Republicans can exhale now.

Convicted coal magnate Don Blankenship’s surprise third-place finish in Tuesday’s West Virginia GOP Senate primary sidestepped yet another debacle for the party after consecutive meltdowns in special elections in Alabama and Pennsylvania. Instead, party leaders celebrated state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey’s win, which capped the first multi-state primary of 2018.


The night saw Republicans pick three of the 10 candidates who will take on Democratic senators in states President Donald Trump won, and the first House incumbent go down in a primary in 2018.

Here are POLITICO’s seven takeaways from Tuesday:

1. Republicans averted catastrophe, but victory in West Virginia is far from assured.

A Blankenship nomination might well have extinguished GOP hopes of toppling Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, despite the state’s heavily Republican electorate. Blankenship was living in a Phoenix halfway house this time last year, after his conviction for conspiracy to skirt mine safety rules after an incident claimed the life of 29 miners at one of his facilities. He called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “Cocaine Mitch” and made racially charged comments about McConnell’s family.

Morrisey is someone national Republicans can embrace. National Republican Senatorial Committee executive director Chris Hansen said in a statement Tuesday night that Morrisey will “fight for conservative values” and predicted his victory over Manchin in the general election.

But Morrisey enters the race with his own baggage — even if it’s nothing like Blankenship’s. Morrisey used to be a Washington lobbyist, and Morrisey’s wife still is one. Also, Morrisey ran for Congress in 2000 — in New Jersey.

Rep. Evan Jenkins, who finished second on Tuesday night, tried to level those attacks. But the punches didn’t land with Blankenship’s circuslike candidacy stealing the spotlight.

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With Blankenship fading into the distance, Manchin can contrast his folksy, “Pepperoni roll,” West Virginia affect against Morrisey’s Jersey accent and D.C. “swamp” ties. Republicans will fire back, alleging that Manchin isn’t the aw-shucks bipartisan he claims to be and doesn’t stick up for Trump, who is very popular in the state.

2. Words alone can’t earn the Trump mantle.

Reps. Luke Messer and Todd Rokita spent the final week of the GOP Senate primary in Indiana trying to convince voters that Mike Braun — the businessman and former one-term state representative who had surged to the front of the field on an outsider message — wasn’t a reliable conservative. They cited Braun’s participation in Democratic primaries for more than three decades.

But Braun easily defeated both Messer and Rokita because his outsider message, in contrast with his two D.C. insider rivals, resonated more than his Democratic past. (Braun said he only voted in Democratic primaries to influence local elections, but Messer and Rokita painted that as a lame excuse.)

Braun’s argument was easier to make after Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump’s opponents in the GOP primaries needled the billionaire for his past donations to Democratic candidates, or his past conservative apostasies on issues like abortion and universal health care. Trump parried those attacks, barely breaking a sweat.

Ultimately, as much as Rokita (who donned a red Make America Great Again hat in his ads) or Messer (who talked up Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize) tried to claim the Trump mantle, Braun seemed more like the real deal. He hit Messer and Rokita for being attorneys who never practiced law, getting into politics at a young age instead. And Braun, who will now try to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, said he was the only candidate who had signed the front of a paycheck, while his opponents had been endorsing government checks for most of their careers.

3. House members went down hard.

It was a bad night for House members running statewide: Jenkins lost to Morrisey by more than 5 percentage points. Rokita and Messer finished even further behind Braun.

Rep. Jim Renacci, who still won the GOP nomination to face Sen. Sherrod Brown in Ohio, failed to win a majority of the vote in the primary, despite endorsements from Trump and the state Republican Party.

For a party led by a first-time-candidate-turned-president, it’s not surprising that Congress isn’t the ideal springboard to higher office. But the GOP is relying on other House members to maintain its Senate majority — whether Martha McSally in Arizona, Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee or Kevin Cramer in North Dakota.

And for members facing competitive statewide primaries — think McSally, Kristi Noem for governor in South Dakota, Raúl Labrador for Idaho governor or Diane Black for Tennessee governor — they may find their congressional résumés are more anchors than propulsion for their candidacies.

4. The first incumbent falls. Will others join?

Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) became the first incumbent member of Congress knocked out in a primary in 2018.

Pittenger tried to align himself closely to Trump, touting in his first TV ad that he was the “strongest supporter” of the president. But Mark Harris, a pastor who nearly beat Pittenger in 2016, successfully tagged Pittenger as part of the “Washington swamp.” Republicans in primaries across the country are questioning their opponents’ pro-Trump bona fides, a strategy that proved effective here.

Pittenger’s loss surprised national and local Republicans, who expected the congressman to survive the primary challenge. But Harris’ campaign said Pittenger’s “votes didn’t match his rhetoric,” pointing to his support for the omnibus spending bill in March, said Andy Yates, a spokesman for the campaign. (Harris, a social conservative, said he planned to join the House Freedom Caucus.)

It's not clear that there’s a long list of Pittengers about to be swept away in primaries. Still, his defeat could serve as a wake-up call to incumbents who have struggled to unite Republicans at the ballot box in the past, like Reps. Martha Roby of Alabama and Doug Lamborn of Colorado.

5. Both parties got their men for Ohio governor.

It was an easy night for both parties watching the Ohio gubernatorial race. State Attorney General Mike DeWine easily dispatched Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor in the GOP primary, aided by the imprimatur of the state party.

And on the Democratic side, former state Attorney General Richard Cordray cruised past Rep. Dennis Kucinich after weeks of hand-wringing that the race against the at-times eccentric Kucinich was closer than it should have been.

In the end, Cordray — who until recently headed the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — crushed Kucinich and four other challengers, even winning a greater percentage in the Democratic primary among a fractured field than DeWine earned in a one-on-one matchup with Taylor.

Both parties quickly pivoted to trying to attach a Washington brand to their opponents. The Republican Governors Association called Cordray “a Washington D.C. power-hungry insider,” despite DeWine’s 20-year congressional tenure.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Governors Association said DeWine was “a card-carrying member of the D.C. and Columbus swamp,” despite the fact that Cordray was DeWine’s predecessor as attorney general and was an Obama political appointee.

Either way, the gubernatorial election this year will be a rematch of the 2010 attorney general race. DeWine, four years removed from a loss to Brown, toppled the then-incumbent Cordray by 1 percentage point in the GOP wave year.

6. Chalk two up for the GOP establishment.

Establishment Republicans got more good news in Ohio when Troy Balderson and Anthony Gonzalez won primaries for open congressional seats.

Balderson, backed by former Rep. Pat Tiberi, beat Melanie Leneghan in two primaries in Ohio’s 12th District on Tuesday — one for the November election, and another for an August special election to complete Tiberi’s unexpired term.

The race was a proxy war between Tiberi — a longtime ally of former House Speaker John Boehner — and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Tiberi spent money on TV ads to back Balderson, while Jordan, the House Freedom Caucus co-founder, cut a competing TV ad for Leneghan that aired with help from conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein.

Gonzalez, a former Ohio State University football star, won a similar fight in the state’s 16th Congressional District. He defeated state Sen. Christina Hagan, who had Jordan’s backing in the race.

Both districts have been Republican strongholds — the 16th is even more solidly red than the 12th. But given Democrats’ stronger-than-expected performances in special elections in the Trump era, Republicans are gearing up for a fight for the Tiberi seat over the next three months.

“There will be a very clear contrast between Troy and ... [Democratic nominee] Danny O’Connor in the months ahead,” said Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee.

7. Women are dominating Democratic primaries

Women are running for federal office in record numbers in 2018 — and it looks like Democratic primary voters are poised to support those candidates as never before. There were 20 open Democratic House primaries with women on the ballot Tuesday night, and voters selected a female nominee in 17 of them.

It’s a sharp turnaround from past years, when female Democrats faced big hurdles in trying to win support from voters. A good number of the primary winners Tuesday night are running in heavily Republican seats with little chance of winning general elections. But they are still part of an important trend: Evidence is building that Democratic voters are tilting toward supporting women this year.

Keep this in mind as we approach primaries in big states full of battleground districts over the next two months: California and New York in June, and Pennsylvania next week.