Reflecting on the large production staff of one of The Who’s later tours, Pete Townshend once quipped that it took 300 people to replace Keith Moon. In that spirit, no one mortal can replace Jim Geraghty when he’s away from the Morning Jolt. Today, this is Dan McLaughlin joining the cast filling in for Jim. On the menu today: Another primary election day, and knives are sharpening on the left. But first, in the run-up to the Fourth, we are launching a “Defending America” webathon, so if you’re feeling generous and appreciate the work NR does to stick up for this great nation, please contribute any amount. That link again is here.

The Primary Story of the Day

Okay, campers, rise and shine! Tuesday is another busy primary day. The headline races: Republican primaries for Georgia governor, Oklahoma governor, and Alabama Senate, and Democrats scramble for the dishonor of becoming mayor of D.C.

Georgia

Georgia lies on an unstable partisan fault line. The state went for Joe Biden in 2020, and Democrats have won the last three Senate elections in the state: two in the 2021 runoffs that elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and another in 2022 when Warnock was reelected in a runoff against Herschel Walker. But these are the only statewide victories for Democrats in Georgia since the 1990s. No Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of the vote in Georgia since native son Jimmy Carter. Donald Trump, who won the state by five points in 2016, carried it by two in 2024, even as he won his best-ever margins most everywhere else.

Given the grisly national environment for Republicans with Trump’s approval rating struggling to stay above 40 percent, Ossoff is heavily favored to win reelection. That has D.C. conventional-wisdom-setters such as Jonathan Martin of Politico talking up Ossoff and Warnock for promotion: “I’d venture a confident prediction today: one of the two Georgia senators will be on the party’s ticket in 2028.”

The Republican primary pits two-term Representative Mike Collins (not to be confused with former Georgia Representative and Senate candidate Doug Collins) over a political outsider, former Tennessee and Louisiana Tech head football coach Derek Dooley. Collins just gained a formal Trump endorsement — not a shock for a guy who once shot a voting machine in a TV campaign ad — while Dooley is backed by Trump archrival Governor Brian Kemp. Dooley is the son of legendary UGA coach Vince Dooley, who helmed the undefeated 1980 national champions (whose star was Walker, then a freshman). Kemp and his endorsees routed Trump in the 2022 primaries, but times have changed; Collins got 40 percent of the vote in the May 19 first round to Dooley’s 30 percent, and Collins is now the favorite. The polls have Collins consistently ahead, but by widely divergent margins; it may all come down to turnout. While polls of the general election matchup are mostly stale, Emerson’s poll of the race completed in early March found Ossoff ahead of Collins by a margin of 48 percent to 43 percent, and ahead of Dooley by a margin of 49 percent to 41 percent.

The unstable element, given Democrats’ inroads at the Senate and presidential level, is the state government, which Republicans have run uncontested since the last century. Kemp held off Democrats and national hype for Stacey Abrams in a blue-wave year in 2018, and repeated the feat while taking friendly fire from Trump in 2022. Without a strong candidate profile such as Kemp’s, it may be much harder to hold the governor’s mansion while losing the Senate race in the teeth of an increasingly likely blue wave. One or the other is apt to give.

A heavyweight gubernatorial primary field was winnowed on May 19 to eliminate Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Attorney General Chris Carr, leaving a runoff between Trump-backed Lieutenant Governor Burt Jones (the only Trump-supported statewide candidate to win a contested primary in 2022), who also gained a late endorsement from Kemp, and businessman Rick Jackson, who earned last-minute praise from Donald Trump Jr. The race has been a bitter one, full of contending lawsuits that obscure the comparatively small ideological differences. Polls suggest a very tight race.

The winner will face former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who has a deep-blue city mayoral record in a town that hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Reconstruction, but had her occasional moments of sanity in dealing with the George Floyd riots in 2020. There are also Republican and Democratic primary runoffs for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, races that are likely to follow the top of the ticket.

Finally, there’s a special election runoff in Georgia’s 14th House district to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene. Republican Clay Fuller, a former district attorney, faces Democrat Shawn Harris (a retired brigadier general), who got stomped by MTG in the 2024 election by 29 points. Fuller is heavily favored, but watch the margins for signs of trouble.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma’s deep-red status doesn’t mean that its elections lack for drama. In the governor’s race to replace term-limited Governor Kevin Stitt, there’s a crowded field that includes Attorney General Gentner Drummond (who has drawn the wrong kinds of attention for crossing social conservatives), former state House Speaker Charles McCall, former Oklahoma Secretary of Public Safety Chip Keating (the son of former Governor Frank Keating), and former State Senator Jake Merrick, but the momentum seems to be with Mike Mazzei, a former state senator and budget official who drew a surprise Trump endorsement in late May after paying Roger Stone’s consulting firm.

In the Senate race for a full-term seat to replace Markwayne Mullin (who has been temporarily replaced by Alan Armstrong in the Senate until then), Representative Kevin Hern (whose district is also up for grabs tomorrow) faces four opponents who have not previously held office. An early-June poll by JMC Analytics and Polling showed Hern with a commanding lead (37 percent support with everyone else in single digits, and a similar margin of potential support among the undecided), while Mazzei held a 24 percent to 20 percent lead over Drummond. There are also statewide primary races for lieutenant governor and attorney general.

Alabama

In Alabama, where Tommy Tuberville is retiring to seek the governor’s mansion (itself not a great sign for the mood of MAGA diehards on Capitol Hill), there are runoffs in both parties’ Senate races as well as Republican runoffs for attorney general and lieutenant governor.

The Republican race to replace Tuberville pits Representative Barry Moore of the House Freedom Caucus against former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson. In the first round, Moore got 38.2 percent of the vote to Hudson’s 25.6 percent. Hudson, who has attacked Moore’s military service record, is running as the more-populist-than-thou option, but Moore has the Trump endorsement. If both Hudson and Rick Jackson win, that will be a story of populist energy cutting itself free of Trump’s imprimatur. On Monday, Fox News erroneously hit publish on what looks like a pre-written report that Hudson had won, but fear not, loyal readers: We can confirm that the election is still being held today. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Democrats’ runoff is between attorney Everett Wess, who got 39.6 percent in the first round, and small business owner Dakarai Larriett, who got 29.1 percent. If you need to learn who these people are, Republicans are really in trouble this fall.

D.C.

The nation’s capital has two Democratic primaries that are de facto general elections: one for mayor, and one for delegate to the House, where the geriatric and increasingly detached Eleanor Holmes Norton has finally hung it up. Polls appear to show Democratic socialist candidate Janeese Lewis George leading the mayoral race. Expect lots of acrimony between her and Trump if that is the case, notwithstanding how much the National Guard has done to clean up the city.

California

Californians in House district 14 go to the polls to choose a replacement for Eric Swalwell for the rest of his term. If one candidate gets a majority of the vote, he (or, likelier, she) will go directly to Congress. Otherwise, the top two finishers face off on August 18. The field features six Democrats, four Republicans, and an independent. Given the district’s partisan lean, nobody expects the Republicans to be competitive; a primary was already held in the same district with the same candidates on June 2, and as of the current count, State Senator Aisha Wahab and Bay Area Rapid Transit board director Melissa Hernandez finished first and second with, respectively, 39 and 17 percent of the vote. Wahab, a CAIR-endorsed progressive favorite, the child of 1980s Afghan refugees, and the first Muslim to serve in the California state Senate, has the edge.

CHASER: Left-populists are feeling their oats and bidding for power. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed four straight primary winners while keeping a safe distance so far from Graham Platner and Abdul El-Sayed, who might create real blowback against progressives if they lose winnable Senate races. Zohran Mamdani is building his own endorsement and influence operation. And Democrats are crying foul at Republicans stealing a page from their book by boosting sketchy leftists in Democratic primaries.

ADDENDA: Mitch McConnell was hospitalized briefly on Sunday, underscoring why the once-dominant Republican Senate leader is retiring at 84. And Donald Trump aims to rebut Democratic claims that America 250 will be a giant Trump rally by saying on social media that it will be . . . a giant Trump rally.