Photo: AP

Welp, it actually happened: In Virginia, two-time former statewide candidate and friend to white supremacists everywhere Corey Stewart won the GOP’s Senate nomination in a primary on Tuesday.


He did this after video surfaced last week of Stewart calling fascist Republican congressional candidate Paul Nehlen “his personal hero.” And that’s in addition to Stewart’s well-known love of Confederate monuments, something he can’t even use the “Southern heritage” excuse for because he’s from fucking Minnesota.



Naturally, Donald Trump was thrilled.


Stewart will face Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine in November. Some Virginia Republicans, like former lieutenant governor Bill Bolling, are not stoked:

If Bolling’s lack of enthusiasm is any indication of what the majority of Virginia Republicans believe—Stewart just barely beat state representative Nick Freitas for the nomination with a plurality of the vote—the nomination could depress Republican turnout and possibly doom endangered House incumbents in swing districts.



Kaine is widely favored to win re-election, but nonetheless, he’s already on the attack. “A cruder imitation of Donald Trump who stokes white supremacy and brags about being ‘ruthless and vicious,’ Corey Stewart would be an embarrassment for Virginia in the US Senate,” Kaine communications director Ian Sams told CNN.


Meanwhile, in South Carolina, GOP Rep. Mark Sanford—a former governor who infamously dropped his duties in that role and ran off to Argentina to be with a girlfriend whom he later broke up with—lost his House primary to state representative Katie Arrington, which should make Trump pretty happy:


In typical fashion, Trump lent Arrington his support less than three hours before the polls closed. So, it’s impossible to know how much of an effect he had, although Arrington did barely clear the threshold needed to avoid the runoff with 50.5 percent of the vote.

Sanford is the second House Republican to go down in a primary this year after Robert Pittenger of North Carolina, and he might not be the last—fellow Trump critic Martha Roby of Alabama was reduced to less than 40 percent of the vote in a five-way primary earlier this month, and will face a runoff.


In addition to South Carolina and Virginia, Nevada, North Dakota, and Maine had primary elections last night, and Wisconsin had a special election. Here’s what happened: