On the biggest primary day of 2018, Democrats avoided the disaster in California they’d been fearing, while Republicans scored an important top-of-the-ticket victory. Bernie Sanders-endorsed candidates continued to flail, a Republican critic of President Donald Trump hit rough waters in Alabama, and voters sent Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez a message in New Jersey.

Here are POLITICO’s seven takeaways from the action-packed Super Tuesday of 2018:


Bruised feelings, but no lockouts

The blowback for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other national Democrats who maneuvered in California’s House primaries was fierce. But as the votes were tallied Wednesday morning, it appeared that the party’s multipronged strategy — attacking Republicans, taking sides among Democrats and cajoling some other candidates to drop out — had paid off.

Democrats’ gambits in California weren’t just about dragging candidates they deemed more electable across the finish line — they were more existential, since the state’s top-two primary system meant that seats critical to the party’s efforts to win back the House could have vanished from the battlefield five months before Election Day.

In the 39th Congressional District, the DCCC picked a favorite: Gil Cisneros, a Navy veteran and self-funding lottery winner. Cisneros finished second behind GOP nominee Young Kim on a ballet that included seven Republicans and six Democrats.

In the 48th District, Democrats spent the past month bombarding Republican Scott Baugh, who had looked like he was heading toward a second-place finish behind GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. That would have denied Democrats a chance to knock off the controversial incumbent in a district Hillary Clinton carried narrowly in 2016. But the latest vote counts showed Democrats Harley Rouda and Hans Keirstead narrowly leading Baugh in the race for second place. The DCCC had endorsed Rouda and aired some “hybrid” ads with his campaign, while the state Democratic Party had endorsed Keirstead.

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The party avoided a lockout more conclusively in the 49th District race to replace retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa. Republican Diane Harkey finished first, but the second-, third- and fourth-place candidates were all Democrats. That comes after a massive Democratic ad campaign against GOP state Assemblyman Rocky Chávez, who was in sixth place in the vote tally.

The results aren’t official yet, but if there’s a Democrat on the ballot in each of California’s 53 House districts in November, the party establishment in Washington will likely see its primary efforts as worth all the trouble.

Trump’s California victory

Republicans have almost no chance of winning the governorship in heavily Democratic California. But that was besides the point for the GOP on Tuesday: Simply ensuring a Republican made the November ballot was the single-minded goal, and the party pulled it off.

For months, California Republicans had fretted they might get shut out in California’s gubernatorial primary — in which the top two vote-getters advance regardless of party affiliation — a result they feared could have ruinous implications for down-ticket races. Even a drop in turnout of 1 percentage point could potentially cost the party competitive House contests in Southern California.

But Trump and establishment Republicans coalesced around a little-known GOP businessman, John Cox, who finished second behind Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, and about 15 percentage points ahead of a second Democrat, Antonio Villaraigosa. That deprived Democrats of an all-Democratic general election — and could potentially keep GOP voters interested in the top-of-the-ticket race.

The elevation of Cox made strange bedfellows of Trump and Newsom in the final days of the campaign. Newsom and his supporters, hoping for an easy race against Cox instead of a difficult one against a Democrat, had aired ads reinforcing Cox’s conservative credentials for Republican voters.

Meet the next California governor

After eight years in a job so low-key that Newsom once even suggested it should be eliminated, California’s Democratic lieutenant governor catapulted to national star status by handily winning the gubernatorial primary.

The former San Francisco mayor’s pitch that he had “courage for a change” was underscored in ads that reminded progressive voters that Newsom took the lead in pushing for same-sex marriage and universal health care in his city, while being one of the first to call for legal recreational cannabis in California.

He’ll face Cox in the general election, but that figures to be a mere formality in a state in which the Republican Party has disintegrated to 25 percent voter registration. Newsom is expected to glide into the job as a lead player in the “state of resistance” strategy against Trump come November.

Newsom, from one of the nation’s most progressive bastions, is already talking about taking a page from the playbook of the four-term Gov. Jerry Brown, who once famously advised that surviving the waves of politics in California requires leaders to “paddle to the left, paddle to the right.” With an eye toward his next job as chief executive of the world’s fifth-largest economy, the former mayor is talking about tackling issues like jobs, housing, income inequality and homelessness — and he may already have begun paddling. His promise: “I’m not going to be a profligate Democrat.”

A protest against Menendez

Menendez won his Democratic primary on Tuesday. But nearly 40 percent of his party’s voters went for a little-known, underfunded local newspaper publisher rather than cast a ballot for the scandal-ridden New Jersey senator.

Now the question is whether Democrats will hold their noses and come home for Menendez in the fall.

Menendez, whose corruption trial last year resulted in a deadlock on bribery charges, beat Lisa McCormick easily. But the margin — he won just 62 percent of the vote, a weak primary performance for a veteran incumbent — showed that many Democrats remain uneasy with the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

In the strongly Democratic state, Menendez will be the favorite against Republican Bob Hugin in the general election. Hugin, who is at least partially self-funding his campaign, has spent more than $2 million on ads.

What’s still unclear, though, is whether New Jersey voters are interested in delivering him anything more than a primary message. Early polls in the state show Menendez with a wide lead over Hugin, who remains relatively little known.

Another good night for Democratic women

From New Jersey to New Mexico, Democratic women cleaned up Tuesday night. Two Iowa women, Abby Finkenauer in the 1st District and Cindy Axne in the 3rd District, crushed their respective Democratic fields, in each case winning more than the 35 percent needed to avoid going to a state convention.

Finkenauer, 29, benefited from early DCCC support and outraised her opponents. But the DCCC didn’t get involved in Axne’s primary, where she cruised to victory by winning 58 percent against two male opponents.

At the top of the Iowa ticket, in the governor’s race, the year of the woman and the #MeToo movement left a mark: Missing from the cast of candidates was Democratic state Sen. Nate Boulton, who bowed out two weeks before the election in the aftermath of sexual misconduct allegations.

In New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy pilot and federal prosecutor, prevailed in the Republican-leaning 11th District in a seat held by retiring Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen. In New Mexico, Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat and a vocal critic of Trump and his immigration policies, was up against two men; she won the nomination with 66 percent.

Bernie’s sputtering revolution

Tuesday’s results demonstrated again that despite Sanders’ popularity, he’s no kingmaker. Case in point is Pete D'Alessandro, a top aide to Sanders during his 2016 Iowa caucus campaign, who finished third in a field of three in the 3rd District.

With much fanfare, Sanders handed out an early endorsement to D'Alessandro, visited Iowa for a rally and sent out a fundraising email. But any bump in small donors and grass-roots support was short-lived: D’Alessandro finished with just 15 percent of the vote.

A similar scenario unfolded for Iowa gubernatorial candidate Cathy Glasson, a nurse and union leader who won the backing of Our Revolution, the Sanders-aligned group. Glasson couldn’t overtake Fred Hubbell, who was boosted by a storied family name and by millions of dollars in self financing.

In New Jersey, the story was the same: Peter Jacob in the 7th District, and Jim Keady in the 4th district, both failed to gain steam despite endorsements from Our Revolution.

Bend the knee to Trump

Just a few years ago, Alabama Republican Rep. Martha Roby looked to be a rising conservative star, a youthful, female voice in a party that needed more of both. Now, after an anemic 39 percent performance Tuesday, she’s headed to a July 17 runoff.

What happened between her 2016 primary, when she won by a landslide, and her 2018 primary? Donald Trump.

In the wake of Trump’s infamous "Access Hollywood" remarks, Roby issued a statement saying his “behavior makes him unacceptable as a candidate for president and I won’t vote for him.” She’s been paying for it ever since.

Roby has sought to make amends with the White House, but those efforts apparently haven’t registered with Republicans back home.

Roby‘s poor performance does not inspire confidence about her chances in the runoff. But it helps her that she’ll be facing Bobby Bright, the party-switching former Democratic congressman she defeated to win the seat in 2010. Whether she wins or not, the lesson from her experience is clear: In GOP primaries this year, loyalty to the president is the only issue that matters anymore.