Kansas Upheld Abortion Rights And Other Key Updates From The Aug. 2 Elections

[Editor’s Note: The following has been updated as of 11:41 a.m. Eastern with the latest results.]

Tuesday marked the first vote on abortion in a post-Roe landscape. Kansans decided by a double-digit margin that the state constitution does, in fact, protect the right to abortion. With 99 percent of the expected vote reporting, 59 percent of voters voted “no,” on the amendment, or to clarify that the constitution does protect the right to abortion, while 41 percent voted “yes,” or to clarify that the constitution doesn’t protect the right to abortion. It’s notable that the yeses won by 18 points in a state that former President Donald Trump won by roughly 15 points in 2020.

It’s possible, too, that what we saw tonight in Kansas signals that abortion might be an energizing issue for Democrats headed into the 2022 midterms — turnout was staggeringly high in some corners of the state, like Johnson County, the state’s most populous county. Though as we talked about on the live blog, there are still a lot of questions about whether this will translate to electoral success for Democrats in November.

Meanwhile in Arizona, we weren’t sure when we hit the hay last night, but it does seem as if in all four of its statewide races — governor, U.S. Senate, attorney general and secretary of state — an election-denying candidate could win. (The caveat here is the governor’s race, where we don’t expect a call anytime soon.) Moreover, they all had Trump’s backing:

• With 80 percent of the vote now counted, Trump-backed former TV anchor Kari Lake has pulled ahead of former Arizona Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, currently leading, 46 to 44 percent. ABC News hasn’t yet projected this race for Lake and likely won’t for awhile. It will all come down to what type of vote is still outstanding: Robson led in the mail-vote while Lake led in election day vote. A reminder that Lake has fully embraced Trump’s false election claims while Robson has refrained from taking a stance.
• Meanwhile in the Senate primary, former Thiel Foundation President Blake Masters has won, and with 78 percent of the vote counted, he has a roughly 10 point lead over solar power businessman Jim Lamon. (Remember, though, on the election-denying front, it didn’t actually matter whether it was Masters, Lamon or Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich who won, as all three have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election.)
• For secretary of state — an important post considering that it oversees elections — election-denying state Rep. Mark Finchem won with 74 percent of the vote counted, defeating businessman Beau Lane, the one candidate who unreservedly acknowledge Biden’s win in this race.
• And finally, Trump-backed Abraham Hamadeh won the attorney general race with 32 percent of the vote. Both Hamadeh and Rodney Glassman said Trump was the rightful 2020 winner.

One other big thread we were tracking this evening was how the three House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol fared. And at least one lost. Republican Rep. Peter Meijer lost to Trump-endorsed challenger John Gibbs by about 4 points in the GOP primary for Michigan’s 3rd District, with around 99 percent of the expected vote. Meijer joins South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice as the two pro-impeachment Republicans who have lost their primaries so far.

Meanwhile, the two other House Republicans who backed impeachment appear to be in a better position, although there are a lot of votes left to still be counted in Washington. In Washington’s 3rd District, Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez has advanced, per ABC News, with 32 percent of the vote and about half of the expected vote in. It’s not clear yet whether Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler, who voted to impeach Trump, will prevail, but she is in second with 24 percent — good enough to advance if results hold. In Washington’s 4th District, Rep. Dan Newhouse holds a narrow lead over the field with 27 percent, followed by Doug White, the lone Democrat in the race. It’s possible, though, that Loren Culp, Trump’s endorsee, catches up with him, as only about half the expected vote has been reported.

Should Herrera Beutler and Newhouse both manage to pull out first- or second-place finishes, they’d join California Rep. David Valadao as the three pro-impeachment Republicans who have survived their primaries. Perhaps not coincidentally, Valadao also hails from a top-two primary state, which may give a slight boost to more moderate candidates than a traditional party primary.

Finally, here are updates on the other races that weren’t called when we put the live blog to bed.

• In the Republican primary for Arizona’s 4th District, Kelly Cooper leads Tanya Wheeless 30 percent to 25 percent. The winner will take on Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton in this swing seat in the fall.
• The GOP primary in Arizona’s 1st District has now been called for Republican Rep. David Schweikert. He will face Democrat Jevin Hodge in this red-leaning Phoenix-area seat.
• The GOP primary in Arizona’s 2nd District has also been called for Eli Crane. Crane will now face Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran in a seat that became much redder in redistricting. The Republican will likely be favored in the fall.
• The Democratic primary in Michigan’s 13th District, a safely blue open seat around Detroit, has been called for Shri Thanedar. With Thanedar’s victory, it will now be the first time voters haven’t elected a Black representative since 1954, which is likely in part thanks to redistricting and the fact that a number of high-profile Black candidates ran in this race.
• In Washington’s 8th District (likely the state’s only competitive seat this fall), Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier leads the all-party primary with 49 percent, ensuring she’ll have a spot in the general election. But the top three GOP contenders are all bunched up behind her: 2020 state attorney general nominee Matt Larkin has 16 percent, while King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn and 2020 8th District nominee Jesse Jensen both have 15 percent.

And now ABC News has projected Kobach as the winner as well.

The Associated Press has called the Republican primary for Kansas attorney general for Kris Kobach. With 90 percent of the expected vote in, he is defeating state Sen. Kellie Warren 42 percent to 38 percent. Warren had argued that Kobach, who lost bids for governor in 2018 and Senate in 2020, would be unelectable, but he’s probably the favorite this fall given how red Kansas is. And if he is elected attorney general, you can expect him to be a major thorn in the Biden administration’s side, especially on issues of voting and immigration, which have been career-long focuses for Kobach.

Yeah, Jacob, and he said in his 2012 campaign for a judgeship that his judicial philosophy most closely aligned with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. However, during this primary, he has emphasized that he is pro-choice.

Not only is Marlinga on the older side, but he’s also taken some pro-life stances in the past that might come back to haunt him. In the 1990s, when he was a prosecutor, he got a court to bar a 12-year-old incest victim from traveling out to state to get an abortion (to Kansas, which coincidentally kept abortion enshrined in its constitution tonight).

ABC News is projecting that Carl Marlinga has won the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 10th District. Voters often say that they want new blood, but Democrats here opted for the 75-year-old Marlinga over one of his younger female challengers, perhaps because of his long electoral track record in the area. However, Marlinga will have his hands full in November taking on John James in this Republican-leaning district.

We finally have a meaningful number of votes in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 13th District, an open, safely Democratic seat (so this primary is essentially tantamount to election). Self-funding state Rep. Shri Thanedar leads with 31 percent, followed by state Sen. Adam Hollier with 24 percent and nonprofit leader Portia Roberson with 18 percent. This Detroit-based district (or one of its successors) has elected a Black representative ever since 1954, but Thanedar is Indian American.

Of the 16 whose races have been called, 15 Trump endorsees are projected to win tonight. The remaining six endorsees whose races are still in play include Joe Kent and Loren Culp, running for Washington’s 3rd and 4th Districts, respectively. Currently, both are trailing, with each race is at about 50 percent reporting, and each candidate has roughly half the vote share.

Out in Arizona, AG candidate Blake Masters is leading with a third of the vote share amidst a crowded field, although over 40 percent of the votes have yet to be counted. Eli Crane, running for Congress in the state’s 2nd District, is in a similar boat, leading with one-third of the vote share at 50 percent reporting. Meanwhile, Trump’s choice for Arizona governor, Kari Lake, is trailing. Lastly, it’s coming down to the wire for John Gibbs in Michigan’s 3rd District. At present, he’s leading with a thin margin at 51.5 percent of the vote share and about 95 percent of the vote in.

We’ve got two calls from ABC News in Arizona’s 6th District. On the Democratic side, former state Sen. Kirsten Engel has won her party’s nomination over state Rep. Daniel Hernandez. On the GOP side, Juan Ciscomani, a former adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey, will be the nominee. It’s an open-seat race in an evenly divided district and will be closely watched in the fall.

Notably, James — a Republican — might be Michigan’s only Black U.S. representative next year. Rep. Brenda Lawrence is retiring, and Indian American state Rep. Shri Thanedar is leading the Democratic primary to replace her in Michigan’s 13th District.

In the Republican primary for Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, the AP reports that John James has dispatched his little-known primary foe, 87 percent to 13 percent. James has become a favorite of national Republicans after overperforming Michigan’s baseline partisanship in both the 2018 and 2020 U.S. Senate races, and now he’s probably favored to go to Congress: Michigan’s 10th District became a Republican-leaning seat in this year’s redistricting process, and our model gives him a 68 in 100 chance of winning.

Trends continue to favor Gibbs in Michigan’s 3rd District GOP primary. He leads by 2.7 points now, and with 92 percent of the expected vote reporting, this may be all she wrote for Meijer. Gibbs did well in the election day vote in Kent County (Grand Rapids), which helped him narrow Meijer’s early lead there to almost a 50-50 draw. Meanwhile, Gibbs has a small leads in the other two counties that make up around 25 to 30 percent of the district’s vote.

The AP (but not yet ABC) has called the top-two primary in Washington State for incumbent Democrat Patty Murray, and her top GOP challenger, triage nurse Tiffany Smiley. The two will face off in a head-to-head matchup this fall, and Republicans hope the red wave gets high enough to reach all the way to the Evergreen State.

Just thinking out loud here. We’re about to get some good indicators of the national mood in a series of upcoming special elections: Minnesota’s 1st District next Tuesday; Alaska’s at-large House seat on Aug. 16; New York’s 19th and 23rd districts on Aug. 23. If Democrats continue to overperform in those seats, it will show that the party’s voters really are energized, at least as we stand now.

Arizona’s GOP Senate primary remains pretty close, as Masters leads Lamon by about 4 points with 57 percent of the expected vote reporting. Brnovich is hanging out at 20 percent, so it looks like it’s a Masters-Lamon race. Interestingly, Lamon is doing a bit better in the counties that sit along the U.S.-Mexico border, but Maricopa County (Phoenix) is the mother lode of votes in Arizona (roughly 60 percent of the GOP primary vote), and Masters is up about 6 points there.

Among races that have been called so far tonight, 17 Republican candidates who outright deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election have won, while three other candidates who questioned the results have clinched their nominations. In Blake Masters (Senate in Arizona), Mark Finchem (secretary of state in Arizona) and Eli Crane (Arizona’s 2nd District, we have three more candidates leading their races who have embraced Trump’s claims of a stolen election.

Like the GOP, Democrats are nominating fewer women this cycle compared to 2020, but women are still a substantial share of all their party’s nominees. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, women are 40 percent of House nominees and 33 percent of Senate nominees thus far (in 2020 it was 47 percent and 36 percent, respectively). Tonight, Democratic women have won or are leading in a few races that could be competitive in November. For instance, in Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs won the gubernatorial primary, and in the 6th District, state Sen. Kirsten Engel is leading Daniel Hernandez. And in Michigan, former Department of Justice Attorney Hillary Scholten will run in the 3rd District.

Speaking of extremely down-ballot Arizona races, state House Speaker Rusty Bowers is currently losing his bid for a promotion to the state Senate, 61 percent to 39 percent. Bowers, of course, got national attention recently for testifying in front of the Jan. 6 committee about his resistance of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In response, Trump endorsed his primary opponent, David Farnsworth.

Speaking of impeachment Republicans, things are still incredibly close in Michigan’s 3rd District GOP primary. Gibbs leads Meijer 51 percent to 49 percent, with 73 percent of the expected vote reporting. Early on, Meijer held a big lead in Kent County (Grand Rapids), which will cast around 70 percent of the vote in this district, but it’s now only barely going for Meijer, 52 percent to 48 percent. The other parts of the district are going pretty big for Gibbs, so the fact that Trump’s endorsee has cut the margin in Kent could be his ticket to victory.

It’s been a big night for nationally (in)famous Republicans seeking comebacks. Looks like Joe Arpaio is going the way of Eric Greitens rather than Kris Kobach.

Washington’s other House Republican who backed impeachment is also in a tight race. With about half the vote in from the 4th District, Dan Newhouse leads with 27 percent, just ahead of Doug White, the only Democrat running, who has 26 percent. Trump’s endorsee, Loren Culp, is in third with 22 percent. So it looks like it’s going to be close.

Washington’s 8th District is the state’s most competitive congressional seat. But it might be a while before we know which Republican will take on Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier in the fall. While Schrier is setting the pace with just under 50 percent of the vote, Matt Larkin, who ran for state attorney general in 2020, is in second with 16 percent, King County Councilor Reagan Dunn is right behind with 15 percent and Jesse Jensen, who ran for the 8th District in 2020, is in third with 13 percent. All are Republicans.

We’ve got a lot of very close action out west in Washington’s top-two primaries involving House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump. (Remember, all candidates run together on the same ballot.) In the 3rd District, about half the expected vote is in, and auto shop owner Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the lone Democrat of note, leads with 32 percent, while pro-impeachment incumbent Herrera Beutler is in second with 24 percent. Herrera Beutler is just ahead of Joe Kent, Trump’s endorsed candidate, who has 20 percent, while the other notable Trumpy contender, Heidi St. John, has 15 percent. Ahead of the primary, a mysterious outside group called Conservatives for a Stronger America spent $932,000 supporting St. John and $521,000 opposing Kent, prompting Kemp to claim the group wanted to help St. John split the Trump base to help Herrera Beutler. That may in fact be happening.

To give you a sense for how insane turnout was for Kansas’s abortion referendum: Almost 243,000 votes have been counted so far in Johnson County, Kansas, the state’s most populous county. That’s almost as many as Johnson County cast for governor in the 2018 general election: almost 271,000.

For now, Karrin Taylor Robson leads in the GOP race for Arizona governor, with 49 percent of the vote, over Kari Lake, with 40 percent of the vote. This is another intriguing pairing and a bit of a referendum on the election denial tactic. Lake has been a vocal proponent of Trump’s false claims of a stolen election, even challenging her fellow candidates at a debate to raise their hand if they believe the U.S. had “a corrupt, stolen election” in 2020. Robson, who has avoided sharing her thoughts on the legitimacy of the election, refused to raise her hand. Lake later criticized Robson for not raising her hand and saying the election was stolen, calling it “disqualifying.” So it will be worth seeing how this race shakes out, but keep in mind Lake will likely get a boost from election day votes later in the night.

We’ve got about half the vote counted in Washington, and Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat, is leading the all-party field with 54 percent of the vote. Republican Tiffany Smiley is next with 32 percent. The two will almost certainly face off in the fall, in a “reach” race for Republicans looking to take back the Senate.

Nathaniel, I’m not sure it’s that shocking that the abortion vote in Kansas got way more votes than the gubernatorial primaries — unaffiliated voters could only vote for the constitutional amendment.

We still have next to no results from Michigan’s Detroit-based 13th District, where polls closed three and a half hours ago, and now we know why:

Over in Arizona’s 2nd District, Navy SEAL veteran Eli Crane leads state Rep. Walt Blackman 33 percent to 24 percent in the Republican primary, with almost half the expected vote reporting. Businessman Mark DeLuzio is close behind in third with 19 percent. Crane had led the way in fundraising and got Trump’s endorsement in this crowded primary, so he was somewhat favored coming in. Just for the record, QAnon promoter Ron Watkins has only 3 percent and is in last place (as Kaleigh mentioned earlier, he may be the voice behind Q, the message board account that has helped inspire the conspiracy theory).

The GOP winner will face Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran in the fall and will probably be favored, as the district shifted from R+6 to R+15 in redistricting (compared to the old 1st District). It was a little bit of a surprise O’Halleran decided to run anyway.

Quite a stat here.

With 51 percent of the vote reporting, Ciscomani leads his four Republican challengers with 47.9 percent of the vote. Martin, in the No. 2 spot, was the 2020 Republican nominee for the same part of the state.

There’s a close Democratic primary for Arizona secretary of state, too: Former Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes leads state House Minority Leader Reginald Bolding 53 percent to 47 percent. The ideological divide here isn’t as stark as on the Republican side, though: Obviously, both have affirmed Biden’s victory in the state.

Votes are coming in fast: Engel is leading in the Democratic primary for Arizona’s 6th District with 94 percent of the vote reporting. Engel is a law professor who has served in the state legislature.

In Arizona’s 1st District, incumbent GOP Rep. David Schweikert leads insurance company founder Elijah Norton 44 percent to 34 percent, with 77 percent of the expected vote already reporting. Norton went after Schweikert for his various ethics scandals, including a fine by the FEC for campaign violations and ethics violations handed down by the House Ethics Committee. Norton also had a big fundraising advantage thanks to his personal wealth. But Schweikert and his allies criticized Norton for running an insurance company that allegedly defrauded customers. They even sent out mailers to voters that implied Norton was gay, which prompted a lawsuit by another man pictured in the mailer.

Along with Finchem, multiple candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election are currently leading their races in Arizona. This includes Masters, currently leading in the GOP race for senate. Masters has said, “I think Trump won in 2020,” and that election officials and the media “conspired to manipulate the 2020 election.” Masters has 34 percent of the vote.

Nathaniel, it’ll be interesting if Wheeless goes down in Arizona’s 6th. She’s the preferred candidate of a lot of power players in Washington, D.C., and got a big boost from several Super PACs throughout the race, including the Ken Griffin-funded Strong Leaders Fund, which spent $440,000, and $800,000 from WFW Action Fund, another GOP establishment outfit with big-name backers.

In the “also ran” category tonight we have (possibly) Q himself. Ron Watkins is the former administrator of 8kun, one of the message boards where “Q,” the shadowy figure behind the QAnon conspiracy theory, posts their cryptic messages. And there’s a convincing argument to be made that Watkins himself was behind the Q account. But any clout he gained among the QAnon crowd isn’t going far. He’s currently in last place with 3 percent of the vote in Arizona’s 2nd District. (Something he, earlier tonight on his election live stream, said he hoped wouldn’t happen: “That would be terrible.“)

We have the first few votes coming in for the Republican and Democratic primaries in Arizona’s 6th District, but we will hopefully have more soon. On the Democratic side, Engel has a slight lead with 11 percent of the expected vote reporting, while Ciscomani has an early lead on the Republican side with 13 percent reporting.

In the GOP primary for Arizona’s 4th District, Kelly Cooper leads Tanya Wheeless 30 percent to 25 percent with about 60 percent of the expected vote reporting. This district got redder in redistricting, and the GOP is hoping to knock off Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton as a result.

ABC News projects incumbent Rashida Tlaib will win the Democratic primary for Michigan’s 12th District. With her high-profile congressional career representing the 13th district since 2019, tonight’s results are no surprise, and she’s poised for reelection this November.

In the GOP primary for secretary of state in Arizona, Trump-endorsed state Rep. Mark Finchem has a decent lead with 35 percent of the vote, with advertising executive Beau Lane close behind with 28 percent of the vote. This is a notable competition since Finchem has been a big proponent of Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen, while Lane is the only candidate in the GOP primary for secretary of state who has stated without reservation that Biden legitimately won.

Arizona’s Democratic primary for governor wasn’t nearly as competitive as the Republican primary, and in fact, we already have a winner: ABC News is projecting that Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (75 percent of the vote currently) has defeated Marco Lopez (21 percent).

The Arizona’s governor’s race, as Geoffrey and Nathaniel wrote in their preview of Arizona’s primary, has evolved into something of a proxy war between Trump and more traditional GOP forces led by Ducey and Pence. Lake, for instance, backs Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, earning his endorsement in the process, while Robson has played it much more coyly, avoiding taking a public stance on the 2020 election. It’s not exactly a full-throated denial that Trump won, but it has earned support from the GOP establishment like Ducey and Pence. It’ll be interesting to see whether those differences in approach matter tonight in Arizona, as Robson has lagged Lake in the polls for awhile now but presumably would be a stronger general election choice.

In Arizona’s Republican primary for Senate, former Thiel Foundation President Blake Masters leads solar power executive Jim Lamon by 5 points, 35 percent to 30 percent, with 49 percent of the expected vote reporting. Attorney General Mark Brnovich is back in third with 20 percent. Masters has Trump’s endorsement but does not seem to be rolling up much of a margin, although some final polls gave him a double-digit edge.

We’ve got a fair bit of the vote counted in Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial primary (50 percent), and Karrin Taylor Robson is currently leading Kari Lake, 50 percent-41 percent. Robson was endorsed by outgoing GOP Gov. Doug Ducey and former Vice President Mike Pence, while Lake has the support of Trump.

Democrats don’t have much of a shot in November in Missouri’s U.S. Senate race, but that primary has still been dramatic, with the two candidates going VERY negative on each other. And now we can see why: It’s a close race! Busch Valentine leads Kunce 43 percent to 38 percent with 75 percent of the estimated vote reporting.

Just checking in on the GOP race for AG nomination in Kansas. It’s still neck-and-neck, with the two front-runners alternating who is in the lead. Currently it’s Kobach, with 40 percent of the vote, but Warren is right behind with 39 percent.

This stat on turnout is quite something

Sarah, 10 House Republicans voted to impeach Trump. Of those, four decided to retire, in part because some attracted primary opponents whom Trump endorsed or because of redistricting — or both. Two of the six who are seeking reelection have already had their primaries. Of those, California Rep. David Valadao narrowly advanced in his top-two primary ahead of a very Trumpy (but not Trump-endorsed opponent), while South Carolina Rep. Tom Rice lost outright in his regular party primary, not even forcing it a runoff against a Trump-endorsed opponent. Meijer is one of three representatives who faced the voters today, with Washington Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse also on the docket. Meijer is locked in a very close primary fight, but it’s possible that Herrera Beutler and Newhouse might benefit from Washington’s top-two system, much as Valadao appears to have done. The other remaining impeachment vote is Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who trails in the polls and may be doomed in her regular party primary that takes place later this month.

Geoff, I know this is something you’ve been tracking closely over the past year, but how have House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump fared this cycle?