Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Reid Epstein, filling in for Lisa Lerer today. |
Eight states and Washington, D.C., are holding primaries on Tuesday, but the drama is less about the Democratic presidential race — Joe Biden has this one in the bag, folks — and more about how voters and elections officials adapt to voting by mail. |
Tuesday’s contests in Indiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island were postponed from dates in April and May, giving voters time to request and return absentee ballots. And Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota and the District of Columbia, which stuck with June 2, are conducting their primaries largely by mail. |
Here’s a look at what to watch tomorrow — including some intriguing races down the ballot. |
The first national test for mail voting |
Since the coronavirus crisis largely shut down American life in mid-March, a handful of states have held elections. But Pennsylvania is perhaps the clearest test yet for how voters are responding to pushes from their party to request ballots by mail. More than twice as many Democrats have requested absentee ballots as have Republicans, according to data from the Pennsylvania Department of State. |
How much of that is because of President Trump’s baseless attacks on mail voting is unquantifiable. But it is a data point that worries Republicans, especially in a key battleground state that Mr. Trump carried in 2016. |
Beyond partisan scorecards, there is also the question of whether elections officials running Tuesday’s contests are up to the task of smoothly instituting a new system of voting. It’s not known yet if the Postal Service and local clerks can process hundreds of thousands of additional mail ballots — or if the contests will be disrupted by the coronavirus or further demonstrations over police brutality. |
One thing that seems quite likely: Elections jurisdictions will be slower than normal to process and report results. |
Steve King’s last hurrah? |
In his 17 years in Congress, Representative Steve King of Iowa has defended white nationalism, posted a Confederate flag on his office desk and described immigrants in vile terms. Now he has four Republican primary opponents, including Randy Feenstra, a state senator who has the support of most of Iowa’s Republican establishment. |
The splintered opposition could benefit Mr. King. In Iowa, a candidate must win at least 35 percent of the primary vote to claim the nomination. If no one does, the party’s nominee will be chosen later this summer at a district convention, which is likely to be packed with activist Republicans still loyal to Mr. King. |
Waiting for whoever emerges from the Republican primary is J.D. Scholten, a Democrat who basically never stopped campaigning against Mr. King after coming within 10,000 votes of ousting him in 2018. Democrats see Mr. Scholten as having a shot at winning in November if he faces Mr. King again, but the race probably wouldn’t be competitive against Mr. Feenstra. |
Will Iowa Democrats back the establishment’s Senate choice? |
The Senate Democrats’ campaign arm endorsed Theresa Greenfield in the Senate race in Iowa almost a year ago, but that didn’t scare her opponents out of the primary. |
Eddie Mauro, a Des Moines businessman, has poured more than $4 million of his own money into TV ads. Michael Franken, a retired vice admiral in the Navy, won the endorsement of The Des Moines Register. And Kimberly Graham, a lawyer, has sought to energize the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. |
Ms. Greenfield, a Des Moines businesswoman, is seen as likely to win. She has focused her TV ad spending on the incumbent, Senator Joni Ernst, and not her Democratic opponents. |
But it’s not clear how Democratic primary voters are reacting to the crises racking the nation. It would be a substantial embarrassment for both Ms. Greenfield and the Senate Democrats’ campaign arm if she fails to reach the 35 percent threshold required in Iowa to win the nomination — or worse, loses it to someone else. |
Two House races in New Mexico (one with Valerie Plame) |
Republicans held New Mexico’s Second Congressional District, which covers the southern half of the state, for 36 of 38 years until Xochitl Torres Small, a Democrat, won it in 2018. |
The two Republicans aiming to win it back are locked in a televised contest of their own loyalty to President Trump. Yvette Herrell, a former State House representative who lost the 2018 race, has ads reciting never-Trump Facebook posts written by her primary opponent, Claire Chase, a former congressional aide turned lobbyist. Ms. Chase, in return, calls herself a “pro-Trump conservative” and says Ms. Herrell “undermined Trump’s campaign.” |
Democrats are hoping for a rematch with Ms. Herrell rather than a contest against Ms. Chase, who is far better funded. |
Democrats have their own nasty race in northern New Mexico’s Third District, a safe seat where seven candidates are seeking to succeed Representative Ben Ray Luján, who is running for the Senate. |
Valerie Plame, the former C.I.A. agent whose cover was outed during the George W. Bush administration, has raised the most money but has fought off accusations that she is a carpetbagger. Teresa Leger Fernandez is the choice of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. |
A 14-way primary in Indiana |
When Representative Susan Brooks of Indiana announced last June that she wouldn’t seek re-election, it was seen as a harbinger of another bad year for House Republicans. Ms. Brooks was the recruitment chairwoman of her caucus and represented the sort of suburban voters who are often repelled by Mr. Trump. |
Her retirement set off one of the largest primaries in the country. Fourteen Republican candidates participated in a recent online forum as they compete for the district, which covers the suburbs north of Indianapolis. |
The candidates include Victoria Spartz, a self-funding state senator who immigrated from Ukraine two decades ago; Kelly Mitchell, the state treasurer; Beth Henderson, a self-funding businesswoman who trumpets her horse-riding skills in TV ads; and Micah Beckwith, the chief executive of a church singing troupe who has been a vocal critic of stay-home ordinances in place to fight the coronavirus. |
The winner is likely to face Christina Hale, a former State House member who has raised nearly as much money as all of her Republican opponents combined, excluding their own contributions. |
We want to hear from our readers. Have a question? We’ll try to answer it. Have a comment? We’re all ears. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. |
These protesters’ message is clear: Do better by black Americans |
Reporting my latest article, about what black protesters want from the Democratic Party, required venturing into the heart of both of America’s current pandemics. In Columbia, S.C., a city where black residents have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus pandemic, a racially diverse crowd of thousands gathered anyway at the State Capitol to protest police brutality. |
In my (masked) conversations with people there, I was struck by how much these things worked in tandem in people’s minds. They were attending not only because of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but also because of a general distaste for a political system they feel has not worked for black Americans. Of course, South Carolina is the same state that changed the trajectory of the Democratic primary and helped make Joe Biden the Democratic nominee — the same Mr. Biden who had told donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he was elected president. |
When you ask people about this seeming contradiction — the prospect of voting for Mr. Biden while being fed up with systemic inequities — a couple of things become clear. Voting in elections is wrapped up in many concerns: who can win, what other voters will think, name recognition and other factors. The people gathered on Saturday had one concern: what they felt was right. |
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