of comparison.

You didn't look hard enough! 

In the 1996 Democratic primary, 47,484 people showed up. Compare that to the GOP side, where turnout stood at 20,269 for a similarly crowded race.

Keating's going to pound Perry on his "I frisked a girl and I liked it" problem. 45,000 votes is good for a Republican primary in a Mass. congressional district, but he'll need a lot more than that to win and will have to be careful not be completely defined by his scandal if he wants to ride general Republican coattails to win.

I guess it depends on how Keating spins it. Had Perry been the one doing the strip searching, it'd be much more of a slam dunk issue.

It clearly wasn't enough to cause Perry any problem in the primary.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

O'Donnell's website reportedly crashed from the attention.  She's having a fund raiser - and raised almost $750,000 so far today.  Democrats should be afraid - not necessarily of O'Donnell, but of the political climate that brought her to victory.

Congratulations to Christine O'Donnell, who has the distinction of being both a symptom and a disease at the same time.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

Honestly, we should keep half-an-eye on any race D+6 or lower. There are bound to be unexpected surprises this year—and this includes scenarios where people like Titus win but someone like Bishop or even McCarthy loses.

I half-heartedly root against McCarthy every year. I feel for her loss, but she had no business making a congressional career out of it.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

I suspect Djou will win. Yet another prediction for someone to laugh at in a few weeks.

I'm still with you on that, Torie.