Primary elections were held Tuesday in Kentucky, Alabama, Georgia, Oregon, Idaho and Pennsylvania. The contests were seen as a further test of President Donald Trump 's grip on Republican voters.
In Kentucky, Trump’s handpicked candidate Ed Gallrein defeated Rep. Thomas Massie in a primary election challenge. Trump sought to unseat Massie after the eight-term representative broke with him on issues, including the release of the Epstein files.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic voters have picked nominees they hope can flip Republican-held seats seen as critical for the party to retake the U.S. House. The races showed Gov. Josh Shapiro’s influence in the state, with all three candidates he endorsed in contested races winning.
In Georgia, Republicans will have two runoffs on June 16. Mike Collins and Derek Dooley will compete for the chance to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November. In addition, Burt Jones and Rick Jackson advanced to the runoff for governor. Keisha Lance Bottoms won the Democratic nomination for governor.
In Oregon, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek defeated nine primary challengers and she will face off in November against Republican Christine Drazan. Voters also rejected a gas tax increase as prices at the pump soar with the war in Iran.
In Alabama, U.S. Rep. Barry Moore advanced to a runoff for the Republican nomination to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who won the GOP nomination for governor and will face Democrat Doug Jones.
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The victory by the state senator sets up a rematch for November, when she will again face Democrat Tina Kotek. Drazan ran against Kotek in 2022 and lost.
Drazan advanced from a crowded field of 14 GOP primary candidates that included a fellow Republican legislator and a former NBA player.
“I’m not surprised at all that Oregonians have rejected a completely unpopular tax increase,” Republican state Sen. Bruce Starr, who helped lead the gas tax referendum campaign, told The Associated Press Tuesday night. “Oregon voters will not be ignored. Oregon taxpayers will not be ignored.”
He’s a three-term congressman and member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus who has said Alabama deserves a “Trump conservative” in the Senate.
Trump has called Moore “a totally reliable MAGA Warrior!” During a brief telephone rally Monday night, Trump said: “Barry is going to do a fantastic job. He will fight for you in the Senate.”
Adair, a county commissioner in central Oregon’s Deschutes County, beat one opponent to win the Republican primary for the state’s 5th District.
The state’s lone competitive U.S. House district stretches from southern Portland across the Cascade Range to Bend, which is in Deschutes County.
Adair will face off against the incumbent, Democratic U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, in November’s general election. Republicans are hoping they can win the seat back from Democrats after briefly flipping it for one term in 2022 for the first time in decades.
The Georgia Republican is still making the rounds at his watch party after qualifying for a June 16 Senate primary runoff against U.S. Rep. Mike Collins.
Different from many other candidates, Dooley has been milling about most of the night, starting soon after polls closed. Among his happiest supporters: his mother, 86-year-old Barbara Dooley.
Derek’s late father, Vince Dooley, was the longtime University of Georgia football coach and athletic director.
Barbara Dooley ran for Congress in 2002 and lost a Republican runoff. Vince Dooley considered a gubernatorial bid as a Democrat in 1990 but opted against it.
The legendary coach died in 2022, shortly after endorsing his former player, Republican Herschel Walker, in a failed Senate bid.
Speaking at her celebration after winning the Democratic nomination for Georgia governor, Lance Bottoms vowed to stand up to the president.
She also said Georgians showed their voices would “never be silenced” and promised to make sure every resident had a chance to succeed.
“It means stopping Donald Trump every time his policies hurt Georgia, and also taking action here to make life better for people across the state,” she said.
The Democratic-controlled Legislature passed the contested gas tax increases last year when it also raised a series of other fees to help fix roads and close a gap in the state’s transportation budget.
Republicans launched a referendum campaign to refer it to the ballot and give voters the final say on whether to raise the tax by 6 cents to 46 cents a gallon.
The rejection of the tax is a win for Republicans. Democrats didn’t organize efforts to campaign for the gas tax increase, noting it was coming before voters as the Iran war causes prices at the pump to skyrocket. Some party members said in the lead-up to the primary that they anticipated voters would reject it.
They will compete in a June 16 runoff after neither candidate received at least 50% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary.
Collins, 59, represents a district east of Atlanta. Dooley, 58, is a lawyer and former football coach running for office for the first time.
Another candidate, U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter, did not qualify for the runoff.
The winner will face Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November.
The seat is being vacated by Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor.
Incumbent Tina Kotek beat nine opponents to win the Democratic primary. Political experts had expected her to win, as her challengers had raised little to no money and didn’t have experience in elected office.
Kotek will face off in November against whoever advances from a crowded Republican primary field of 14 candidates.
A self-described “proud troublemaker,” Rabb is a member of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives, where he made a name for himself by backing left-wing causes. He will almost certainly go to Washington next year to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans since no Republican filed to run in the majority Black district.
Rabb was endorsed in the four-way primary by progressive stalwarts including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and online streamer Hasan Piker.
He fended off Sharif Street, a state senator and former state party chair who had prominent establishment backers and a familiar name as the son of John F. Street, the city’s former two-term mayor. Rabb also beat Dr. Ala Stanford, a pediatric surgeon who was backed by millions of dollars from 314 Action, a left-leaning political action committee aimed at electing scientists to Congress.
The former Atlanta mayor hopes to win a seat that has eluded her party for more than two decades.
Bottoms’ pitch to voters was that she was “battle-tested” after a mayoral term in which she had to manage crime and the COVID-19 pandemic before her surprise decision not to seek reelection.
Like other Democrats, Bottoms cites expanding healthcare, affordable housing and better education as among her top issues.
Democrats have not won the Georgia governor’s office for 24 years.
Georgia Rep. Mike Collins criticized Ossoff during remarks Tuesday night, aiming to link him to Democrats in California and New York.
He talked up his support for the Laken Riley Act and his longtime support for the president. Although he must first clear a runoff vote for the Republican nomination for Senate, he looked ahead to the general election and cast the choice between Ossoff and the GOP as a stark choice.
“You can replace a Democrat with an actual conservative,” he said.
The wins in the Pennsylvania votes come as Democrats assemble their slate for a fall contest in which they’ll try to capture a U.S. House majority.
Those three swing districts are held by Republican U.S. Reps. Scott Perry, Brian Fitzpatrick and Ryan Mackenzie.
For Shapiro, the election year is an opportunity to show his political strength in a premier battleground state should he decide to run for president in 2028.
The president has been on a Republican primary winning streak. In a matter of weeks, his preferred candidates nearly swept Indiana state Senate races, knocked off Louisiana U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and ousted Kentucky U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie.
But the Georgia Republican runoff for governor will be something different.
Sure, Trump has his loyalist in Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was one of the president’s fake electors in the 2020 scheme to overturn the presidential election. He was a state lawmaker then.
But Jones will match up against a billionaire, Rick Jackson, who has made clear he’ll spend as much as it takes. He’s already plowed $83 million of his fortune into the contest.
That’s no guarantee Jackson can buck recent trends. But it does mean that Jones and Trump won’t be able to control the narrative.
The two-term congressman is the owner of a family trucking business. He represents a district east of Atlanta. He has made immigration enforcement a focus of his candidacy.
Georgia Republicans are looking for a challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff. Collins and Buddy Carter are playing up their conservative records on Capitol Hill, while former college football coach Derek Dooley pitches himself as a political outsider.
Jeanine Thomas, a Massie supporter who was at the congressman’s watch party, said she appreciated his integrity.
“He and Trump had the same campaign promises, and he stuck with them,” Thomas said. “He was courageous enough to not toe the line when it was going against what he had promised his constituents that he would do, and unfortunately he was punished for it.”
Meanwhile, Kim Dees was attending Gallrein’s event. She said she was “ecstatic” that Gallrein won the primary.
“He’s very authentic. He’s not a politician. So that’s kind of follows what the Founding Fathers had,” she said. Dees said Gallrein is “a man of honor” who was called to serve and stepped up.
Dees said there should be term limits for politicians, noting that if Massie had won it would have been his eighth term.
The Bucks County commissioner will face Fitzpatrick, a perennial target of Democrats.
Harvie was backed by Shapiro and the House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
He beat first-time candidate Lucia Simonelli.
Fitzpatrick is one of just three Republicans who won their 2024 House race in a district also won by Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
The Democrat considered a potential White House contender in 2028 spent a considerable amount of his primary night speech attacking the president.
The Republican Congress is weak and only serves the will of Trump, Shapiro said. That includes giving Trump a free pass on wrongdoing and corruption, Shapiro said.
“The only way we can expect to change this is to win in November and bring some accountability back to our nation’s capital,” Shapiro said.
Jones was the last Democrat to win a statewide election in Alabama and is seeking a political comeback with a bid for governor.
He won a special election to the U.S. Senate in 2017, buoying the hopes of Democrats in the Deep South state. However, he was defeated three years later by Tommy Tuberville to reclaim the seat for Republicans.
Tuberville won the Republican nomination for governor, setting up a rematch between the two political rivals.
Before running for office, Jones, a lawyer and former U.S. attorney, was best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for Birmingham’s infamous 1963 church bombing.
A judge ordered two precincts at Ison Springs Elementary School in suburban Atlanta to stay open until 11:02 p.m. because the school was placed on lockdown just before noon and remained closed until 4 p.m. over an incident that was unrelated to the election, the Secretary of State’s office said.
County officials said they decided to hold election results until the closure of all polling places after reviewing state law and State Election Board rules and consulting with attorneys. The secretary of state’s office had earlier said the rest of the county’s election results would not be delayed.
Most polls in Georgia closed at 7 p.m. ET.
Gallrein’s victory over Massie in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District Republican primary was powered by his performance in Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties in northern Kentucky across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio, and in Oldham County in the Louisville suburbs.
At the time the AP called the race, Gallrein had a lead in all four counties, which collectively make up the bulk of the district vote. Massie was ahead in his home base of Lewis County, but his sizable lead there was still significantly behind the lead he had there in his last contested primary in 2022.
“He was a bad guy. He deserves to lose,” Trump told reporters following Massie’s defeat, another sign of Trump’s enduring grip on the Republican base.
Trump allies quickly celebrated the victory online. Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager, posted a photo of Trump raising his middle finger and tagged Massie in the post.
“Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote on social media.
The Pennsylvania governor urged the crowd at his primary election rally to help the party’s candidates win control of the state Legislature for the first time in more than three decades.
Josh Shapiro, who is putting his clout on the line in congressional and legislative races, said he will advance a stronger agenda with Democratic control in Harrisburg.
“Give me a Democratic majority in the Senate and we will fully fund mass transit, we will build more housing, and we will codify abortion rights into state law,” Shapiro said.
The former college football coach entered politics with his election to the U.S. Senate in 2020. Tuberville opted not to seek a second term and instead launched a bid for governor.
During his time in the Senate, Tuberville was closely aligned with Trump, who endorsed Tuberville in 2020 and has also backed his bid for governor. “Tommy Tuberville has my Complete and Total Endorsement to be the next Governor of the Great State of Alabama – COACH TUBERVILLE WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump wrote on social media.
During the primary, opponent Ken McFeeters accused Tuberville of not meeting the legal requirement to have lived in the state for seven years. Tuberville maintains he meets the residency requirement, and the Alabama Republican Party dismissed McFeeters’ challenge.
Jones emphasized his previous political victories in his speech after advancing to the Georgia governor runoff. He said he cut taxes and regulations and was tough on public safety and election integrity.
He acknowledged the president, who endorsed him, during his roughly 10 minutes of remarks.
“I could not leave this stage without thanking President Donald J. Trump,” he said.
Jackson took shots at Burt Jones after advancing to a June 16 runoff, saying Jones “was all talk and no results.”
And while Jones was endorsed by Trump, Jackson said he would be Trump’s “favorite governor.”
“As governor, I’ll be like Trump but with a southern tongue,” said Jackson.
In announcing that he conceded defeat to Gallrein, Massie also made a jab at his opponent over the millions of dollars poured in to the race by pro-Israel groups to try to defeat the incumbent.
“I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv,” Massie told the crowd.
Massie has voted against U.S. aid to Israel and faced accusations of antisemitism. He has denied the charges, arguing that he is generally against all foreign aid.
The race drew in millions of dollars against Massie from pro-Israel interest groups, including from the Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund
Stelson, a one-time local TV anchor and personality, lost in 2024 to Perry by barely a percentage point in the right-leaning 10th District.
Stelson was backed by Shapiro and the House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
Stelson beat progressive challenger Justin Douglas for the right to challenge Perry again in the Harrisburg-area district.
After unseating Massie with strong backing from Trump, Gallrein pledged to take the party’s agenda to Washington and work closely with the president. His victory speech lasted around five minutes.
“We have a saying on the family farm that it’s a contact sport,” Gallrein said. “I can tell you that campaigning is one as well folks.”
Trump-endorsed Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was the frontrunner for much of the lead-up to tonight’s gubernatorial primary, until health care executive and billionaire Rick Jackson entered the race just a few months ago.
Jackson spent millions of his own dollars to flood the state with campaign ads.
Many candidates backed by the president have enjoyed comfortable victories in their elections this primary season, but few have been up against a candidate with such a large campaign budget. Jones and Jackson have advanced to a June 16 runoff election.
The Kentucky congressman claimed in his speech after his defeat that young voters were still on his side.
“People that want somebody that will go along to get along, I’ve never heard of that strategy but that seems to be what the voters want,” Massie said. “But not the young voters.”
The crowd was still energetic despite Massie’s loss, and started a chant of “No more wars!” that the congressman joined in on. Massie’s speech meandered through different topics and touched on other politicians before another chant started of “America First!”
“We stirred up something. There is a yearning in this country for someone who will vote for principles over party,” Massie said.
Gov. Josh Shapiro was uncontested in Tuesday’s primary. He’s seeking a second term in the fall and puts his clout on the line in the battleground state ahead of a potential 2028 bid for the White House.
The 52-year-old has made his opposition to Trump’s agenda a central focus of his reelection campaign.
Shapiro is on track to break his own fundraising record. He’s working to flip important Republican-held U.S. House seats and deliver the first Democratic-controlled state Legislature in more than three decades.
Republican state Treasurer Stacy Garrity ran uncontested for the GOP’s nomination.
The president, who had waged his own social media campaign against Massie, posted a photo showing him and Gallrein under the words “Ed Gallrein Wins! Endorsed by President Trump!”
The two-term state treasurer was uncontested in the GOP primary.
Garrity is running as a strong backer of Trump’s agenda as she attempts to be the first Republican to win the office in Pennsylvania since 2010.
Shapiro ran uncontested for the Democratic Party’s nomination to seek a second term.
Garrity lagged badly behind Shapiro in fundraising after winning two relatively low-profile races for treasurer.
The result showed the president’s persisting influence over GOP voters, adding to a growing number of Trump-backed primary challengers to defeat Republican lawmakers who angered him in his second term.
Massie, who has served in Congress since 2012, fell into Trump’s crosshairs in part by pushing for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and denouncing the war in Iran.
Gallrein, a former Navy Seal who avoided making public appearances on the campaign trail, ran on his military service and loyalty to the president. He accused Massie of forsaking Trump and the party.
Gallrein is expected to win the general election in the deeply red district.
The Georgia secretary of state’s office said that won’t delay reporting for the rest of the county’s results.
A judge ordered a precinct at Ison Springs Elementary School to stay open until 11:02 p.m. because the school was placed on lockdown just before noon and remained closed until 4 p.m. over an incident that was unrelated to the election, the Secretary of State’s office said.
Sandy Springs police said officers responded to a call about a man dressed in military-style gear and reports of possible gunshots fired in the area. After an extensive manhunt, a suspect was taken into custody, police said.
Eleven Cobb County precincts were also staying open late, with delayed closures ranging from six minutes to an hour.
U.S. Rep. Andy Barr, who was endorsed by Trump, beat Daniel Cameron, a former state attorney general who leaned into his Christianity on the campaign trail.
The winner in November will replace U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who is stepping down in a generational changing of the guard for Republicans.
Trump swayed the race not just through his endorsement but by offering a third challenger, Nate Morris, an ambassadorship just over two weeks before Election Day. Morris, who fashioned himself as the MAGA candidate, withdrew from the race and encouraged his backers to support Barr.
Barr was first elected in 2012 in the 6th Congressional District. He is expected to win the general election in the Republican-dominated state.
Eleven polling places in Georgia’s Cobb County, in the Atlanta suburbs, will be staying open late because of issues that arose during the day.
Blake Evans, who oversees elections for the secretary of state’s office, said the precincts were staying open because of problems with the electronic poll pads that are used to to check in voters. The extensions range from six minutes at one location to an hour at another, according to a judge’s order.
Deputy Secretary of State Matt Tyser said they are waiting on an order from a Fulton County judge to extend voting at a precinct in Sandy Springs, just north of Atlanta. That’s because a “law enforcement issue” that was unrelated to the election forced the closure of the polling place for several hours.
Most polls in Georgia are set to close at 7 p.m. ET.
