5 final takeaways from 2022's final primaries

Republicans added another problem candidate to their Senate roster on Tuesday. Trumpism had another good night, as did incumbent governors. And in at least one state, a scandal still counts for something.

With primaries in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware now behind us, the 2022 primary season is in the books. Overall, it was a good year of primaries for former President Donald Trump, whose endorsements in several high-profile races swung outcomes his way. But Republicans, owing to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and a big problem with “candidate quality,” are ending the primary season worse off than when the election cycle started.

Here are five takeaways from the final primary night of the year:

Republicans are their own worst enemy

Establishment Republicans and their allies poured millions of dollars into New Hampshire to block a far-right candidate, Don Bolduc, from becoming the U.S. Senate nominee.

It wasn’t enough, as state legislative leader Chuck Morse conceded the primary Wednesday morning, tethering the GOP’s prospects of swinging the Senate in November to yet another problem candidate — what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has referred to as an issue of “candidate quality."

Even before Bolduc’s victory, Mehmet Oz was floundering in Pennsylvania. Blake Masters is underperforming in Arizona, and Republicans in Georgia and Ohio are mired in competitive races.

Bolduc appears likely to have equal difficulties appealing to a general election audience. A retired Army brigadier general, he has amplified Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, called the state’s popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu, a “Chinese communist sympathizer” and called for the U.S. military to “get in there on the ground” in Ukraine.

It won’t take New Hampshire off the map for Republicans. The New Hampshire Senate race was a key part of the GOP’s effort to swing the 50-50 Senate, and Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is vulnerable.

But it’s going to be a lot harder knocking her out with Bolduc on the ballot.

“I just don’t think he has the discipline to run a serious campaign,” said one New Hampshire Republican familiar with the race. “Democrats will have a field day.”

Sununu, in a radio interview, called Bolduc “not a serious candidate.”

Trump is back on the ballot

It was a rare night where Donald Trump did not intervene in marquee races.

But even then, the former president’s presence was everywhere. On the same day as the final primary of the year, the Jan. 6 committee was stirring back to life, while the Justice Department’s probe of the effort to overturn the last election was once again in the headlines. Cable networks were discussing the documents found at Trump’s Florida estate as polls in New Hampshire began closing.

And even if he wasn’t endorsing on Tuesday, the primaries were all about Trump. In the New Hampshire Senate race, it was Buldoc who won not in spite of being “too Trumpy,” as one former state party chair told BBC News, but because of it. He has not only embraced Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen but, joining with Trump against his latest adversary, has raised the possibility of disbanding the FBI.

And in the New Hampshire House race to face Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas, both of the frontrunning Republicans — nominee Karoline Leavitt and runner-up Matt Mowers — served in the Trump administration.

Even in his losses — in Georgia, most prominently — the primaries were shaped by Trump or Republicans’ reaction to him. This is not the primary that Republicans hoped might unfold nearly two years ago, when Trump left office, and when Republicans were hoping to focus the entirety of the campaign on President Joe Biden and the economy.

Of the general election, said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster, “The more Trump is in the news, the easier it is for Democrats to make it a choice election rather than a referendum” on Biden and the incumbent party.

Trump’s Achilles heel: Governors

It won’t go down as a loss on Trump’s scoresheet, but Trump world had tried for months to find a credible Republican to challenge New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

They failed, and the governor who called Trump “fucking crazy” at a roast-style dinner earlier this year was declared the winner of his primary within minutes of polls closing.

The outcome, though hardly unexpected, marked the final rebuke of Trump in a primary season that has largely gone well for him – but in which gubernatorial races have been a striking exception. Earlier this year, it was Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp humiliating Trump’s endorsed candidate, and Idaho Gov. Brad Little beating his Trump-endorsed opponent. In Nebraska’s gubernatorial primary, outgoing Gov. Pete Ricketts’ political machine kept Trump’s longtime ally Charles Herbster from advancing.

Those primaries laid bare one of the few limitations of Trump’s hold on the GOP – and served as a reminder that Trump is not the only Republican with pull in the party. And going forward, Sununu is in position to act as a thorn in Trump’s side. Unlike the governor of Nebraska or Idaho, he’s sitting in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary state, where Trump will be seeking support yet again in 2024 if, as expected, he runs for president.

Trump might have done better sitting the gubernatorial elections out entirely. Sitting governors appear to have a special appeal to primary voters – better able than House members or lower-level public officials to cultivate brands that help them buck some national party trends.

With Sununu’s primary victory — and Rhode Island’s Democratic governor, Dan McKee, winning on the same night — all 28 incumbent governors seeking reelection this year won their primaries.

The 8-week pivot

The problem for Republicans now that the primary season is finished is not just that they’re saddled with several less-than-ideal nominees. It’s that those candidates have so little time to change course before the general election.

Mail ballots for the general election have already been sent to voters in North Carolina. Other states are lining up to do the same, and Election Day is now just eight weeks out.

That’s not a lot of time for Republicans to execute the classic pivot from appeals to the party’s base to less strident pitches aimed at more moderate general election audiences; already they are scrubbing their campaign websites of their positions on abortion and putting their wives in front of cameras to soften their images.

And then there’s the short timeframe to raise money. In New Hampshire, Bolduc reported having about $84,000 in cash on hand as of late August. Hassan was sitting on more than $7 million.

“New Hampshire’s late primary is a real problem when it comes to taking on incumbents,” said Jeff Grappone, a Republican strategist and former adviser to several New Hampshire Republicans, including former Sen. Kelly Ayotte.

“The timeframe is very short … It doesn’t give a lot of runway to non-incumbents.”

Surprise: A criminal conviction is still a problem

Ever since the Access Hollywood tape, old ideas of the salience of a scandal have mostly gone out the window.

But in Delaware on Tuesday, a throwback: The Democratic state auditor lost her primary after being convicted of official misconduct and conflict of interest while in office, on misdemeanor counts stemming from the hiring of her daughter.

It wasn’t exactly Watergate, and the outcome was no foregone conclusion.

The prosecution of the auditor, Kathy McGuiness, was “very aggressive,” Bob Byrd, a former Democratic state representative from Delaware, said in an interview. “I think this one was over the top….many politicians have hired their children.”

But it was a criminal conviction all the same and Delaware voters punished McGuiness for it.

When the state Democratic Party endorsed her opponent in the primary, Lydia York, state party chair Betsy Maron told Delaware-based reporters it was an opportunity to “do away with the political theater that has kept the incumbent at center stage for all the wrong reasons.”