June 5 was the biggest primary day of the year — but it may take some time before all the election results are clear. Many of the most-watched races are in California, which closes polls late, counts votes slowly, and uses the unusual “top two” system that means both first- and second-place winners need to be declared — potentially making the proceedings drag on for days. But seven other states went to the polls Tuesday, and many held primaries with national ramifications. New Jersey, an important state in Democrats’ efforts to take over the House of Representatives, chose its nominees in key races. Montana picked a Republican nominee in a key Senate race the national party is watching closely. Iowa, New Mexico, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Dakota held their primaries too. On top of all that, there was another state Senate special election in Missouri that Democrats could celebrate. Here, then, are some key winners and losers for the states other than California that had June 5 primaries. (Update: Takeaways from California’s preliminary results can be found at this link.) Loser: New Jersey Republicans In a state that’s voted consistently Democratic on the presidential level for decades, Republicans have done a decent job winning some important political offices. Not only did Chris Christie serve eight years as New Jersey’s governor, but Republicans have controlled at least five seats of the state’s 12-member congressional delegation since the last redistricting. But all that is in danger in the age of Trump. Democrat Phil Murphy won the governorship last November, and now several GOP-held congressional districts are among Democrats’ top targets in the country. Already, two formidable Republican incumbents who’ve each been in Congress for 24 years — Rep. Frank LoBiondo in the Second District, and Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen in the 11th — chose to retire rather than face tough reelection fights this year. Rep. Leonard Lance, in the Seventh, also faces a difficult battle in a district Hillary Clinton won. Now that the primary results are in, Democrats have gotten the candidates they wanted in these three races. In the Second, they’ll field moderate Jeff Van Drew, who’s represented much of the district for a decade in the state Senate. In the 11th, they’ll put up former Navy pilot and prosecutor Mikie Sherrill, a female veteran who’s been a blockbuster fundraiser. In the Seventh, the nominee will be former Obama State Department official Tom Malinowski. These outcomes aren’t really surprising. New Jersey has an unusual primary ballot rule in which the county party’s endorsement is actually printed on the ballot, which gives a big boost to candidates with the party’s backing. Still, the party has its preferred nominees, and the national consequences could be big because New Jersey’s House Republicans look likely to face their toughest election races in decades. Loser: anti-corruption Democrats Since his indictment on corruption charges in 2015, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been under a cloud. Accused of using his Senate office to do favors for a wealthy Florida eye doctor in exchange for private jet flights and fancy vacation accommodations, Menendez stepped aside as the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As his trial approached in 2017, there seemed to be a high chance that, whatever the outcome, he wouldn’t run for another term. But in November of last year, jurors couldn’t unanimously agree on a verdict for any of the charges against Menendez. So a mistrial was declared, and the Justice Department ended up dropping the case rather than trying to prosecute him again. Menendez soon got his foreign relations post back and announced he’d run for a third full term. You might think, then, that Menendez would have drawn a primary challenger running on an anti-corruption (or at least an “I have never been indicted”) platform. But, of course, this is New Jersey we’re talking about, and the state’s hierarchical Democratic machine remained united behind him. One primary challenger quit the race after failing to raise much money, and Menendez was left with only one little-known opponent, community news website publisher Lisa McCormick, who hadn’t disclosed raising or spending any money at the time of the last campaign finance filing deadline. Menendez won, of course, but his win wasn’t particularly impressive — at press time, he had 62 percent of the vote to McCormick’s 38 percent. If he had drawn a serious opponent, would he have lost renomination? We’ll never know. Menendez will face wealthy pharmaceutical executive Bob Hugin, who’s poured $7.5 million of his own money into his campaign already, in the general election. Winner: Democrats in special elections, again Amid all the primaries, there were a few state legislature special elections as well — and in one state Senate contest, in Missouri, Democrats flipped another seat formerly held by Republicans. Democrat Lauren Arthur, a two-term state representative and former schoolteacher, beat her Republican opponent by about 19 points in a district Donald Trump won by 4. On the one hand, the election was held just days after Missouri’s Republican Gov. Eric Greitens resigned amid sexual misconduct allegations — so GOP voters might not have been thrilled to head to the polls. On the other hand, this adds to a lengthy list of special elections in which state legislature seats have flipped from Republican to Democratic. And Missouri’s an important state for Democrats this fall, with Sen. Claire McCaskill facing a tough reelection challenge from Republican state Attorney General Josh Hawley. Loser: Republican politicians who criticize Trump In October 2016, after the tape leaked in which GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump bragged that he liked to “grab” women “by the pussy,” Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL) had had enough. She withdrew her endorsement of Trump weeks before the election, saying, “Donald Trump’s behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president, and I won’t vote for him.” But of course, Trump won. And this year, Roby, now running for a fifth term in the House, came under fire for her criticism of him.<doc-sep>The battle for control of Congress was front and center on Tuesday night, with races taking shape in several intensely contested House seats in California and New Jersey. But there were revealing elections in the Midwest and the South, too, underscoring President Trump’s power in the Republican Party and the different ways Democrats hope to loosen his hold on red-state America. Here are some of our takeaways: Money matters in California National Democrats spent over $7 million in an effort to ensure they had a candidate reach the general election in three House districts in California held by Republicans. Their decision to not take their chances in the state’s “top two” system — in which the top finishers in nonpartisan, open primaries face each other in November — appears to have been a wise investment. The party’s intervention in the districts held by Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Ed Royce and Darrell Issa, all Republicans, paid off: they angered some of their own activists but were virtually certain to advance candidates in each of the three districts, including their preferred picks against Mr. Rohrabacher and in Mr. Royce’s seat. And the Democrats also got a bit of a lesson about the risks of not intervening, in the race for the seat held by Representative Jeff Denham. The Democrat Josh Harder got little outside help and appeared poised to barely edge out a little-known Republican challenger because the other five Democrats split more than 30 percent of the vote.<doc-sep>Women running for governor: Republican voters in South Dakota, Alabama and Iowa and Democratic voters in New Mexico all nominated women to lead their state next year — and they all have a solid chance of winning. GOP Rep. Kristi L. Noem won her competitive primary in South Dakota and now has a good chance to be the first woman to lead that state, since the seat is open in November and South Dakota is a fairly Republican state. In Alabama, relatively new Gov. Kay Ivey (R) defended her seat from four other GOP challengers. In Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) won her primary to try to keep her spot as the first female governor of that state. And in New Mexico, Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham will be Democrats' nominee to try to flip that open governor's seat from red to blue. It's the most likely to flip in The Fix's most recent rankings.<doc-sep>National Democrats got their preferred candidates in each of New Jersey’s House primaries on Tuesday night, but the very same voters sent a strong rebuke to Sen. Bob Menendez, who barely mustered 60 percent of the vote running against an unknown challenger. The lackluster showing by Menendez, whose federal corruption trial ended in a mistrial last year, shocked Democrats and could create a new headache for the party as they try to win back control of the Senate. Lisa McCormick, a first-time candidate with no money, no endorsements, and no campaign appearances, captured 38 percent of the primary vote against Menendez, a two-term senator who has raised more than $8 million and had the endorsement of every major Democrat in the state. Advertisement To put Menendez’s poor showing in perspective, he did only slightly worse in the general election in 2012, the last time he was on the ballot. Advertisement Advertisement But Menendez has spent much of his time since then battling a federal indictment related to his high-flying friendship with Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye doctor. Last year, jurors heard nine weeks of testimony describing Menendez’s lavish trips with Melgen, who covered the costs for private jets and hotel rooms at the same time the senator was pleading Melgen’s case in a dispute over his overbilling of Medicare. Menendez’s case eventually ended in a mistrial in November. Melgen was later sentenced to 17 years in prison after being found guilty of $73 million in Medicaid fraud. Advertisement The government decided not to retry Menendez, but his problems didn’t end there. Earlier this year, the Senate Ethics Committee ordered Menendez to repay the cost of any outstanding gifts and “severely admonished” him for his behavior. New Jersey Democrats rallied to his side, and despite faltering in public polls, his only challenger was the unknown McCormick. Menendez will now limp into the general election against Bob Hugin, a former pharmaceutical executive who won the Republican nomination on Tuesday by roughly 50 points. Hugin had the backing of much of the GOP in that race, in part because his personal fortune means he can self-finance a campaign that—until now—was not considered competitive. Hugin has already given his campaign more than $7 million, and is expected to keep investing in the race now that Menendez looks wobbly. Advertisement Advertisement Menendez, a member of the Senate Finance Committee and former chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has never struggled with fundraising, though it’s unclear whether he can match Hugin’s spending. If the national party is forced to shore up Menendez in New Jersey—one of the most expensive media markets in the country—the race could become a sinkhole for money that the party would prefer to spend almost anywhere else. Hugin, for his part, has already signaled he will run an aggressive campaign, and he had spent $2 million attacking Menendez even before the primary was over, with ads that showed washed-out images of the senator and labeled him a “disgrace.” Hugin’s record has its own blemishes. Last year, while he was still the CEO of Celgene Corp.,* the firm agreed to pay $280 million to settle allegations that it promoted cancer drugs without FDA approval. He will also have to battle accusations that he supports Donald Trump, in a state Trump lost by 13 points. At a White House discussion on drug prices last year, and that he later called the meeting “incredibly encouraging” and branded Trump’s agenda “pro-growth.” Advertisement For New Jersey Democrats with a long enough memory, the results on Tuesday will feel disturbingly familiar. In 2002, the state’s incumbent senator, Sen. Robert Torricelli, was forced to drop his re-election bid one month before the general election, after he too was “severely admonished” by the Senate Ethics Committee. Before he dropped out, Torricelli trailed badly in the polls behind a mostly unknown Republican businessman, and his travails threatened to tip the balance in a closely divided Senate. Correction, June 6, 2018: An earlier version of this post misspelled the name of Hugin’s former company. It is Celgene Corp., not Celegene Corp.<doc-sep>
A boy stands in the doorway of a polling station on June 5, 2018 in San Anselmo, California. California voters are heading to the polls to vote in the primary election. Eight states held primary elections Tuesday, and returns indicate Democrats have a good shot of avoiding their worst fears in battleground California. The results will play a major role in whether Republicans can defend their congressional majorities and stop Democrats from flipping the 23 seats needed to take the House. Just three of the states that held primaries on Tuesday — California, New Jersey and Iowa — will determine in large part whether Democrats in November can pick up the red seats they need to win a House majority. California is one of the keys to Democrats' ambitions: The party is targeting as many as 10 Republican-held seats there. The state's primary system, which sends the top two candidates regardless of party to the general election, threatened to dash the party's hopes in some swing districts where several Democrats ran and split the vote. While NBC News has not yet projected the two general election participants in the California swing districts, early results suggest Democrats could get a candidate into all of their targeted House general elections in the state. Wasserman tweet The most populous American state started the process of selecting a new governor, as well. Liberal Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom won the gubernatorial primary, while John Cox, a businessman backed by President Donald Trump, will face off against him.