Fetterman vs. ???

Hello! It’s the weekend, this is The Weekender. ☕

This Tuesday, voters took to the polls across the country to kick off the primary season in earnest. It wasn’t the technical start of the season, but included a bundle of critical races.

The bulk of the excitement was in Pennsylvania, with its twin-engined Senate and gubernatorial contests.

The Senate Democratic primary was decided quickly. Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman (D), leader in money and height, easily snagged the win. Despite investment from much of the Democratic establishment, Rep. Connor Lamb’s (D-PA) campaign never caught fire. Fetterman has achieved something close to folk hero status within the party, combining an unorthodox presentation with a social-justice oriented populist appeal. His last-minute stroke, which necessitated the implantation of a pacemaker, didn’t seem to dent voters’ enthusiasm.

The Republican primary, meanwhile, is still playing out. Hedge fund manager David McCormick and TV personality and doctor Mehmet Oz remain locked together, separated by just over 1,000 votes as of Friday afternoon. An automatic recount, triggered by a difference of .5 percent or less, seems likely. If there is a recount, tallies would be due to the secretary of state’s office by June 8, who then releases a public report.

Funnily enough — and despite former President Donald Trump’s urging for his endorsee, Oz, to just declare victory already — neither Oz nor McCormick are crying voter fraud. It’s interesting how “evidence” of “fraud” tends to wait to reveal itself until there’s a winner and a loser.

The fight for the governor’s mansion was anticlimactic on the Democratic side: Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) ran unopposed. He’ll face far-right state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), who made his name on the Big Lie, wants to outlaw abortions with no exceptions and who recently spoke at a conference put on by QAnon adherents. Mastriano’s win prompted the Cook Political Report to reclassify the race from “toss up” to “lean Democratic.”

Next week contains another marquee Tuesday, as Georgia holds contests for Senate, governor and secretary of state.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) and Stacey Abrams are on a glide path to win their respective primaries. Herschel Walker, too, has been leading the Republican Senate primary for months. Gov. Brian Kemp (R) seems poised to win, with David Perdue limping to the finish line.

What was once a ho-hum “also” race may be the one that captures our attention most: Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who became a household name for his refusal to steal the election for Trump in 2020, is taking on Big Lie-embracer Rep. Jody Hice (R). There has been very little public polling of the race, and there are high numbers of undecided voters.

It’ll be the Big Lie’s first big test, in the state we just can’t quit. 
 

— Kate Riga

Arizona’s Departed Election Security Director Sounds The Alarm

Ken Matta spent two decades at the Arizona Secretary of State’s office, climbing the ladder to become the office’s election security lead for several years. But nothing prepared him for the 2020 election and its aftermath. From the moment that Donald Trump declared the election fraudulent, hours after polls closed on Election Day, “our lives changed,” Matta recalled to me.

That was just the start: What followed was an 18-month siege of the democratic process in Arizona, including the literal seizure of millions of ballots from the state’s largest county for an “audit” by a group of conspiracy theorists who believed that Donald Trump’s second term was stolen from him — and who frequently told Matta and his colleagues in state government that they were bound for jail time.

Matta, who left the secretary’s office this month, said the ordeal left him deeply troubled about voters’ faith in democracy, and about election workers’ waning incentives to stay on the job. “Things haven’t gone back to normal,” he told me. “People that aren’t working are lying awake at night thinking about this stuff. It eats on your soul, it’s all-consuming. It hasn’t stopped.”

— Matt Shuham

• Pennsylvania Republicans’ gubernatorial candidate wrote a master’s thesis in which he imagined himself to be a former military leader, writing “by flickering candle light in a damp Virginian cave,” after a woke dictator has seized power thanks to the destructive force of political correctness. Pretty weird stuff.
• A new, court-drawn map is forcing New York’s Democratic senators to run against each other, and everyone is mad about it.
• The weeks pre-insurrection were a very busy time for Ginni Thomas.

“The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia, and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq — I mean of Ukraine.”

— Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday as he was trying to criticize Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

My mom had a calendar of Bushisms, but they mostly contained stuff like “misunderestimated” and “Is our children learning?” — not Freudian slips regarding a defining event of the 21st century.

— Cristina Cabrera

With outrage having become the lifeblood of today’s GOP, conservatives have developed an interesting habit of coming up with entirely fictional scenarios to find something to get mad about.

Enter Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who put that quirk on full display during a House hearing on abortion on Wednesday. The Republican tried to paint a doctor who was at the hearing as a bloodthirsty baby butcher by demanding to know if she’d perform an abortion literally mid-birth.

“How about if a child is halfway out of the birth canal? Is an abortion permissible then?” Johnson asked.

When the doctor said she couldn’t “even fathom that ever happening,” Johnson dug his heels into the big gotcha, retorting that the situation he described that never happens ever “is unrestricted abortion, right?”

— Cristina Cabrera

According to a draft Supreme Court opinion leaked to the press, Roe v. Wade is slated to be overturned in the summer. In its first event of 2022, TPM is gathering our community to discuss what to make of the stark, new, post-Roe world the decision portends. We’ll bring together journalists, experts and practitioners for a robust discussion of possible outcomes. Our panel of guests is below. 

The event will be held virtually via Zoom on May 26, 2022, at 1 p.m. ET.

The suggested contribution for this event is $5. All contributions will go to the TPM journalism fund. Contributions are not tax-deductible.