Nothing too exciting happened tonight in the primary elections in Ohio, North Carolina, and Indiana. A quick look didn’t reveal any major upsets or surprises. Probably the best news of the night came from Ohio’s 2nd District, where former The Apprentice contestant Surya Yalamanchili won the right to contest for Mean Jean Schmidt’s seat. His opponent had suggested that the district’s voters wouldn’t vote for a name they couldn’t pronounce. A big win for Procter & Gamble.
As The Hill put it:
The anti-establishment fever wasn’t enough to take down incumbents or big-name candidates on Tuesday, but it was enough to be noticed.
It was noticed by Rep. Dan Burton who won despite failing to crack thirty percent. And it was noticed by North Carolina Reps. Heath Schuler and Larry Kissell, too.
In North Carolina, two vulnerable Democrats who voted against their party’s healthcare bill – Reps. Heath Shuler and Larry Kissell – each saw their opponents take about two-fifths of the vote, even though their opponents barely raised any money at all. Shuler won with 61.5 percent, while Kissell took 62.5 – strikingly low numbers for incumbents without major opposition.
In the North Carolina Senate race, Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham are headed for a run-off, neither of them able to crack the 40% threshold needed to avoid one. I don’t have any big problems with Cunningham, but progressives would be well advised to lend Marshall a hand because the party establishment will be backing Cunningham in a big way and he’s not the better of the two.
In the Ohio Senate race, the winner was Lee Fisher. That’s kind of a bummer, but he’s a conventional Democrat and would be a marked improvement over the retiring George Voinovich or former Bush OMB director and trade representative Rob Portman.
There are some jewels to glean from the data, but a quick look doesn’t reveal anything glaring. There was resistance to the Establishment of both parties, but not enough to overturn any applecarts.
In North Carolina, a non-Young Guns candidate, Tim D’Annunzio, finished first in the primary to face Kissell, beating three Young Guns candidates. But he failed to achieve 40 percent of the vote and will go to a runoff with former sportscaster Harold Johnson.
Overall, it was a night of indecision on the part of GOP voters. In nine contested primaries in Indiana, only one nominee came out with more than 50 percent of the vote.
I think I detect some numbers to support a higher energy level on the Republican side, but nothing overly troubling on its face. The Republicans got who they wanted, for the most part and (the North Carolina senate race excepted) so did the Democrats. The winner of the Marshall/Cunningham runoff will emerge stronger in every respect except cash-on-hand, and the Dems are going to be very competitive in both Ohio and Indiana, so I don’t have anything to complain about. It would have been nice to see the backside of Dan Burton, though. Oh, you know what I mean.
