Nikki Haley Still Got Almost 17 Percent Of Pennsylvania Primary Vote, How About That?

Nikki Haley may have ended her presidential campaign weeks ago after getting shellacked on Super Tuesday, but her ghostly presence on Republican primary ballots still provides an opportunity for protest votes, as we saw yesterday in Pennsylvania’s primary election. Donald Trump may have the GOP nomination all sewn up, but he got a reminder that a lot of Republicans still can’t stand him, with a skosh under 17 percent of the Republican primary vote — from more than 156,000 voters — going to Haley, who may no longer be running but is also not sleep-farting in a chilly Manhattan courtroom while being tried for felonies.

Here’s another fun number: In 2020, Joe Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes. Sure, you can’t predict what actual Republican turnout will be like this fall, but it seems a tad significant that so many Republican voters bothered to vote in the primary, but didn’t vote for the Great Dear Smart Leader. If a significant portion of yesterday’s primary voters stay home in November, or write in “Rand Paul,” or even do the unthinkable and vote for Biden, that could be very sad news for Donald Trump, and for the beleaguered Mar-a-Lago staff charged with cleaning ketchup off the walls.

Oh, there’s this too, from the AP:

A larger proportion of votes for Haley tended to come from urban and suburban areas where Trump suffered massive losses in his two previous presidential campaigns.

Oh, well there you go. The GOP primary was rigged, obviously. Haley has yet to endorse Trump, and may just not bother at all, in case by some miracle he goes to jail (like that would stop him from continuing to run) or is overcome by one of his own silent-but-deadlies, in which case loyalists would sue to keep his corpse in contention. Nothing in the Constitution says you have to be alive to be president.

In the Democratic primary, Joe Biden got 93 percent of the vote, with seven percent of the primary vote going to Dean Phillips, who may or may not still be running, we refuse to be bothered looking it up. (Fine, he fucked all the way off after Super Tuesday, too.)

With the presidential nominations already decided, the real action in Pennsylvania was further down the ballot in congressional races, where first-term incumbent Democrat Summer Lee, one of the first Dems to call for a cease-fire in Gaza, withstood a primary challenge from Democrat Bhavini Patel. Lee won her primary by 21 points.

Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D) will face Republican David McCormick in the fall; neither faced opposition in their primaries. McCormick, you may recall, is the former hedge-fund CEO who narrowly lost the 2022 GOP primary to the weirdo who got Trump’s endorsement, New Jersey resident and teevee doctor Mehmet Oz, who then lost to Democrat John Fetterman. This time out, McCormick got Trump’s endorsement since no other Republicans were running, and rightwing dark money groups are expected to throw bajillions of dollars into the race against Casey. A pro-McCormick Super PAC has already raised $20 million to support him, much of it coming from fellow securities traders with billions of dollars to throw around, says the AP.

And finally, let’s pour out a bottle of amniotic fluid for far-right antiabortion ghoul Mark Houck, who failed badly in his Republican primary challenge to incumbent Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, getting only 38 percent of the vote to Fitzpatrick’s 62 percent in the Bucks County district.

Houck, a former “full-time chastity educator,” briefly became a GOP cause-celery following a 2022 incident in which he was arrested and charged with violating federal laws protecting clinics for shoving a 72-year-old volunteer — twice! — who was escorting patients leaving a Planned Parenthood in Philadelphia. The injuries to the volunteer were bad enough to require hospitalization, but Houck was acquitted at trial after he said the escort had said mean cusses at him and his 12-year-old son.

Ever since, religious Right fascists have been treating Houck’s arrest and prosecution — his near-martyrdom, really — as proof that the Biden administration is out to persecute harmless Christians solely for their religious beliefs. How dare the government oppress nice no-fucking advocates who are simply living lives of prayer, even if those prayers take a turn toward the kinetic.

Also too, in November last year, Houck tried suing the Justice Department over his arrest and prosecution,

claiming that the trauma of his arrest over an assault during an abortion clinic blockade had caused his wife’s infertility. The couple already has seven children.

For all that, it doesn’t look like even Republican primary voters were ready to elevate a crazy anti-abortion extremist to a campaign for national office, so that may indicate that at least some Goopers are aware just how toxic the overturning of Roe v. Wade is for them. Or maybe Houck just didn’t click with Republicans who hate abortion but like sex, no telling.

The general election will be a rematch of the 2022 contest between incumbent Rep. Fitzpatrick and Democrat Ashley Ehasz, who ran unopposed. Fitzpatrick won that year with 55 percent of the vote, but the political landscape has changed a bit since then, what with the thing where nobody wants to let Republicans ban abortion nationwide, and Ehasz, an Army veteran, had a very strong fundraising quarter between January and April, bringing in $662,647, for a war chest so far of $1.37 million.

That’s a fraction of the $4 million Fitzpatrick has raised, although he spent a fair chunk of it beating Houck in the primary. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) included the district in its list of “31 vulnerable Republican Districts” targeted for retaking the House this fall.

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[AP / Phillyburbs.com via Joe.My.God / NYT]

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