PHOENIX – Primary victories in Arizona and Michigan for allies of Donald J. Trump on Tuesday confirmed his continued influence over the Republican Party as the former president has sought to purge the party of its critics, install loyalists in key state offices and potential 2024 rivals with a show of brute political force.
In Arizona, Mr. Trump’s Senate pick, Blake Masters, won a crowded primary, as did his pick for Secretary of State Mark Finchem, an election denier who has publicly acknowledged his ties to the far-right militia group Oath Keepers. The governor’s race was pretty much even early Wednesday, even as Mr. Trump’s pick, Kari Lake, was heavily spent.
And in a particularly symbolic victory for Mr. Trump, Rusty Bowers, the Arizona House Republican speaker who gained national attention after testifying against Mr. Trump in the January 6 congressional hearings, lost his bid to the State Senate.
In Michigan, a House Republican who voted to impeach Trump, Representative Peter Meijer, was defeated by a former Trump administration official, John Gibbs, and Mr. Trump’s latest pick for governor, conservative commentator Tudor Dixon. who has repeated his false claims of voter fraud easily won her primary.
Trump and his allies have particularly focused on vote counting and the certification process in both Arizona and Michigan in an effort to oust those who stood in the way of their efforts to undo the 2020 election. The victory of Mr. Finchem, who marched to the Capitol on January 6, was a key sign of how the “Stop the Steal” movement formed on a lie around 2020 has turned into a widespread campaign to try to take control of the levers of the democracy in the run-up to the forthcoming elections.
Tuesday’s primaries in five states — Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, Kansas and Washington state — kicked off a final six-week series of races that will provide a full picture of the Republican Party’s priorities in 2022, how tight the Mr Trump’s grip on the grassroots and the extent to which his falsehoods about a stolen 2020 election have tainted the electorate.
In Washington state, Mr. Trump had backed the challengers of two members of the Republican House who had voted for his impeachment. But both incumbents appeared to be in a strong position to beat Mr Trump’s preferred candidates — taking advantage of the state’s top-two primary system, even though neither race had been called early Wednesday.
Many Republican strategists are eager to move beyond the primaries and this period of infighting to fully focus this fall on beating Democrats and take advantage of President Biden’s waning support and voters’ growing frustration with inflation and the state. of the economy.
In relief for national party strategists, Missouri Republicans rejected the political comeback attempt by Eric Greitens, the scandal-plagued former governor who ran for the Senate. Party leaders feared that Mr. Greitens would have jeopardized an otherwise safe Senate seat for Republicans. Mr. Trump had stayed out of that race until a bizarre last-minute double-approval on Monday of “Eric” — with no last name — a blessing that capped both Mr Greitens, who finished a distant third, and Eric Schmitt, the attorney general. state general, who won the Senate nomination.
In Kansas, voters sent a warning signal to optimistic Republicans as a vote on abortion demonstrated the issue’s electoral potential and changing politics in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. Voters there strongly rejected the attempt to amend the state constitution to remove the protected right to abortion.
Some of the most important Republican games on Tuesday were in Arizona, a top presidential battleground with an open governor race, a contested Senate seat, and multiple competitive House races in 2022.
In the contest for governor, Mr. Trump backed Ms. Lake, a telegenic former newscaster who had become an unabashed champion of Trumpism. Mr. Trump is seeking some redemption after struggling in other governors’ races earlier this year, failing most notably in his bid to oust Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp.
Unlike Mr. Kemp, Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey, who earned Mr. Trump’s ire by backing the results of the 2020 election, was termed and not on the ballot himself. Mr. Ducey backed Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy real estate developer who spent more than $18 million on her flight and who also had the backing of Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president.
Ms. Lake, who has made voter fraud a major part of her candidacy, declared victory at a time when she was actually behind in the counting of votes. “We won this race,” Ms. Lake said at her election night party. “Period of time.” Later, she took the lead for the first time, but that game remained too close to call.
In the Senate race, Mr. Masters, a 35-year-old political newcomer, is running for the Republican nomination to face Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat, who is aiming for a full six-year term after ousting a Republican in 2020. The race is expected to be one of the most controversial of the fall midterms.
The primary win represents the second major win for Peter Thiel, a venture capitalist and major Republican donor who co-wrote a book with Mr. Masters. Thiel put $15 million of his own money into a super PAC to support Mr. Masters and another $15 million in a separate super PAC to support JD Vance, who won his Senate primary in Ohio this spring.
Mr. Masters defeated Jim Lamon, a businessman who pumped $14 million of his personal fortune into his campaign, and Mark Brnovich, the Arizona attorney general who had repeatedly attacked Mr. Trump for failing to investigate his baseless theories about voter fraud.
Holly Law, a 53-year-old living in Phoenix, said the deciding factor in her vote for Ms. Lake and Mr. Masters was the former president’s blessing.
“Trump’s endorsement — that’s it,” she said Monday at a pre-election rally. Ms Law insisted, despite the lack of evidence of fraud, that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump, saying she had stopped watching Fox News altogether because it was the network that first gave her the state. mentioned for Mr Biden.
“Newsmax – 100 percent,” she said of her current viewing habits, referring to the conservative news network.
In Michigan, Mr. Trump had given a belated endorsement to Ms. Dixon, who easily de Republican nomination for governor after two top rivals were thrown out of the vote for submitting fraudulent petitions. Among those on the ballot and among those defeated Tuesday was Ryan Kelley, who led an early poll after being arrested by the FBI in June and charged with trespassing and other crimes related to the storming. from the Capitol on January 6. Kelley was in fourth early on Wednesday.
Tuesday’s Democratic primaries for state offices were less dramatic. In Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs won the Democratic nomination for governor, and in Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer formally became her party’s nominee for a second term.
Michigan had some intense Democratic House primaries, including an expensive one in suburban Detroit, where Representatives Andy Levin and Haley Stevens were drawn to the same district. Ms. Stevens won, among other things, with heavy financial support from the new super PAC branch of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
But the most notable House race in Michigan was Mr. Meijer’s reelection bid. His main rival got a surprising belated boost from the political arm of the House Democrats, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on television commercials, because Gibbs was thought to be easier to beat in a rocking chair this fall.
“I am proud to have remained true to my principles, even though this entailed significant political costs,” Mr Meijer said in a statement admitting his defeat.
Mr Trump personally called Mr Gibbs to congratulate him.
“Yes, sir, your notes have a very, very good reputation,” Mr. Gibbs told him.
“I’m very proud of you. That’s a great job,” Trump said.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s meddling with a pro-Trump candidate has resonated with fellow Democrats, who saw such involvement as undermining the party’s general message that election deniers are a threat to democracy.
“I am disgusted that hard-earned money intended to support Democrats is being used to boost Trump-backed candidates,” Minnesota Representative Dean Phillips said last month, calling Mr. Meijer. “one of the most honorable Republicans in Congress.”
For the other two Trump accusers, Washington state’s top two primary system was poised to help them survive, draw a bigger crowd of candidates and split the vote among their Republican rivals.
Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler led her Trump-backed challenger Joe Kent, a retired Green Beret, with more than half the vote counted. Mr Kent, whose wife was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in 2019, first met Mr Trump at Dover Air Force Base when he went to view the remains of his late wife.
Representative Dan Newhouse, another Republican who voted to impeach Trump, counted among his challengers Loren Culp, a Trump-backed candidate who ran for governor in 2020 and refused to concede that race despite losing by a wide margin. Mr Culp was not among the top two candidates with about half of the votes counted.
