Voters in four states select candidates in primaries tonight: Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington. We've written up all the key races below, and we've also provided interactive, zoomable Google Maps versions of each state's new congressional map where appropriate.
' MI-03 (D): Two Democrats are hoping to take on GOP freshman Justin Amash: former state Rep./former judge Steve Pestka and activist Trevor Thomas. Thomas has outraised Pestka, but Pestka added half a mil of his own money to his campaign coffers and his TV ads are undoubtedly in heavier rotation. Thomas, thanks in part to his work helping to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," has received the support of a lot of national progressives, including VoteVets and House Progressive Caucus chair Raul Grijalva. Pestka, meanwhile, has earned a lot of local and labor. The most recent poll was a Pestka internal from the end of June that had him 39-15, but those numbers came at the very start of the paid media phase of the campaign and the picture has likely changed since then.
' MI-06 (R): Former state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk did well to hold Rep. Fred Upton to a 57-43 win in the 2010 primary without any outside support and basically bupkes for fundraising. And if the Club for Growth had decided to play sugar daddy here this time, perhaps Hoogendyk's second challenge from the right would have succeeded. But the CfG must not have been too impressed with what they saw, since they only spent some $53K here. Meanwhile, some third-party groups (mainly the Radiologists and Optometrists) came in to help Upton with more than $200K, and the incumbent once again badly outraised the upstart. A recent independent poll gave Upton a lead of more than 30 points.
' MI-11 (D & R): If you're reading this primary preview, then you almost certainly know how we've reached this crazy point: Ex-Rep. Thad McCotter's unheard-of failure to qualify for the ballot and subsequently abandoned write-in campaign left the GOP in a real mess. The only guy actually on the ballot is Paulist reindeer farmer Kerry Bentivolio, who was enough of a gadfly to want to challenge McCotter in the primary even before his whole ballot saga unfolded. Given Bentivolio's extreme unacceptability to what passes for mainstream Republican these days, the local establishment rallied around ex-state Sen. Nancy Cassis, who is waging her own write-in bid to try to save her party from itself. Both candidates have mostly self-funded (each for about $200K), but Bentivolio has gotten a ton of outside help (over $700K in total), principally from libertarian Super PAC Liberty for All. While an ambitious EPIC-MRA attempted to poll the race (and found Cassis leading), obviously the write-in factor makes this contest all but impossible to handicap.
Democrats have a mess on their hands, too, though. Physician Syed Taj (who, like Bentivolio, entered the race when it was on nobody's radar) is the only legitimate option. That's because the other hopeful, Bill Roberts, is a nutbag LaRouchie who is fond of handing out literature that reads "Impeach Obama Now" and features a Hitler moustache on the president's face. In a just world, Roberts would be an utter non-entity. But in a race where few voters have ever even heard of the candidates, a familiar-sounding name like "Bill Roberts" might pull more votes than an unfamiliar one like "Syed Taj." Democrats, obviously, are hoping for a Taj-Bentivolio matchup.
Head below the fold for the rest of our writeups.
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