Busy primary day sweeps the nation

Tonight will be less about the countdown for polls to close and more about what individual races mean — for party factions, and for President Donald Trump, looking toward November.

California game theory

The races for California governor and Los Angeles mayor have been reshaped by the top-two system that replaced partisan primaries 14 years ago. That change has led to biennial agony about the risk of one party getting locked out of the November election.

First, the Democrats vying to replace Newsom fretted that too many of them running would split the vote and risk a general election between two Republicans: conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Next, Trump endorsed Hilton, which sent Republican voters his way and reduced the risk of a Democratic lock-out. Then, Eric Swalwell quit the contest (and Congress), right when former health secretary Xavier Becerra was starting to make the rounds on TV, helping him attract Swalwell’s voters and surge into first place.

The debate among California Democrats, many of whom held onto their ballots to wait for clarity, is now about who to send into an election against Hilton — and whether it’s possible to lock him out by supporting progressive billionaire Tom Steyer. Steyer and Becerra have clashed in the final days, with Becerra running anti-Hilton ads that are not-so-subtly designed to drive more Republicans Hilton’s way. Steyer would like to be governor, and Becerra would like to avoid a Democrat-only general election against a man with bottomless pockets.

It’s a similar story in Los Angeles. Democrats once expected Bass and city councilmember Nithya Raman to get the most votes on Tuesday, then face each other again in November. The sole televised debate between Bass, Raman, and reality TV star Spencer Pratt shook those expectations; Pratt was a natural in the format, mocking Raman’s assessment that Bass wanted him to make the runoff because she’d beat him.

But that’s how Democrats see the race. Polling has found weak support for Bass and a path to November for both Raman and Pratt — who also are trying to pull votes from lower-polling candidates with overlapping messages. Raman has a better shot at a top-two slot if supporters of socialist Rae Huang break for her, and Pratt is courting businessman Adam Miller’s voters. If these races are close, they may not be decided until next week, or later; California law allows ballots postmarked on Election Day to be counted if they arrive by June 9.

The left tries to expand its map

Progressive groups, still rebuilding from 2024 defeats, are hoping to get their candidates in Montana, New Jersey, and California through their primaries.

Their coalition is the biggest in New Jersey’s 12th district. Democrat Adam Hamawy, the physician who treated Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s wounds in Iraq, got early backing from Israel critics as well as endorsements from DC Democrats. That helped him in a 13-way race for a safely blue seat in Princeton and Trenton, where Hamawy campaigned with left-wing commentator Hasan Piker on Saturday against “the do-nothing Democrats.”

Endorsers stuck with Hamawy after an 11th-hour controversy related to the brief period when the young doctor volunteered with an organization whose leader planned the first World Trade Center bombing. In Montana, progressives including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got behind Democrat Sam Forstag in the race for the state’s less conservative 1st District, which backed Trump by 12 points in 2024 but has been competitive for other Democrats.

The bitterest left-versus-everybody race of the day might be in California’s 22nd District, where national Democrats recruited Jasmeet Bains, a state legislator and physician, to challenge perennial GOP target Rep. David Valadao. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other progressives support Randy Villegas, a school board member who lives just outside the district lines but who has argued that only real populism can flip the seat.

Incumbents on defense

Northern California Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui, who turns 82 this year, is facing her first real challenge from Mai Vang, a Sacramento city council member half her age. But Matsui isn’t shying away from her age: In campaign ads, she talks about her birth in one of the World War II-era camps that California set up for Japanese Americans. Progressives have accused Matsui of boosting a weak Republican candidate to avoid a November race against Vang. They got a boost when Matsui dodged the Sacramento Bee’s interview process, helping Vang lock up the newspaper’s endorsement.

In the LA suburbs, Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman, who is 71 years old, has no such back-up plan to avoid a November rematch with Jake Levine, a former White House staffer (and son of a former congressman) who’s favored to make it into the top two.

Golden State Democrats have more seats to play with, in the wake of last year’s voter-passed gerrymander. In another part of Southern California, Republican Rep. Ken Calvert is battling fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim after both were shoved into a safely red, redrawn 40th Congressional District. Kim’s tactics for winning her old, competitive seat have become a minor liability; a 2020 clip where she said she wouldn’t let her daughters date someone like Trump now appears in Calvert ads that call her a “Trump traitor.”

Real competition in Iowa

The retirements of Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and GOP Sen. Joni Ernst have opened up their seats at a moment when Iowa’s decade-long red shift looks to be slowing. (The party is down two state Senate seats since 2024, after fumbling them away in special elections.) Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra, a northwest Iowa congressman who’s made little impression since ousting Steve King in 2020, got a weekend endorsement from the president in his bid for governor; before that, Feenstra was losing ground to businessman Zach Lahn, who has gotten far more interest from conservative activists. Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand, the only Democrat still holding statewide office, has led Feenstra in both parties’ internal polls, and has no challenger today.

Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, also netted a Trump endorsement for her Senate primary to replace Ernst, while the Democratic race has come down to state Sen. Zach Wahls and state Rep. Josh Turek, neither of whom want to associate with national Democrats. Wahls, whose political career started when he defended his parents’ same-sex marriage as a teenager, has gone after Turek’s support from DC-based groups and his willingness to support Chuck Schumer for Senate Democratic leader.

Turek has run a slightly more moderate campaign and highlighted his ability to hold a Trump-won district, while Wahls has never faced a Republican opponent in his dark-blue Iowa City seat. Wahls has struggled to attract national progressive interest in his race, but he’s not wrong: A win for Turek would tamp down the chatter, at least momentarily, about Democratic voters rejecting the choices of their party leaders.