What to watch in May 19 primaries

PHILADELPHIA — Seven states hold their primaries on Tuesday, including two — Alabama and Georgia — where Republicans are working to change electoral maps as soon as possible.

Polls will start closing before dusk in eastern Kentucky. The night will end with the year’s first West Coast primaries, in Oregon. Here’s an hour-by-hour guide with what to watch, and close looks at what’s at play in each state.

6 pm ET: Kentucky’s Trump heat check.

The president’s irritation with Rep. Thomas Massie inspired the most expensive House primary in history, with pro-Trump and pro-Israel organizations attacking Massie to help challenger Ed Gallrein. It hasn’t unfolded like Sen. Bill Cassidy’s unsurvivable primary in Louisiana. Massie did not vote to impeach or remove Trump, which is heresy for GOP voters. He believes that he picked fights where the common man is with him, not the president.

“It’s a referendum on Israel’s influence,” Massie told the Financial Times. Trump, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and AIPAC-affiliated PACs agreed with that; the latter two groups spent $9 million against Massie. The congressman beat a Trump-backed challenger in 2020, which made him bolder about going around the president when he returned to office, opposing the Iran War and getting the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed.

Trump’s influence has been more decisive in the race to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell. On May 2, he endorsed Lexington-area Rep. Andy Barr for the seat, enticing businessman Nate Morris out of the race by offering him an ambassadorship. (The offer did not lead to much scrutiny, though allegations that the Obama White House dangled a job to pressure a Pennsylvania Democratic candidate 16 years ago sparked a GOP-led investigation.)

Post-endorsement polling for Barr put him far ahead of Daniel Cameron, the state’s former attorney general, whose stock fell after he unsuccessfully challenged Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in 2023. Cameron started his political career in McConnell’s office, but distanced himself during the Senate race, calling himself a “Trump conservative” against the “McConnell Machine” that wanted (and got) Barr. Polls close across the entire commonwealth by 7 pm.

7 pm: Power plays in Georgia.

The gerrymandering stakes in the race for governor are unknown. Republicans might set new maps for the 2028 elections while Gov. Brian Kemp is still around to sign them; the Republicans running to replace him say they will if he doesn’t.

The president has endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones for governor, after helping him get elected to his current office for his work challenging the 2020 election. Healthcare company CEO Rick Jackson charged into the race three months ago with TV ads that put him into the lead in some polls. Both men are likely to make a June 16 runoff, with state Attorney Gen. Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger grabbing too much of the vote for anyone to hit 50% and win outright. (The GOP primary for Raffensperger’s job will determine whether a Trump ally has the state’s top elections role in 2028, with ex-Raffensperger aide Gabriel Sterling running as a competent successor.)

Geoff Duncan, the Trump critic who Jones replaced as governor, has lagged in his own bid for the Democratic nomination. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms led in polls since she entered the race, and got Joe Biden’s endorsement when early voting began; some Democrats worry that the record of her single term, and middling work for the Biden administration, weakens her for the general election. Two other Democrats, former state Sen. Jason Esteves and former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond, are hoping that Bottoms goes to the runoff where they can make a clean argument against her.

Trump has stayed out of the GOP’s Senate primary, which will select an opponent for Sen. Jon Ossoff, the only Democrat running for reelection in a state Trump carried. Kemp’s backing friend and football coach Derek Dooley, who’s never run for office before; two safe-seat conservative congressmen, Mike Collins and Buddy Carter, have led him in polls, neither easily clearing 50%, and Trump’s stayed neutral.

8 pm: Shapiro and the left in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, the Democrats’ most popular swing-state leader, has no real challenger and knows which Republican he’ll face in November: state Treasurer Stacy Garrity. He’s been focused down the ballot, with endorsements in four seats that Democrats think they can flip in a wave.

Shapiro’s backing Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti in the 8th Congressional District, where she has no challenger; he supports Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie in the 1st District, where he’s expected to roll past a candidate who’s raised less than $75,000. The governor has more on the line in the Harrisburg-based 10th district, a perennial Democratic target, where former TV reporter Janelle Stelson wants a rematch with Rep. Scott Perry, R-Penn. — and must first defeat Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas, who’s running to her left and highlighting his fights with ICE.

In the Allentown-based 7th District, a top 2026 Democratic target, Shapiro and a coalition of national figures — including Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — support firefighters union president Bob Brooks. Ex-Rep. Susan Wild, who narrowly lost the seat in 2024, recruited longtime advocate Carol Obando-Derstine to run; veteran and attorney Ryan Crosswell has run against Brooks as a not-ready-for-primetime candidate; former Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure got a late burst of money from the shadowy Lead Left PAC, which keeps spending on behalf of left-wing candidates who don’t have local party support.

Shapiro stayed out of the open race in the 3rd District, which any Democrat is guaranteed to hold; it contains parts of Philadelphia that backed Harris by 77 points. State Sen. Sharif Street, who ran the state party during its disastrous 2024 election, faced a center-left challenge from Dr. Ala Stanford, a public health advocate who’d never run for office before. But her stumped and confused answers in some candidate forums weakened her while widening the path for state Rep. Chris Rabb, a far-left Democrat. Rabb went viral for his answer, at one of those forums, on whether he’d take support from AIPAC: “F*ck AIPAC.”

8 pm: Alabama’s half-primary. Alabama Republicans postponed four House primaries after the Supreme Court curtailed the Voting Rights Act, and now intend to run the November elections on a friendlier map. They’ll still pick their nominee to replace Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who’s running for governor; Trump has endorsed Rep. Barry Moore in the six-way primary. But Moore’s 1st District won’t hold its primary until Aug. 11, where the winner of the popular vote will be the nominee, after the state canceled runoffs.

11 pm: The GOP’s future in Idaho and Oregon.

Trump has stayed largely out of primaries in Idaho, where Republicans hold every major office, and Oregon, where they hold none of them. Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson, 75, has put up weak performances against fringe candidates in the past, and Gov. Brad Little is seeking a fourth term, which half a dozen Republicans are contesting. Democrats aren’t seriously contesting their races in November, giving primary voters more space for protest votes.

They don’t have that luxury in Oregon, where the field for governor includes two recent nominees who lost that race by single digits. In 2022, former GOP legislative leader Christine Drazan ran 3.6 points short of beating now-Gov. Tina Kotek, helped by a Democrat-turned-independent who ran against both parties; in 2010, former NBA player Chris Dudley came even closer to beating Gov. John Kitzhaber.

Dudley’s own polling shows him competitive with Kotek, whose favorable ratings are underwater. Republicans haven’t won a race for governor in Oregon since the Reagan administration, when their party was far more competitive statewide, but the right nominee might force another look at challenging Kotek.