Primary elections 2022 latest: Trump-backed Republican wins in Illinois as New York’s governor cruises to victory

Democrats are heading to the polls on Tuesday for a runoff election in South Carolina to determine which candidate will face Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the US Senate, in November.

Krystle Matthews and Catherine Bruce will duke it out for the chance to wage an uphill battle against Mr Scott in deep-red South Carolina. He previously won reelection in 2016 with more than 60 per cent of the vote.

Voters in eight states will head to the polls on Tuesday. Those states are New York, Colorado, Illinois, Mississippi, Nebraska, Utah, South Carolina and Oklahoma. New York’s primaries tomorrow will include races for statewide seats like the governor and lieutenant governor, while other seats including those in the state legislature and Congress will have their races conclude in August.

Rep Lauren Boebert, one of the House’s most controversial members, is set to face Don Coram in Tuesday’s GOP primary for the 3rd congressional district of Colorado.

She’s favoured to win, but faces a competitive challenger in Don Coram, a member of the state legislature, due in no small part to her own controversial remarks and actions. Two major PACs, the Fire Boebert PAC and the Better Than Boebert PAC, are backing her opponent.

A Republican congressman who voted to create an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack is at risk of losing his seat on Tuesday.

Rep Michael Guest of Mississippi is facing a Trump-backed challenger in his state’s runoff. The congressman previously trailed him by a few hundred votes in the state’s primary election earlier this month.

His opponent, Navy veteran Michael Cassidy, has used his vote against him as well as his support for sending military aid to Ukraine, a prospect opposed by the isolationist far-right of the GOP.

Tuesday’s elections will see the first time New York voters get the chance to vote for (or against) a Giuliani in decades.

Known by some as “America’s Mayor” after the 9/11 terrorist attacks struck his city during his mayoral tenure, Rudy Giuliani saw his reputation diminish to a great extent with his performance as lead attorney for Donald Trump’s ill-conceived effort to overturn the 2020 election in the courts. Now, just under two years later, his son Andrew is a candidate in the Republican primary for New York governor. It’s his first foray into politics at any level.

Mr Giuliani (the younger) is not likely to win his primary on Tuesday; Rep Lee Zeldin is the frontrunner for the GOP contest. If he loses, it will likely be because many voters did not want to trust the governor’s mansion in one of the US’s biggest states to a political newcomer.

Read more from The Associated Press:

Voters in the US are heading to cast their ballots for the first time since the striking down of Roe v Wade, clearing the way for dozens of states to outlaw abortion.

On Tuesday, primaries are being held in Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oklahoma and Utah and runoffs are being conducted in Mississippi and South Carolina, and Nebraska is holding a special election.

Politico Politics editor Scott Bland said that he’s “looking for the first concrete signs of how the [Supreme Court] decision might affect Democratic primaries and the party as a whole going forward this year. In 2018, we saw a powerful swell of interest in female candidates in Democratic primaries all over the country — do we see evidence of anything like that happening this time? Are there any shifts in turnout that we can reasonably categorize as a response to the Dobbs ruling?”

Seven GOP primaries will be decided in Illinois on Tuesday. While the gubernatorial contest has garnered the most attention, Democratic incumbent JB Pritzker, a billionaire who has given $125m to his own campaign, is favoured to win reelection.

In the GOP contest to challenge him, hedge fund founder Ken Griffin has given $50m out of the total $53m raised by the campaign of Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin, who would be the state’s Illinois first Black governor if successful, FiveThirtyEight noted.

GOP donor Richard Uihlein has given $9m to state Senator Darren Bailey, who has brought in $11m in total. Mr Uihlein has also contributed $8m to a political action committee supporting Mr Bailey.

Jesse Sullivan, a venture capitalist, has collected $12.6m, with $11m coming from three donors.

Abortion rights could become the decisive issue in Democratic House primaries in Illinois on Tuesday night.

“Rep Marie Newman is trailing Rep Sean Casten, so if she crosses the finish line, it might indicate that abortion rights supporters gravitated to her — even though Casten holds the same views,” Illinois reporter Shia Kapos said in Monday’s Politico Nightly. “The same goes for races in IL-07, in which Justice Democrats-backed Kina Collins is trailing veteran Rep Danny Davis, an abortion rights supporter who was just endorsed by President Joe Biden.”

“A Collins victory would indicate that the Roe decision had an impact. And in the newly drawn IL-03, the race is tight between Chicago [Alderman] Gil Villegas and state Rep Delia Ramirez,” she added. “As in the other Democratic races, Villegas and Ramirez both support abortion rights.”

“I’m also watching IL-01 — a race that has 17 Democrats in the primary, including an anti-abortion pastor, Chris Butler, who is backed by former Congressman Dan Lipinski — an anti-abortion Democrat who lost to Newman in the last cycle. Lipinski was on robocalls urging support of Butler,” Ms Kapos noted. “The race is a wild card because there are so many candidates, including Jonathan Jackson, the Rev Jesse Jackson’s son. The winner could win with as much as 20 percent of the vote. If Butler does well, it will indicate Lipinski’s anti-abortion message sunk in with voters.”

On 7 June, no one won a majority in the two GOP primaries for the US House in Mississippi, prompting today’s runoff elections.

In the fourth congressional district, Rep Steven Palazzo has come under scrutiny for allegedly spending almost $200,000 in campaign money for personal use.

He received 32 per cent of the vote, seven per cent ahead of Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell. The other five Republicans in the race have endorsed the sheriff, FiveThirtyEight reported.

In the third district, former Navy pilot Michael Cassidy came out ahead of Rep Michael Guest – 48 to 47 per cent.

Mr Cassidy has been blasting Mr Guest for his vote to establish a January 6 commission.

In the Republican primary for Colorado senator, businessman Joe O’Dea is the choice of the establishment.

“He says he supports abortion rights — rare for a Republican, but an electoral asset in a state that’s become a Democratic stronghold,” chief polling analyst Steven Shephard said in Monday’s Politico Nightly. “It’s one of the reasons why Democrats have meddled in the primary to elevate O’Dea’s more extreme opponent, state Rep Ron Hanks, who opposes the right to an abortion in all circumstances. A Democratic-linked outside group has spent just shy of $4 million on ads that either trumpet Hanks’ right-wing credentials or attack O’Dea’s, seeking either to bruise O’Dea ahead of a matchup with Democratic Sen Michael Bennet — or deny O’Dea the nomination entirely.”