Primary Night: Brooks Can Be Deceiving: The 2022 primary season continues Tuesday in Virginia and Washington, D.C, while Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia will hold runoffs for contests where no one won a majority of the vote in the first round of voting on May 24. As always, we've put together our preview of what to watch starting at 7 PM ET when the first polls close. You'll also want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.
The most high-profile contest is arguably the Republican Senate runoff in Alabama, where the candidate Trump endorsed a year after he called her “not in any way qualified” is going up against the candidate Trump labeled “woke” when he unendorsed him in March. The former contender and frontrunner is former Business Council of Alabama head Katie Britt, who is going into the runoff with a wide lead in the polls against Rep. Mo Brooks.
Trump’s picks, though, face dicer prospects in Georgia, where his slate fared poorly last month against Gov. Brian Kemp and other statewide elected officials. Perhaps the most dramatic confrontation will be in the rural 10th District where Trump’s man, former state Rep. Vernon Jones, is involved in an ugly confrontation with trucking company owner Mike Collins. Kemp, for his part, endorsed Collins late in the contest, a move that turned this already intense runoff into a closely-watched proxy war.
Over in the 6th in the Atlanta suburbs, meanwhile, Trump-backed candidate Jake Evans is trying to beat physician Rich McCormick after badly trailing him 43-23 in May. The Club for Growth, which has been on the outs with Trump for months, is supporting McCormick, who narrowly lost last cycle’s race in the prior version of the 7th District to Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux. You can find more about these races, as well as even more big contests, in our preview.