art credit for Branco cartoon: pinterest.com
Incumbent Renee Ellmers loses primary,
Warren Davidson will replace Boehner until the next election
With all the headlines on Trump and
Clinton, there are two other results from yesterday’s elections that you might
have missed. The Washington Post reports:
Warren
Davidson, a businessman and former Army Ranger, won a 15-way Republican primary
in March in the special election for Ohio’s 8th Congressional
District. The tea party candidate rather easily bested more moderate
candidates, including two state lawmakers, in a campaign that quickly became
ground zero for the party’s ongoing identity struggle in the House that Boehner
used to run.
On Tuesday,
Davidson easily won the special election in the deep-red district, which will
allow him to serve out 2016 in Boehner’s seat.
Read the rest here.
And Renee Ellmers (R-NC) was defeated
in the primary yesterday, despite Trump’s endorsement. The News Observer reports (h/t RealClearPolitics):
U.S. Rep.
George Holding of Raleigh defeated a fellow incumbent — and a Donald Trump ally
— in one of the most-watched congressional primaries in the nation.
Rep. Renee
Ellmers’ defeat in the GOP contest marks a major fall for a politician who was
once a television political show staple and who worked to recruit Republican
women to run for office. Holding presented himself as more conservative than
Ellmers.
“You go to
Washington and you think you vote the right way,” Holding said at his victory
party Tuesday night. “I try to vote in a conservative manner, and you wonder
sometimes, do people even notice? This primary gave me the opportunity to learn
that people do notice.”
With all
precincts reporting, Holding defeated Ellmers by about 30 percentage points.
Ellmers squeaked out a second-place finish by less than a percentage point over
tea-party-connected candidate Greg Brannon.
This blog expressed disappointment
over Trump’s endorsement of Ellmers. She was the first congresswoman to endorse Trump, but her voting record was
terrible. From News/Talk 1010 WCSI:
“Ellmers voted
for Obama’s omnibus budget deal, voted to support Obama’s executive amnesty for
illegal immigrants and supported John Kasich in a straw poll during the
presidential primary,” the aide said Sunday. “Now she’s trying to fool voters
to get reelected.”
# # #
