Primary elections: 3 races to watch Tuesday in Minnesota and Georgia

08/11/2020 World


In Georgia, a GOP candidate with a track record of impending rhetoric and ties to the baseless QAnon collusion theory is in a primary runoff. If Marjorie Taylor Greene dominates in the closing, she will be in a good position to win a congressional seat in the fall, putting National Republicans in the difficult position of how to respond.

Republican voters will also choose a candidate in a primary for a Minnesota congressional seat in a district that went for President Donald Trump in 2016 by a wide margin and is currently represented by threatened Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson.

Those are some of the races to watch Tuesday with races taking place in Georgia, Connecticut, Vermont, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Omar sees a well-funded Democratic primary challenger in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District on Tuesday.

Omar has received attacks from challenger Antone Melton-Meaux that she is divided and too focused on building a national profile. Democratic reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, also members of the ‘squad’, faced similar attacks in the primary races of their own, but both overcame them against these challenges earlier this year.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar hope to take on a whole host of challengers
Melton-Meaux, a lawyer who practices mediation and is a first-time candidate for elected office, does not have as much of a national profile as the challengers who ran against Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib, but he still has a substantial amount raised from money. He had raised more than $ 4.1 million on July 22, according to FEC data, while Omar had raised about $ 4.3 million on the same date.
Omar’s outspoken support for progressive priorities has given her a devoted following on the political left. At the same time, however, her rhetoric related to Israel has made her a target of criticism from Republicans as some members of her own party. Chamber member Nancy Pelosi and other members of the House Democratic leadership once went so far as to publicly call on Omar to apologize for comments they said were “anti-Semitic tropes.”
That controversy may have helped their Democratic challenger. Of the money raised in support of Melton-Meaux’s bid, several hundred thousand dollars have been pooled by a few pro-Israel political action commissions.
Omar apologized after her incursion of the Democratic leaders of the House and has tried to limit the damage and win over skeptics. Last May, she wrote an op-ed with Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who is Jewish, and urged the Muslim and Jewish communities to “come together to confront the twin evil of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic violence.”

Melton-Meaux has been cautious about unraveling the issue, saying in an interview that Omar’s comments had created “a lack of confidence” in the Jewish community that she was not seeking enough to fix. But his campaign has spent more time questioning Omar’s national profile, and whether it has taken her off the job.

Omar, who lost her father to Covid-19 this year, has the full support of the state’s Democratic Farmer Workers’ Party, including popular figures like her 5th District predecessor, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Pelosi also endorsed Omar in her bid for reelection. In 2018, Omar received more votes in total than any new member of Congress and outnumbered 428 constituencies out of 435, according to an analysis by the congresswoman’s campaign team.

GOP candidate who has embraced QAnon conspiracy theory over the vote in Georgia

A Republican primary runoff on Tuesday for the 14th Congressional District of Georgia has attracted national attention as a result of impending rhetoric from one of the candidates: Marjorie Taylor Greene.

QAnon conspiracy theorists on the ballot show Trump's influence on the GOP

One of the main flash points in the race has been the fact that Greene promoted the wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theory known as QAnon. While the theory is unbelievable enough to invite all sorts of interpretations from its supporters, QAnon claims at its core that Trump has secretly fought to bring down a cabal of satan-worshiping pedophiles who destroy all levels of the American government and other elite institutions has infiltrated.

Greene is immersed in the world of QAnon collusion theorists, calling the mythical Q a “patriot” in a 2017 video and saying “He is someone who loves his country very much, and he is on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump. “
The GOP candidate also has to deal with a backlash over the emergence of some of her remarks from the past that black people called “slaves for the Democratic Party” and the progressive billionaire activist George Soros, who is Jewish, a ” nazi. ” House GOP leaders reacted with condemnation following a report in Politico that summarized the comments in June.

If Greene wins the primary runoff, she will be in a strong position to win the general election in the trusted Republican district.

She retires against GOP opponent John Cowan in the runoff. The two candidates previously competed against each other in a primary election in June, in which Greene won roughly 40% of the vote, while Cowan received only 21%.

Who will be the GOP nominee in the Trumpiest district represented by a Democrat?

In Minnesota, Republican voters will elect a candidate in the battle for the 7th Congressional District currently represented by Democrat and House Speaker Collin Peterson. Peterson District voted for President Donald Trump by a larger margin than any other represented by a Democrat, making him the most vulnerable Democrat by 2020.

The Republican primary on Tuesday is a five-way race, but the candidates who have attracted the most attention in the race are former Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Michelle Fischbach and retired Air Force Major Dave Hughes.

Fischbach won the GOP distinction for the district during a virtual party convention in May, while Hughes ran against Peterson in 2016 and 2018, where he won nearly 48% of the vote after Peterson’s 52%.

CNN’s Simone Pathe, Michael Warren and Greg Krieg contributed to this report.

.

Tags

Designed by Tricksfast Solutions
© Copyright 2024, All Rights Reserved