Takeaways from Tuesday's elections in 9 states
WASHINGTON – Amid the coronavirus pandemic a nd nat i o nwide pr o t e s t s against systemic racism after the death of George Floyd, there was still an election on Tuesday. And it brought big wins, albeit expected, for former Vice President Joe Biden.
Biden swept all seven states holding presidential primaries Tuesday – Maryland, Indiana, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Montana, South Dakota and Pennsylvania. Washington, D.C., also voted in a presidential primary Tuesday, but results were not available early Wednesday morning. (Iowa had primaries Tuesday, but it's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses were in February, when Biden finished in fourth place.)
Biden's wins in those states push him closer to meeting the 1,991-delegate threshold to be the Democratic nominee. He needs roughly 100 more delegates to cross that line.
Despite early losses in the primary season, Biden, 77, scored a huge comeback with a dominating primary win in South Carolina. He went on to rack up delegates on Super Tuesday a few days later. In early April, Biden became the presumptive nominee after Sen. Bernie Sanders, his last Democratic opponent still in the race, suspended his presidential campaign.
Here are other takeaways from Tuesday night:
Longtime Rep. Steve King loses Republican primary
Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a nine-term Republican congressman, lost his primary to Republican state Sen. Randy Feenstra.
King r epresents I owa's fourth congressional district, which is largely Republican.
King was stripped of his House committees last year
after remarks he made to The New York Times about white nationalism. All four challengers used King's removal from those committees as evidence that they would be more effective in Congress while still sharing King's conservative values.
King denied supporting white nationalism and said those comments were taken out of context for political reasons. He described the backlash as an orchestrated campaign against him. King's comments were f ormally rebuked by t he House of Representatives.
Many i n his party distanced themselves from the congressman. Throughout the primary cycle, Iowa and national Republicans either stayed on the sidelines or endorsed Feenstra. Shortly after news organizations announced Feenstra won the primary, his campaign manager Matt Leopold tweeted a photo of the state senator.
“.@RandyFeenstra taking a call from Congressman Kevin McCarthy. Randy is ready to get to work,” Leopold wrote in the tweet.
R e p u b l i c a n N a t i o n a l Committee Chair Ronna McDanie l c o n g r a t u l a t e d Feenstra in a tweet: “Steve King's white supremacist rhetoric is totally inconsistent with the Republican Party, and I'm glad Iowa Republicans rejected him at the ballot box.”