Primaries: Governor’s race tops ballot in Oklahoma; runoffs in South Carolina, Mississippi
South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster gets Donald Trump’s backing in quest to keep his job
OKLAHOMA CITY (CFP) — Oklahoma Republicans will go to the polls Tuesday to decide what is shaping up to be a tight three-way race for governor, picking a nominee to face a stronger-than-usual Democratic challenge in November in a political climate rocked by April’s statewide teachers’ strike.
In the state’s 1st U.S. House District in metro Tulsa, five Republicans and five Democrats are scrambling for spots in runoffs for an open seat.
Warren
McMaster
Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Republicans will decide a runoff between Governor Henry McMaster and Greenville businessman John Warren, with McMaster hoping for a last-minute boost from President Donald Trump, who visits the state Monday.
Upstate in the 4th U.S. House District, former State Senator Lee Bright from Spartanburg will face State Senator William Timmons from Greenville in the Republican runoff for the seat being vacated by retiring U.S. Rep. Trey Gowdy. Democrats in the district will choose between Doris Lee Turner, a Greenville tax accountant, and Brandon Brown, a college administrator from Greenville.
And in Mississippi, Democrats will decide a runoff to pick a nominee for the uphill task of trying to defeat Republican U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, while Republicans in the 3rd U.S. House District will settle a runoff for the seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper, who is also retiring.
In the Senate runoff, Howard Sherman, a venture capitalist from Meridian who is married to actress and Meridian native Sela Ward, will face State House Minority Leader David Baria from Bay St. Louis.
In the 3rd District, Michael Guest, the chief prosecutor for the judicial district that includes Madison and Rankin counties, will face Whit Hughes, a hospital executive and aide to former Governor Haley Barbour.
Polls in all three states will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. local time.
In Oklahoma, voters will be going to the polls in the first statewide election since a teachers’ strike in April over low pay and what teachers saw as inadequate state support for education. The strike ended after legislators raised taxes to improve pay and school funding.
Kevin Stitt
Mick Cornett
Todd Lamb
The open Republican race for governor, which drew 10 candidates, is shaping up as a battle between Lieutenant Governor Todd Lamb, former Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett and Kevin Stitt, a wealthy Tulsa businessman who founded Gateway Mortgage Group.
Cornett, 59, a former television anchor in Oklahoma City, served 14 years as mayor and was president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 2016.
Lamb, 46, a former Secret Service agent, is finishing his second term as lieutenant governor, after previously serving in the Oklahoma Senate.
Stitt, running on a platform of reforming the political culture in Oklahoma City that came under fire during the teacher’s strike, surged in polls in the latter stages of the race after pouring in $2.2 million of his own money.
Oklahoma has primary runoffs, which means that a runoff between the top two vote-getters is likely. The runoff will be August 28.
Incumbent Republican Governor Mary Fallon is term limited.
While Republicans dominate Oklahoma politics — and Fallon won the last two races by double-digit margins — Democrats will have a viable nominee for governor, former Attorney General Drew Edmonson, who had raised $1.4 million heading into the primary, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission.
Edmundson, 71, comes from a prominent Oklahoma political family and served as attorney general from 1995 to 2011. His father was a congressman, his uncle a governor, and his brother, James, serves on the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
In Oklahoma’s 1st District, voters are picking a replacement for former Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, who resigned in April after he was confirmed as NASA administrator.
The Republican contest is shaping up as a battle between former Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris; Kevin Hern, a Tulsa McDonald’s franchisee; and Andy Coleman, an attorney and minister from Owasso.
On the Democratic side, the front runner is Tim Gilpin, a Tulsa attorney and former member of the state school board who has the backing of the Oklahoma Education Association.
In South Carolina, McMaster — who inherited the office last year when former Governor Nikki Haley became UN ambassador — is trying to hold off Warren, a political newcomer who came from the back of the pack to win the second spot in the runoff.
McMaster was the first statewide elected official to endorse President Trump in 2016, and the president returned the favor by tweeting an endorsement and making an appearance on his behalf Monday at a suburban Columbia high school.
Vice President Mike Pence campaigned with McMaster Saturday in Myrtle Beach.
The winner of the GOP runoff will face State Rep. James Smith from Columbia. Democrats have not won a governor’s race in the Palmetto State in 20 years.
Bayou love tangle: Rudy Giuliani’s new romance drags Trump into Louisiana U.S. House race
President’s attorney endorses challenger who employs his new girlfriend; Trump tweets support for incumbent
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
Rudy Giuliani
LAFAYETTE, Louisiana (CFP) — Rudy Giuliani is intervening on behalf of a challenger in a Louisiana congressional primary, tangling his politics with his love life in an episode that has angered state GOP leaders and prompted President Donald Trump to take sides against his own personal attorney.
The drama is taking place in Louisiana’s 3rd U.S. House District, which covers the Acadiana region in the state’s southwestern corner.
Guillory
Higgins
The incumbent Republican, freshman U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, is a former sheriff’s deputy who gained national fame as the “Cajun John Wayne” after appearing in Crime Stoppers videos that went viral online. He is being challenged in the state’s all-party jungle primary by eight candidates, including Republican Josh Guillory, a Lafayette attorney.
Jennifer LeBlanc, a GOP fundraiser in Louisiana, is working for Guillory. She is also Giuliani’s new girlfriend — or, as he described it to the New York Daily News, “We are dating, however not that advanced yet.”
And there is one more wrinkle: LeBlanc worked for Higgins until switching horses, without explanation, last year.
Giuliani is scheduled to head a June 25 fundraiser for Guillory in Lafayette — news that has irritated Louisiana Republican leaders who support Higgins’s re-election, according to a report in Politico.
To counter the perception that Trump had anything to do with Giuliani’s support of Guillory, Higgins got an audience at the White House, which was followed by an endorsement offered by the president’s re-election campaign. However, Trump stopped short of offering him the holy grail of a coveted endorsement tweet.
LeBlanc, who worked for Giuliani’s ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign, released a statement to Politico saying that she “ended work with Congressman Higgins, and later began work with Josh Guillory, well before I began spending part of my social life with Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”
“These three decisions in my life were made for very different reasons, and are independent of each other,” she said.
Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who has been married and divorced three times, has led a colorful love live. While still married to wife No. 2, Donna Hanover, he began seeing wife No. 3, Judith Nathan, an affair that played out in the New York tabloids in 2000 and 2001.
He and Nathan married in 2003. She filed for divorce in April.
Giuliani denied to the Daily News that his relationship with LeBlanc precipitated his divorce from Nathan, saying the two did not begin seeing each other until May.
Under Louisiana’s unusual primary system, all nine candidates in the 3rd District will compete in November, with the top two finishers advancing to a December runoff if no one captures a majority.
Higgins and Guillory are the only Republicans running, which makes a runoff more likely if the GOP vote is divided.
Even with LeBlanc’s help, Higgins so far enjoys a 3-to-1 fundraising advantage over Guilllory.
South Carolina congressional candidate Katie Arrington seriously injured in car wreck
Accident comes 10 days after Arrington toppled U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford in GOP primary
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPoitics.com editor
CHARLESTON (CFP) — State Rep. Katie Arrington, the Republican nominee in South Carolina’s 1st U.S. House District, was seriously injured in a car accident Friday night that left one person dead and another critically injured.
State Rep. Katie Arrington, R-South Carolina
According to messages posted on Arrington’s Twitter feed, she was a passenger in a car that was struck by a wrong way driver on U.S. 17 south of Charleston.
The driver of the other car was killed; the driver of the car in which Arrington was driving, Jacqueline Goff, a friend of Arrington’s from Louisiana, was reported in critical condition by the Post and Courier of Charleston.
Arrington was on her way to Hilton Head Island where she was to have received an award from a state medical organization Saturday morning.
Arrington suffered a broken back, several broken ribs and underwent surgery to remove a portion of her small intestine and colon, according to her Twitter feed. She also had a stent placed in the main artery in one of her legs that had collapsed.
Additional surgeries will be required, and Arrington is expected to be hospitalized for two weeks at Medical University Hospital in Charleston.
Arrington’s Democratic opponent, Joe Cunningham, announced he was suspending his campaign “until further notice.” He asked his Twitter followers to lift “her and her family up in prayer.”
Just 10 days before the accident, Arrington, 47, from Summerville, won the 1st District nomination by defeating incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford. The race drew national attention because Sanford had been an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, who endorsed Arrington on election day.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted that his “thoughts and prayers are with Representative Katie Arrington of South Carolina, including all of those involved in last nights car accident, and their families.”
Sanford also extended his condolence on Twitter: “Our thoughts and prayers this morning go to Katie Arrington, her family and those involved in last night’s automobile accident.”
The 1st District includes metro Charleston and the Lowcountry along the Atlantic Coast.
President Trump endorses U.S. Rep. Martha Roby in Alabama primary runoff
Roby has faced backlash for her criticism of Trump during 2016 campaign
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPoitics.com editor
MONTGOMERY (CFP) — With three weeks to go before voters in Alabama’s 2nd District decide a contentious runoff for the U.S. House, President Donald Trump has weighed in with an endorsement of U.S. Rep. Martha Roby, who has faced a backlash for her decision to unendorse Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“Congresswoman Martha Roby of Alabama has been a consistent and reliable vote for our Make America Great Again Agenda,” Trump said in a June 22 tweet. “She is in a Republican Primary run-off against a recent Nancy Pelosi voting Democrat. I fully endorse Martha for Alabama 2nd Congressional District!”
U.S. Rep. Martha Roby, R-Alabama
Roby is in the July 17 runoff against Bobby Bright, a former Montgomery mayor who held the seat as a Democrat before losing it to Roby in 2010. He switched to the GOP earlier this year to challenge her.
In the first round of voting, Roby took 39 percent to 28 percent for Bright, beating out three other candidates for the two runoff spots.
The result was seen as a rebuke to Roby by Trump voters, who have been furious over her decision in October 2016 to rescind her endorsement of him after the infamous Access Hollywood tape surfaced in which Trump bragged about sexually accosting women.
At the time, Roby said she would not vote for Trump because his “behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president.”
A month later, almost 30,000 people cast write-in votes against Roby, reducing her vote total to just 49 percent of the vote in a strongly Republican district and virtually ensuring she would face a primary fight in 2018. She has since toned down her criticisms of Trump and has highlighted her support for Trump’s agenda in Congress.
House candidate Bobby Bright, R-Alabama
During his time in the House, Bright, far from being a Nancy Pelosi Democrat, was considered to be one of the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus, opposing legal abortion and restrictions on firearms.
During this campaign, he has also cast himself as a supporter of Trump’s trade policies and his call to “drain the swamp” in Washington. He has also run a TV ad criticizing Roby for “turning her back on President Trump when he needed her the most.”
The 2nd District, which is strongly Republican, takes in much of Montgomery and its northern suburbs, along with the Wiregrass Country in the southeastern corner of the state.
The winner of the runoff will face Democrat Tabitha Isner, a business analyst and pastor’s wife from Montgomery.
Neighbor who attacked U.S. Senator Rand Paul gets 30 days in jail
Rene Boucher tackled Paul after a dispute over yard waste
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky (CFP) — A neighbor of U.S. Senator Rand Paul will spend 30 days in jail for an assault last November outside Paul’s Bowling Green home that left the senator with broken ribs.
Rene Boucher (Warren Co. Sheriff’s Office)
Rene Boucher, 60, who pleaded guilty in March to a felony charge of assaulting a member of Congress resulting in injury, was sentenced June 15 in U.S. District Court in Bowling Green.
He was also fined $10,000 and sentenced to a year of probation after his release, according to a statement from the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, which prosecuted the case.
The Bowling Green Daily News reported that Boucher apologized to Paul in court, saying, “I’m embarrassed and I hope (Paul) and his family will one day be able to accept my apology.”
“I lost my temper and I did not behave well, and I was wrong. I did not think I would be in a courthouse at the center of all this,” he said, according to the Daily News.
U.S. Senator Rand Paul
Federal prosecutors had sought a stiffer sentence of 21 months in prison for Boucher. Paul, who did not attend the sentencing hearing, expressed some dissatisfaction with the lighter sentence in a statement: “The original 21-month sentence requested would have been the appropriate punishment.”
“No one deserves to be violently assaulted. A felony conviction is appropriate and hopefully will deter the attacker from further violence,” Paul said in the statement.
The attack occurred last November 3 in the upscale Rivergreen subdivision east of Bowling Green, where Paul and Boucher, who are both medical doctors, are neighbors. Paul was mowing his yard when Boucher tackled him to the ground, breaking several ribs.
Paul later contracted pneumonia, which can be a complication of rib injuries.
Boucher denied any political motivation for the assault, saying he attacked Paul in anger after the senator repeatedly piled yard waste near the property line between their homes. However, Paul said Boucher had never complained to him about the waste.
Boucher was originally charged with assault in state court, but because Paul was a member of Congress, federal prosecutors later took over the case, which was turned over to the Southern District of Indiana after the Western District of Kentucky was recused.
Russell Coleman, the U.S. attorney for the Western District, was formerly special counsel to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Paul’s Kentucky seatmate in the Senate.
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