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Clinton ekes out win in Democratic presidential primary in Kentucky
Lexington Mayor Jim Gray wins Democratic nomination to face Republican Rand Paul in U.S. Senate race
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
LOUISVILLE (CFP) — Hillary Clinton scored a narrow victory over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Kentucky Democratic presidential primary, the last stop in the Southern primary season.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders
Clinton took 46.8 percent of the vote in the May 17 vote, compared to just 46.3 percent for Sanders. a margin of just 1,900 votes. That was a stark reversal from eight years ago, when Clinton walloped Barack Obama by more than 35 points in the Bluegrass State.
With the results in Kentucky, Clinton ends the Southern primary season by nearly running the table, taking 12 out of 14 contests. Sanders won only Oklahoma and West Virginia.
Lexington Mayor Jim Gray
Meanwhile, in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate primary, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray won the Democratic nomination over a crowded field, taking 58 percent of the vote. He will now face Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul in November.
Given Kentucky’s Republican tendencies in federal elections, Paul, seeking his second term, is considered a prohibitive favorite, although Gray, as mayor of the commonwealth’s second-largest city and the wealthy owner of a family construction business, poses a credible challenge.
Gray is also trying to become the first openly gay man ever elected to the Senate.
Bernie Sanders cruises to big win in West Virginia primary
Democrat Jim Justice wins Democratic governor’s race, will face Republican Bill Cole in November
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
CHARLESTON, West Virginia (CFP) — U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont easily won the Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia, notching a rare victory in the South.
Sanders took 51.4 percent of the vote in Mountaineer State, compared to just 35.9 percent for Hillary Clinton. On the Republican ballot, Donald Trump–now unopposed for the nomination–scored an easy victory, taking 77 percent in the May 10 vote.
Meanwhile, in the state’s gubernatorial primaries, political newcomer Jim Justice won the Democratic nomination and will face Republican State Senate President Bill Cole in the general election. The incumbent Democrat, Governor Earl Ray Tomblin, is term limited.
A Republican hasn’t won the governorship in West Virginia since 1996. However, the state’s recent GOP trend, which including capturing the state legislature in 2014, has given Republicans high hopes for taking the state’s top office.
But they will have to get past the deep pockets of Justice, a billionaire farmer and coal mine owner who was a registered Republican until 2015. Justice has gotten the coveted endorsement of the politically powerful United Mine Workers of America and other labor groups., as well as conservative Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin.
Sanders’ victory in West Virginia is just his second win in the South this primary season. With only Kentucky left to vote on May 17, Clinton has swept everything in the region except Oklahoma, most by wide margins.
Speaking to jubilant supporters in Salem, Oregon, as the results came in, Sanders pointedly noted that Clinton carried West Virginia by more than 40 points when she ran against Barack Obama in 2008
“West Virginia is a working class state and like many other states … in this country, working class people are hurting,” Sander said. “And what the people of West Virginia said tonight, and I believe the people of Oregon and Kentucky will say next week, is that we need an economy that works for all of the people, not just the 1 percent.”
Clinton was dogged by a remark she made in March that “we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” which went over badly in coal-producing West Virginia. She later apologized for what she termed a “misstatement.”
Kentucky, the last Southern state left in the Democratic primary calendar, is also a coal-producing state. Both Sanders and Clinton have been campaigning hard in the Bluegrass State.
West Virginia was the final Southern stop for Republicans. Trump won every state in the region except for Oklahoma and Texas, which went to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.
Report: Trump nomination opens up Southern possibilities for Clinton
Cook Political Report moves projections for four Southern states toward the Democrats
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Now that Donald Trump has secured the Republican presidential nomination, the respected Cook Political Report is shifting its projections for four Southern states, with 73 electoral votes, toward Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The more pessimistic projections for Trump are due to his “historic unpopularity with wide swaths of the electorate,” according to the report.
The four Southern states where Clinton is projected to have increased opportunity are Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Those states are four of the five largest in the region, and all have large populations of suburban swing voters Clinton is expected to target.
Of the largest Southern states, only Texas remains solidly Republican, according to Cook. The remaining nine states in the South–Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kentucky and West Virginia–are also still rated as solidly Republican.
After Trump became the presumptive nominee, the Cook report shifted its projections toward Clinton in 12 states. In only one state, Maine, did it project an increased opportunity for Trump.
Nationwide, states with a combined 309 electoral votes are projected as either solidly for or leaning toward Clinton, 40 more than she needs to win. By contrast, the states solidly behind or leaning toward Trump have just 190 electoral votes.
Perhaps the most significant shift in Cook’s projections was for Florida, with 29 electoral votes, which went from a toss-up to leaning Democratic.
History shows how vital the Sunshine State is to any GOP presidential candidate: The last Republican to win the White House without carrying Florida was Calvin Coolidge way back in 1924. Five of the last six times a Democrat won, he carried Florida.
The most surprising shift in the projections was for Georgia, with 16 electoral votes, which moved from solidly Republican to leaning Republican.
The last time a Democrat carried Georgia was in 1980, when native son Jimmy Carter was on the ballot. Republican Mitt Romney won it by eight points in 2012.
The Cook report moved Virginia, with 13 electoral votes, from a toss-up to leaning toward Clinton. Although the Old Dominion became reliably Republican in presidential contests in the 1960s, Barack Obama won it in both 2008 and 2012 with a strong performance in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, something Clinton hopes to replicate.
North Carolina, which had been leaning Republican, is also now a toss-up, according to Cook. The Tar Heel State has been a swing state in recent elections; Obama won it in 2008, but Romney took it back in 2012.
Obama’s victories show just how important keeping the South solidly Republican is for a GOP nominee. Winning just three Southern states in 2008, and just two in 2012, was enough for him to put the Electoral College out of reach for John McCain and Romney.
In 2000, George W. Bush took 168 electoral votes out of the South, more than 60 percent of what he needed to win. In 2012, Romney carried only 138, barely half of what he needed, forcing him to make up the differences in regions that were less Republican-friendly, which he failed to do.
An April Mason-Dixon poll of voters in Mississippi also illustrated the scope of Trump’s potential problems in the South. His lead over Clinton was within the margin of error, meaning that the race in the Magnolia State was a statistical dead heat.
If deep-red Mississippi were to be in play come November, the rest of the South would likely also be in play, which could mean a very long election night for Trump.
Ted Cruz drops out of presidential race after Indiana loss
Departure of the last Southerner in the White House contest hands nomination to Donald Trump
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
INDIANAPOLIS (CFP) — After a crushing loss to Donald Trump in the Indiana primary, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, ending a 13-month quest for the nation’s highest office.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz
“From the beginning, I’ve said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I’m sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed,” Cruz told incredulous supporters in Indianapolis after the May 3 vote. “Together, we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we’ve got, but the voters chose another path.”
Spectators in the audience shouted “No!” as it became clear that Cruz would bow out of the race.
Cruz was the last of the 10 Southerners still in the presidential contest, a field that one point included nine Republicans and one Democrat from the region. His departure came after losing to Trump by 16 points in Indiana and getting shut out in the hunt for delegates.
Trump’s win in the Hoosier State extinguished any hope of denying him a majority of the delegates to this summer’s Republican National Convention.
Cruz, 45, is in his first term representing the Lone Star State. He ran for president hoping to harness the support of religious conservatives and Tea Party forces that had carried him to the Senate.
Cruz won the first presidential contest, narrowly defeating Trump in Iowa. However, Cruz struggled to find traction with his base in the face of the Trump phenomenon. That was particularly true in the South, an evangelical-heavy region where he won just two states, Texas and Oklahoma.
As the field began to dwindle, Cruz tried to position himself as the alternative to stop Trump, which worked in early April with a victory in Wisconsin. But then Trump rolled through New York and several Northeastern states, giving him a delegate lead that became insurmountable after Cruz’s loss in Indiana.
Cruz was not helped by his deep unpopularity with his colleagues in Congress, one of whom, former House Speaker John Boehner, described him as “Lucifer in the flesh.” But Cruz wore their opprobrium as a badge of honor, saying it proved he was a genuine outsider.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz picks Carly Fiorina as running mate
Cruz looks to reignite campaign with early announcement of VP pick
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
INDIANAPOLIS (CFP) — U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has picked former Hewlett-Packard CEO and one-time rival Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate in a bid to jump start his flagging campaign.
Vice Presidential Candidate Carly Fiorina
“Carly is brilliant and capable, and yet she experienced the hardscrabble world of being a woman professional in the business world that extracts a price,” Cruz told a rally in Indianapolis on April 27, where he rolled out his new ticket. “Over and over again, Carly has shattered glass ceilings.”
Conceding that selecting a running mate before clinching the nomination was “unusual,” he said he picked Fiorina because she can unite the GOP and because her selection would “give the American people a clear choice.”
In her debut as a vice presidential candidate, Fiorina described the campaign as “a fight for the soul of our party and the future of our nation.”
“I’ve had tough fights all my life. Tough fights don’t worry me. What matters is, is this fight worth having? And this is a fight worth having. This is a fight worth winning.”
Fiorina, 61, suspended her own presidential campaign in February after finishing in seventh place in the New Hampshire GOP primary. She later endorsed Cruz and has joined him on the campaign trail, where she has bonded with Cruz’s two young daughters.
In an odd moment during her debut, Fiorina went on to sing part of a song she made up for his daughters, which began, “I know two girls that I just adore. I’m so happy I can see them more.”
GOP front-runner Donald Trump ridiculed the selection of Fiorina, dismissing it as a “desperate attempt to save a failing campaign.”
The Fiorina pick marks the first time since 1976 that a presidential candidate has named a running mate prior to clinching the nomination. It came a day after Cruz was mathematically eliminated from capturing a delegate majority after getting wiped out in five primaries in the Northeast.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz
Cruz came in third behind both Trump and Ohio Governor John Kasich in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Rhode Island. He failed to crack 20 percent in any of those states and managed less than 11 percent in Rhode Island.
The only state where Cruz didn’t finish dead last was Pennsylvania, where he took 22 percent of the vote and edged out Kasich for second place. Trump won all five primaries up for grabs in the April 26 vote.
Cruz, the last Southerner left in the presidential race, will now head to Indiana, which is increasingly seen as a must-win for the senator to stop Trump from getting to a delegate majority, triggering a contested convention. Indiana votes May 3.
A contested convention is now Cruz’s only path to the GOP nomination. With his losses in the Northeast, he has 562 delegates and would need 675 to secure a majority in Cleveland; however, there are only 616 delegates still outstanding.
With his victories in the Northeast, Trump has 954 pledged delegates. He needs to win just 283 more delegates to secure the nomination, or about 46 percent of the delegates remaining.
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