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      John Curtis, a Moderate House Republican, Wins Utah’s Senate Primary

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      Representative John Curtis, a centrist Republican, won his party’s primary for U.S. Senate in Utah on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, beating a more conservative candidate endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Curtis, who has held a House seat in eastern Utah since 2017, has portrayed himself as a moderate workhorse in the image of the senator whose seat he is vying to fill: Mitt Romney, a former presidential candidate who said he was retiring to make way for a “new generation of leaders.”Mr. Curtis, 64, is perhaps not the fresh-faced successor Mr. Romney, 77, had imagined. But Mr. Curtis, a member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus and a leader of Republican efforts to address climate change in Congress, is a clear heir apparent to Mr. Romney’s centrist style of politics.Unlike Mr. Romney, Mr. Curtis is not a vocal critic of Mr. Trump. Mr. Romney, who voted twice to remove Mr. Trump from office during the former president’s two impeachment trials in the Senate, had pleaded with his fellow Republicans to unite behind an alternative to the former president for 2024.While Mr. Curtis declined to support Mr. Trump in the 2016 election, he largely backed his agenda once he was elected to Congress. But he refused to support Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. In the midst of this year’s Senate primary race, and seeking to polish his conservative bona fides, Mr. Curtis defended the former president’s vow to prosecute his political enemies if elected president.“I think it’s just human nature to feel the way that President Trump has expressed himself,” Mr. Curtis said during a debate ahead of the primary.Still, he faced attacks from his main primary opponent, Trent Staggs, the mayor of Riverton, Utah, for not being sufficiently supportive of the former president. Mr. Trump had endorsed Mr. Staggs, describing him in a video last weekend as “a little bit of a long shot” but “MAGA all the way.” For months, polls showed Mr. Curtis leading the race by a wide margin.Mr. Curtis began his political career as a Democrat. He unsuccessfully ran for the Utah State Senate in 2000, and then served for a year as the chair of the Democratic Party in Utah County. He ran for mayor of Provo as a Republican in 2009, and served in that position until 2017.That year, when Representative Jason Chaffetz, the influential chair of the House Oversight Committee, abruptly retired from his House seat in eastern Utah, Mr. Curtis jumped into the race, winning the Republican primary with 40 percent of the vote and defeating his Democratic opponent in the special election in a landslide. Mr. Curtis has since cruised to re-election to three full terms in the House. More

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      Rep. Bob Good Seeks Funds for Virginia Primary Recount

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      The Republican primary between Representative Bob Good of Virginia, the chairman of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, and his Trump-backed challenger was still up in the air on Monday almost a week after the balloting, as the two election deniers settled in for a lengthy and ugly fight over who was the true victor.John J. McGuire, a little-known state senator and former Navy SEAL who attended the “Stop the Steal” rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, held a razor-thin lead of just under 375 votes out of the nearly 63,000 votes cast, according to The Associated Press. He declared victory last Tuesday night before all the votes were counted, and on Monday, former President Donald J. Trump, who endorsed him, declared Mr. McGuire the winner in a social media post.But The A.P. said on Monday that the contest was too close to call, noting that while it would be unusual for a recount to shift the outcome of such a race, it would not be impossible. And Mr. Good has already made it clear he will seek a recount, an option under Virginia law, which allows such a request if the winner of a race is less than one percentage point ahead of his opponent.John J. McGuire, a state senator, speaking to supporters in Lynchburg, Va., last week. He declared victory on election night.Skip Rowland/Associated Press“While not unprecedented, it is rare for a race of this nature to shift by a few hundred votes during a recount,” The A.P. said in explaining its finding that the race was “too close to call.” “However, A.P. research has found that Virginia has a history of making small vote corrections after Election Day and that some past statewide races have shifted by hundreds of votes during a recount.”Mr. Good would have to pay for the recount himself because he trails Mr. McGuire by 0.6 of a percentage point, just above the 0.5 percentage point difference below which the state would finance it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Bowman and Latimer Use Final Debate to Air Differences on Israel and Race

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      Fighting for his political life ahead of next week’s New York primary, Representative Jamaal Bowman took broad swipes on Tuesday at his opponent in the contest’s final debate, accusing him of failing Black constituents and selling his campaign out to a pro-Israel super PAC.Mr. Bowman, who is Black, charged that George Latimer, his white challenger, had slow-walked desegregation as Westchester County executive and had done too little to close the wealth gap between Black and white families.He repeatedly sought to portray Mr. Latimer as a lackey of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the bipartisan pro-Israel lobby that has spent a record-shattering $14 million trying to defeat Mr. Bowman over his criticisms of Israel.“He claims to be a Democrat, but he is supported by racist MAGA Republicans who support taking your voting rights — gutting your abortion rights,” Mr. Bowman, 48, said, referring to some of the group’s conservative donors.Mr. Latimer, 70, was having none of it. He forcefully denied each claim, saying that Mr. Bowman was “cornering the market on lies” in a desperate attempt to reverse a race that polls indicate he is losing. He trumpeted his own record producing affordable housing and investing in communities of color.“This is an example of using race as a weapon,” Mr. Latimer said at one point. “What we need to do is bring people together.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Suhas Subramanyam Wins Democratic House Primary in Virginia

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      Suhas Subramanyam, a state senator in suburban Loudoun County, Va., narrowly won the Democratic primary in a House district in Northern Virginia on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, after perhaps the ugliest primary of the 2024 election season so far.Mr. Subramanyam’s victory over 11 other Democratic candidates in the contest to succeed a retiring Democratic representative, Jennifer Wexton, is likely to be a relief for national Democrats who had watched anxiously as another front-runner in the race, State Representative Dan Helmer, faced calls to drop out over an accusation of sexual harassment.The district had been trending away from Republicans since 2018, when Ms. Wexton flipped it to her party after nearly 40 years of Republican control. Neither party had considered Virginia’s 10th District to be part of the 2024 battlefield until an anonymous Democratic official in the district, speaking through her lawyer, accused Mr. Helmer of groping her and later making sexually crude remarks.Mr. Helmer refused to depart the race and denounced the “baseless charges” leveled “a week before an election by people who have endorsed my opponents.”Mr. Subramanyam tried to stay above the fray, banking on his name recognition, record as a state senator, and the endorsement of Ms. Wexton, who announced her retirement last year after being diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder, progressive supranuclear palsy, for which there is no effective treatment.But in a primary marked by mudslinging and late attacks, he had to beat back a report that he had improperly put employees of his State Senate staff on his campaign payroll, an accusation he says is categorically false.A House Republican leadership aide had said officials at the National Republican Congressional Committee would assess the district if Mr. Helmer was the Democrats’ candidate. Mr. Subramanyam’s victory could keep the district off the battlefield this fall.He will face Republican Mike Clancy, a lawyer and business executive. More

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      Tom Cole, House GOP Spending Chief, Defeats Challenger in Oklahoma Primary

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      Representative Tom Cole, the veteran Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, fended off a primary challenge on Tuesday from a well-funded right-wing businessman, putting him on track to win a 12th term.Mr. Cole, who was first elected to Congress in 2002, has long been a fixture of Oklahoma politics and an influential legislative voice behind the scenes in Congress. The Associated Press called the race less than an hour after polls closed as Mr. Cole led by an overwhelming margin.Mr. Cole ascended to the helm of the influential Appropriations panel in April, assuming a coveted position on Capitol Hill that put him in charge of the allocation of federal spending. Top members of the committee can steer federal dollars not just across the government, but also to their own districts.But as the G.O.P. has veered to the right in recent years and become increasingly doctrinaire about slashing federal spending, the Appropriations gavel has morphed into a political liability for Republicans. Mr. Cole’s opponent, Paul Bondar, an anti-spending conservative businessman, tried to weaponize the congressman’s 15-year tenure on the committee against him. Mr. Bondar argued that Mr. Cole’s time on Capitol Hill had left him out of touch with his district, and attacked his voting record as insufficiently conservative.“Tom Cole voted with Democrats for billions in new deficit spending,” a narrator on a television advertisement said. “Paul Bondar opposes new federal spending.”Early on, Mr. Bondar committed to pouring large amounts of his personal wealth into the race. With more than $8 million spent as of late last week, it became one of the most expensive House primaries this year — and the most competitive primary challenge Mr. Cole had faced in years.“It’s like an old-fashioned bar fight,” Mr. Cole told Roll Call. “The guy who wins a bar fight isn’t the guy with the most money; it’s the guy with the most friends. And I have a lot of friends in that district.”Mr. Cole’s predecessor on the committee, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, also faced a well-funded primary challenge when she led the panel, and also was able to use her stature in the district to defeat it easily.In the end, Mr. Cole’s status as a political veteran in the district, as well as Mr. Bondar’s own political foibles — chief among them his recent move into the state from Texas — allowed him to prevail. A halting interview Mr. Bondar gave to a local television reporter in which he confessed to dialing in to the call from Texas was widely circulated in the district.“Can’t find his way around the district without a map,” Mr. Cole said of his opponent in an interview earlier this month. “It’s not like I’m an unknown quantity. My family’s lived in this district 175 years on my mom’s side and 140 on my father’s side.” More

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      Eugene Vindman, Key Trump Whistle-Blower, Wins House Primary in Virginia

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      Yevgeny Vindman, who along with his twin brother helped expose then-President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to strong-arm Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joseph R. Biden Jr., won his Democratic primary on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press. He will run in the fall to represent the Virginia district of Representative Abigail Spanberger, who is retiring.Mr. Vindman, who goes by Eugene, had no governing experience, a point his Democratic competitors made in the primary for Virginia’s Seventh Congressional District. But his name recognition, along with that of his identical twin, Alexander Vindman, helped him raise over $5 million, more than the rest of the field combined.And his message that democracy is at stake in 2024 proved more persuasive than the push of Democratic competitors — such as two Prince William County supervisors, Andrea Bailey and Margaret Franklin — for governing experience.Two other races featuring “Save Democracy” candidates went the opposite way. Harry Dunn, who rose to prominence as a Capitol Police officer who waged pitched battles with Mr. Trump’s supporters during and after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, lost his Maryland House primary last month to Sarah Elfreth, a state senator who ran on her legislative record.Mike O’Brien, a former Marine Corps officer and fighter pilot who made the preservation of democracy central to his candidacy, lost a Pennsylvania Democratic primary in April to a newscaster, Janelle Stelson, who used issues like abortion access and the price of gasoline and groceries to win the right to challenge a fierce Trump Republican ally, Representative Scott Perry.In 2018, the Vindman brothers, both lieutenant colonels in the Army and aides on the White House National Security Council at the time, raised internal alarms about a phone call in which Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce an investigation into the business dealings of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter in his country.At the time, Mr. Biden was widely expected to be Mr. Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election. The call was central to the first of Mr. Trump’s two impeachments, and it vaulted both Vindmans to prominence in liberal circles, though Alexander Vindman was the only brother who testified as part of the impeachment proceedings. Eugene Vindman, who was dismissed from the White House early in 2020, he says as improper retaliation for his whistle-blowing actions, raised a remarkable sum of money for a first-time candidate.“I sacrificed my military career to expose Trump’s corruption,” Eugene Vindman said in one of his campaign ads.His election to the House is not guaranteed. Ms. Spanberger, a Democrat who is retiring to run for governor, won the newly drawn district, which runs from Washington’s far-southern suburbs into the countryside north of Richmond, by 4.6 percentage points in 2022. But Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, won the district the year before by 4.9 points en route to winning the governor’s mansion. More

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      Nancy Mace Defeats G.O.P. Challenger, Dealing Blow to McCarthy’s Revenge Tour

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      Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, on Tuesday defeated a well-funded primary challenger, putting her on track to win a third term. Her resounding victory also dealt a major blow to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to exact political retribution against those who voted to oust him.Ms. Mace, 46, who once leaned center on social issues, won a Democratic seat in 2020 and claimed that all of former President Donald J. Trump’s accomplishments had been “wiped out” by his behavior on Jan. 6, 2021. But she has made a hard tack to the right over the past year as she has tried to game out her political future. The Associated Press declared her victory about two hours after polls closed on Tuesday.She was the unlikeliest of the eight rebel Republicans who voted to oust Mr. McCarthy last year, which transformed her from an ally into one of his top targets for revenge. Outside groups with ties to Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican, have poured more than $4 million into backing her opponent, Catherine Templeton, and attacking Ms. Mace.Ms. Mace said that effort motivated her to work harder.“I hope to embarrass him tonight,” she said earlier Tuesday over lunch at a Waffle House in Beaufort, between stops at polling locations. “I want to send him back to the rock he’s living under right now. He’s not part of America. He doesn’t know what hard-working Americans go through every single day. I hope I drive Kevin McCarthy crazy.”A spokesman for Mr. McCarthy declined to comment, and Ms. Mace did not mention his name in her victory speech on Tuesday night.Ms. Mace, whose back story as a former Waffle House waitress is a major part of her political biography, ordered her hash browns with confidence: scattered, diced, capped and peppered. Then she barely touched them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Participant in Jan. 6 Riot Loses Primary Race in South Carolina

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      A 22-year-old who participated in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol lost his bid to unseat a Republican incumbent in the South Carolina House of Representatives.The defeat of Elias Irizarry in the state primary on Tuesday is the latest in a number of losses that riot participants have suffered at the ballot box in recent months. Most recently, Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia lawmaker who pleaded guilty to a felony for his role in the attack, was defeated in a Republican primary in May for a congressional seat there.Mr. Irizarry graduated last month from the Citadel, the esteemed public military college in Charleston, S.C. He was running in House District 43, a rural area in the northern part of the state. The incumbent, Randy Ligon, will not face a Democratic challenger in the general election, and will serve a fourth term in office.Mr. Irizarry was sentenced to 14 days in jail after pleading guilty to a trespassing charge related to his participation in the 2021 riot. He was suspended from the Citadel for a semester but was later reinstated after a federal judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, wrote a letter to the school stating that Mr. Irizarry had demonstrated “remorse and a determination to make amends.”Before his sentencing, Mr. Irizarry told Judge Chutkan that he was ashamed of his participation in the storming of the Capitol. But in the run-up to the election, his campaign website noted his prosecution for engaging in “nonviolent activities” at the Capitol as proof that he had “always stood for the conservative movement.”That reference to Jan. 6 disappeared from the website last week after The New York Times discussed it with Mr. Irizarry’s federal public defender. In a text message, Mr. Irizarry said he had initially mentioned his involvement in the riot on his website “for the sake of transparency.” More