Every election has some degree of importance-- if for no one else, at least for the candidates and the people in the constituency. But last night's primaries... not so much. The star attraction-- the Alabama GOP Senate primary runoff between establishment hack Katie Britt and insurrectionist crackpot Mo Brooks held no drama. Round one ended with Britt massively ahead-- 268,949 (45.2%) to 170,108 (28.6%), with third place finisher Michael Durant with 138,300 (23.3%). After the first round, Trump endorsed Britt-- having once tarred her as a RINO-- and Durant's voters consistently told pollsters they were going for Britt rather than Brooks.
Last night, turnout was reduced-- from around 600,000 on May 24 to around 400,000. Britt kicked Brooks' ass 252,881 (63.0%) to 138,425 (37.0%). Of Alabama's 67 counties, Britt won 66. Brooks lost all the counties in his own congressional district and narrowly won Shelby County southeast of Birmingham, a deep red hellhole that Trump took with 69.3% in 2020.
Predictably, Brooks was bitter and angry. His election night victory party-- at a Huntsville gun range, Bullet & Barrel-- was a sorry affair. Huntsville stretches over 3 counties in Brooks' congressional district. He lost all three in the runoff:
Madison Co.- 48.7%
Limestone Co.- 45.2%
Morgan Co.- 48.1%
His concession speech came quickly: "It’s always appropriate to congratulate the winners, and some of these winners might be a little bit unexpected, but I’d be remiss if I did not congratulate the Alabama Democratic Party for helping to ensure that the Democratic nominee in the Republican primary won. Congratulations to the Democrats. They now have two nominees in the general election. Another group I’d be remiss if I did not congratulate are special interest groups generally and more specifically the special interest groups that support open borders and cheap foreign labor. They worked hard for their values." Asked by a reporter if Britt is a RINO, Brooks responded "Absolutely; either that or a Democrat."
Sour grapes to the max, he refused to call for GOP unity-- not that it's needed-- and said "The voters have spoken, but not spoken wisely... The Republican Party of Alabama lost in a variety of different ways... America quite clearly lost" and then said Capitol Hill "is a really depressing place to work." He didn't denounce Trump, but let's see what happens when he gets sworn in by the Select Committee.
Last night, Politico reported that far right sociopath Amy Kremer, "chair of Women for America First, a key organizer for Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021 rally, who traveled to Alabama to assist the Brooks campaign in recent days, has remained committed to Brooks despite Trump’s decision to rescind his endorsement. 'Donald Trump is disconnected from the base,' said Kremer, who was an early supporter of Trump and prior to that, a leading activist in the tea party movement. 'I don’t know what has happened there. I think he’s getting bad advice from the people around him, and I think it’s unfortunate, but it’s time for those of us in the movement to get back to basics, back to our first principles. We were here long before President Trump came along, and we’re going to be here long afterward,' Kremer said. Even after Trump put his weight behind Britt in the runoff-- and as public and internal polling showed Brooks’ prospects as weak-- top conservative commentators like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin and Charlie Kirk declared their support for Brooks up to the final day of the campaign. Kirk, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Reps. Scott Perry (R-PA), Mark Green (R-TN) and Chip Roy (R-TX) and Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward spent Monday night on a tele-town hall in support of Brooks, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) also continued to lend their support.
There were also a couple noteworthy GOP runoffs in Georgia, noteworthy not because one candidate was better than another-- they are all utterly worthless and dangers to America-- but because Trump's candidates lost. The 10th district was open because fascist lunatic Jody Hice decided to run for Secretary of State-- and was decisively defeated without a runoff. The runoff to replace him came down to two complete Nazi freaks, Mike Collins, the son of a former congressman, and a former conservative Democrat-turned-Trumpist Vernon Jones, who Trump persuaded to run and endorsed. Jones, who stylizes himself "the Black Donald Trump" got clobbered 30,524 (74.5%) to 10,457 (25.5%). It probably had less to do because of Trump's endorsement backfiring than it did with Collins handing out rape whistles with Jones’ name on them to draw attention to a very long, sordid history of raping, harassing and intimidating women. Just another sick conservative psychopath.
The other interesting Georgia race last night was for GA-06 in the suburbs and exurbs north of Atlanta, freshly gerrymandered to give the Republicans an extra seat. It went from a swing district with a partisan lean of D+1 to a solid red district with an R+24 partisan lean. Both Republicans who ran, Rich McCormick and Jake Evans, are as far right as you can be without having to move to the Idaho panhandle, but Evans-- a young fascist whose father, Randy, a lobbyist, bought the ambassadorship to Luxembourg from Trump and who had come in second in the May 24 first round with 25,985 (23.0%), only managed to turn out 8,079 of his supporters for a meager 32%. Presumably Randy had slipped Trump a few bucks to have gotten him to endorse his son, which didn't do young Evans much good in the end.
So how bad will the guy who won who wasn't endorsed by Trump be in Congress? Take a look at his TV ad: