Other Races On The Radar Tonight

Besides that little matter of the Democratic nominee clinching victory tonight, there are primaries all over the the country outside of California, some of them worth noting.

TPM Election Central mentions two Senate races, in New Mexico and New Jersey. The entire Congressional delegation in New Mexico is running for the seat vacated by Pete Domenici, and on the Republican side, wingnutty Steve Pearce is facing wingnut in moderate clothing Heather Wilson. Weirdly, Domenici waited until the weekend before the primary to endorse Wilson, so there was probably no impact of that. Pearce is favored in this primary, but the winner will be stomped by progressive Tom Udall in the general election, IMO.

In New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg was challenged from inside the party by Rob Andrews, a moderate (at best) Congressman. I think he's just trying to raise his statewide name ID for when Lautenberg (who's 84) eventually steps down, because he's getting smoked by all accounts. Andrews is having his wife run for his own Congressional seat and will probably try to get it back by having her step down if he loses. I hope he gets crushed today.

And in IA-03, Ed Fallon is challenging Bush Dog Leonard Boswell for a seat in Congress. Stoller calls this race an experiment in grassroots campaigning but I don't think that's true. Maybe it's because I'm in California, but in most parts of this state you can't put an ad on the air unless you're running statewide or get a king's ransom from an independent expenditure campaign. So I see this "experiment" every cycle. And it usually doesn't win, unfortunately. And most observers don't expect Fallon to win, either. But if he can make Boswell sweat, maybe he can alter his behavior.