I got two sets of returns, and my read is the rigged machines are backing the e$tabli$hment.
"Candidates backed by Tea Party fare poorly in GOP primaries" by Jonathan Martin | New York Times May 07, 2014
It's a rewrite or different?!!
WASHINGTON — In a boost for establishment Republicans and their hopes to gain control of the Senate, Thom Tillis won the North Carolina primary on Tuesday, avoiding a potentially contentious runoff by capturing more than 40 percent of the vote.
Tillis, the state House speaker, will now be able to focus his campaign on Senator Kay Hagan, the first-term Democrat who polls suggest will be highly vulnerable in what is expected to be one of the nation’s most-watched and costliest Senate races.
Buoyed by a few million dollars in support from mainstream Republican groups, Tillis held an advantage from the start over his two biggest challengers, Greg Brannon, a libertarian-leaning physician, and Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor. With all but 20 of the state’s 2,725 precincts reporting, Tillis had received 46 percent of the vote, while Brannon had 27 percent and Harris 18 percent, according to the state elections website.
Conservative groups have already spent over $12 million attacking Hagan through television ads, an assault that has clearly hurt her standing. A New York Times poll last month showed that 44 percent of North Carolinians disapproved of her job performance — the same proportion that approved of her work.
Tuesday was the beginning of a busy primary season, with elections scheduled nearly every week over the next two months. Many of the Republican contests will feature a Tea Party-versus-establishment dynamic, which will offer insight into which faction is faring better with party loyalists.
Primaries were also held in Ohio, where Speaker John A. Boehner easily held off two Republican primary opponents. First-term Representative David Joyce had a slightly tougher time but was running well ahead of his Tea Party-backed rival, according to the Associated Press. Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana fended off a challenge from the right, rolling up 75 percent of the votes in a three-way race.
But it was North Carolina that attracted the most interest for both parties.
While Tillis is no moderate — he pushed through a conservative agenda in the Legislature — the North Carolina results represent a win for such Republican groups as the US Chamber of Commerce and the Karl Rove-backed American Crossroads, both of which aired TV ads in the state in an effort to ensure that Tillis did not have to face a potentially draining mid-July runoff. The groups, along with the Senate Republican leadership, were also concerned that a runoff would give an opening to Brannon, who they feared could not beat Hagan.
In the final days of the primary, the race became something of a proxy war between high-profile Republicans. Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, and Mitt Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential candidate, both offered late endorsements of Tillis, while Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky appeared Monday at a rally in Charlotte for Brannon.
Well, I know where I line up there and.... no runoff, huh?
Doesn't surprise me after what happened to his father, and I hope you forgive me for not liking the tea. As I gift I will not needle a certain someone how Karl Rove is now her best friend these days.
Brannon, however, was not able to win support from well-funded conservative groups, such as the Club for Growth, that insurgent candidates often rely upon to defeat mainstream Republicans.
That is in his favor because the well-funded Tea Party are the corporate controlled frauds.
That lack of help was not only a letdown for Brannon, it was also a disappointment to Democrats, who were hoping that the Republican race would continue into July.
Democrats had begun hammering Tillis from the right, using mail pieces and radio ads to raise doubts about his conservative credentials.
It's the tea.
Beyond the Senate primary, 10-term Republican Representative Walter Jones fended off one of the most serious primary threats of his career, a challenge from the first-time candidate Taylor Griffin.
That's because Jones stepped out of line a long time ago and started questioning the wars.
Jones had infuriated some in his party for becoming an outspoken non-interventionist following the invasion of Iraq and saying last year that “Lyndon Johnson’s probably rotting in hell right now because of the Vietnam War, and he probably needs to move over for Dick Cheney.”
A smile crossed my face when I saw that.
There are heroes in the halls of government!!
Another incumbent Republican in the state, Representative Renee Ellmers, won in a primary that was also watched closely. Ellmers was challenged on the right partly because of her support for an immigration overhaul. Her Democratic opponent could be the former “American Idol” contestant Clay Aiken. With almost all the ballots counted, he held a 370-vote lead over the businessman Keith Crisco.
That is what AmeriKan politics is now: a $hit-$how fooley more celebrity than substance.
--more--"
What my printed paper gave me, more or less:
"Primary Season Begins With Tea Party Defeat" AP / David Espo, May 6, 2014
WASHINGTON — North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis captured the nomination to oppose imperiled Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan Tuesday night, overcoming anti-establishment rivals by a comfortable margin in the first of a springtime spate of primaries testing the strength of a tea party movement that first rocked the Republican party four years ago.
In Ohio, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald won the Democratic nomination to challenge Gov. John Kasich in the fall, while U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, rolled to re-nomination for another term in Congress, his 13th.
On a night that was kind to Republican incumbents, GOP Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana easily fended off a challenge from the right, rolling up 75 percent of the votes in a three-way race. First-term Rep. David Joyce of Ohio had a slightly tougher time but was running well ahead of his tea party rival.
I'm sensing a narrative.
Elsewhere in the state, Rep. Walter Jones, an anti-war Republican, was running ahead of his challenger.
My morning print tells me he defeated his challenger.
In North Carolina, Tillis was winning about 48 percent of the vote with ballots counted in 46 percent of the state’s precincts. He needed 40 percent to avoid a July runoff. Greg Brannon was running second and Mark Harris third.
Also in North Carolina, former “American Idol” runner-up Clay Aiken seized a narrow lead as he sought the Democratic nomination to oppose Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers in the fall. A Democratic runoff was possible.
That will get coverage!
Democratic State Rep. Alma Adams was comfortably ahead for a pair of nominations at the same time: in a special election to fill the unexpired term of former Rep. Mel Watt, and also for the November ballot in the heavily Democratic district.
Hagan, whom Republicans have made a top target in their drive to win a Senate majority in the fall, won renomination over a pair of rivals with about 80 percent of the primary vote.
Tuesday marked the beginning of the political primary season in earnest, and over the next several months Republicans will hold numerous contests featuring incumbents or other establishment figures against tea party challengers. Some of the races are in states where the identity of the party’s candidate might mean the difference between victory and defeat this fall, such as Alaska, Georgia, Iowa and Kentucky. In other areas, it will matter less, including Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
That's 9 seats and Repugs only need six to take over.
In the marquee race of the night, Tillis and a pair of political novices, newcomers, obstetrician Greg Brannon and Mark Harris, a Baptist pastor, led a field of eight candidates vying for the right to take on Hagan, a top target for Republicans angling for control of the Senate in the fall.
Tillis ran as a conservative with the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Right to Life Committee and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while Brannon had the backing of Sen Rand Paul of Kentucky, a tea party favorite. Harris countered with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose popularity with evangelical voters briefly made him a force in the race for the 2008 presidential nomination.
Look where I'm stuck.
State law set a runoff for July 15 if no candidate gained more than 40 percent of the vote, an outcome party officials said they hoped to avoid in order to maximize their chances against Hagan. One voter, Debbye Krueger of Salisbury, North Carolina, said, “I think the tea party has pulled the right so far to right that they’re falling off the cliff. And, anybody who’s moderate or uses any ounce of decorum to make a logical decision not based on political affiliation is demonized.”
Dan Coutcher, a chaplain at North Carolina State University, said he voted for Brannon, who he said had delivered his grandchildren. “I like him more than I like Tillis. I tend to not like long-term career politicians,” he said.
Me, neither, not anymore.
Boehner’s nomination to a 13th term in the House was never in doubt, despite challenges from tea party adherents J.D. Winteregg and Eric Gurr. His seat is safely Republican for the general election, as well, and it will be up to fellow Republicans — assuming they hold their House majority — to decide if the 64-year-old Ohioan serves a third term as speaker.
Safe assumption.
Kasich was unopposed for nomination to a second term as governor, a race viewed as a possible prelude to a 2016 run for the White House.
Fitzgerald wasted no time in pocketing his primary triumph, blasting out an email that declared, “As of tonight, this race is officially between me and Gov. Kasich.”
North Carolina hosted the most closely watched race of the night, at the intersection of the tea party’s long-running challenge to the Republican establishment and the GOP campaign to gain the six seats needed to win a Senate majority in the fall.
I think they will easily get it; it's a referendum on Obummer and the Democrats in the sixth year of a failed and stale presidency.
Establishment figures made little or no secret of their desire for Tillis to prevail, fearful that any other challenger to Hagan could mean a replay of 2010 and 2012, when Republicans lost winnable Senate races in Nevada, Indiana and Missouri.
“You can’t defeat Kay Hagan with a factionalized (party),” Tillis said at one point, making a case for his own nomination.
Paul, whose upset victory in a 2010 primary in Kentucky served notice that the tea party was a force to be reckoned with, hailed Brannon. The first-time candidate is “a true believer and we need true believers in Congress,” Paul said as Brannon battled the establishment.
For his part, Harris damned Tillis with the faintest of praise, saying Monday the state assembly leader is the man to support “if you want an establishment … style of United States senator, someone that is going to work in the system.”
Hagan is among the Democrats’ most vulnerable incumbents in a campaign season full of them, a first-term lawmaker in a state that is ground zero in a national debate over the health care law that she and the Democrats voted into existence four years ago. Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, has run about $7 million worth of television commercials criticizing Hagan for her position on the law.
Yes, the impressions of that albatross will be made clear in November. Should have delayed it rather than waive it all except the tax penalty, but Herr President wouldn't have it.
If Republican Party leaders preferred Tillis, Democrats seemed to want anyone but him, or at a minimum, a runoff that would require Republicans to battle one another into midsummer.
Hagan’s campaign recently sent out a mass mailing that said Tillis had once called Obamacare a “great idea” — an obvious attempt to influence the outcome of the primary by holding down his support among conservative primary voters. Tillis favors the law’s repeal, and in fact called the law “a great idea that can’t be paid for.”
An outside group dedicated to electing Democrats ran a television ad assailing Tillis over severance packages that went to two members of his legislative staff said to have had inappropriate relationships with lobbyists.
--more--"
Got a big primary up here, too:
"Brown hints at provisions he favors in health care law" by Noah Bierman and Joshua Miller | Globe Staff May 08, 2014
CONCORD, N.H. — Some Democrats in tough elections have been reluctant to talk about the issue because they do not want to highlight the health care law in states where Obama lost during the 2012 election.
We were told the WH was going to do a whole campaign to promote it politically, but haven't seen a thing.
One exception, Senator Mary Landrieu has been the most aggressive in challenging Republicans in Louisiana to expand Medicaid, making their resistance a campaign issue.
Still, Republicans say they believe that the health law remains a distinct political advantage for their party.
*****************
The focus on the Affordable Care Act in New Hampshire, a state which Obama carried in 2012, is being closely watched across the country. New Hampshire, which holds the nation’s first presidential primary, is “purple,” not predictably Republican or Democrat, and is seen as a preview of broader battles in the midterm elections and the 2016 White House race. Its voters are a mix of free-market conservatives, traditional liberals, and independent-minded voters who often upend conventional political wisdom.
I know what group I am in.
Republicans, meanwhile, hope Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the Democratic incumbent who has been on defensive over her support for the health law, will pay the biggest price in the health care debate. She initially repeated Obama’s inaccurate pledge that people who liked their insurance could keep it and later filed a bill to preserve coverage for those who saw their plans canceled.
It's an inaccurate pledge, not a lie!
Good thing there is Obummercare because that makes me sick.
In an interview, Shaheen said she was also working with fellow senators to address “a number of concerns from small businesses,” including the requirement that employers subsidize insurance to full-time employees. But she would not detail any proposals, nor would she say what other issues she believes need fixing.
“We will see as the law is implemented that there will be other things that come up,” she said.
WTF? Who sloppily wrote it, and why did not anyone read it before voting for it?
Shaheen said she is “absolutely” proud of her vote in favor of the bill and said residents frequently tell her how much the law has already helped them. But it is unclear how much she will campaign on the issue. For example, she declined to say whether she would hold an event to highlight the law’s benefits, as Representative Carol Shea-Porter, another New Hampshire Democrat in a tough election, did earlier this week....
She really bums me out.
--more--"
