What Went Down During The May 17 Primary Elections

These two maps of Philadelphia — one from the City Commissioners showing the Democratic Senate primary vote so far, the other from Social Explorer showing the share of Black residents in each census tract — illustrate that Malcom Kenyatta is running strong in Philadelphia’s Black neighborhoods. Even with Fetterman’s strength statewide, his performance in Black communities is a key question given a 2013 incident in which he pulled a shotgun on a Black jogger — and the potential for that to be part of GOP attacks in the run-up to November.

In PA-17 there are two Democrats trying for the nomination to win Lamb’s seat, Chris Deluzio and Sean Meloy. Deluzio is a Navy veteran who served in Iraq and has worked at the Brennan Center for Justice and the University of Pittsburgh Institute for Cyber Law, Policy and Security. Meloy is an LGBTQ+ rights activist who has served on the Pennsylvania Commission on LGBTQ Affairs. Meloy has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood Action Fund and the NARAL Pro-Choice America PAC, and it will be important to see whether and how the abortion issue may motivate Democratic voters tonight.

Amelia, Hines’s journey to the 13th District has been quite something. A Charlotte native who lived in Winston-Salem at the time, Hines originally announced he was running in the 5th District, which contained neither Charlotte nor Winston-Salem. But after Budd decided to run for Senate, Hines switched to Budd’s 13th District, where he spent part of his childhood. That became the 7th District under the new congressional map passed by Republicans last year but was eliminated when that map was struck down as an illegal gerrymander. Hines then opted to run in the new 13th District, which is south of Raleigh and doesn’t overlap at all with the old 13th.