6 takeaways from primaries in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and more

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(CNN) --

Pennsylvania Republicans chose a politician who denied Joe Biden's victory as their midterm gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, but appear to have rejected a far-right Senate candidate.

As of early Wednesday, Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon backed by former President Donald Trump, and retired hedge fund executive David McCormick are locked in a melee battle in the Republican Senate primary that could take days. to resolve.

Conservative Kathy Barnette, whom many Republican officials feared would outperform Oz and McCormick despite concerns about her eligibility, was in third place.

The winner of that race will face Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who triumphed in the Democratic primary despite being hospitalized after suffering a stroke days earlier, in a race both parties see as crucial in the battle for control of the Senate.

Pennsylvania was one of five states holding primaries on Tuesday.

In North Carolina, Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn was narrowly defeated amid a cloud of scandal.

In Idaho, Gov. Brad Little fended off a challenge from his No. 2. And in Oregon, a moderate Democrat trailed in the congressional primary.

These are six takeaways from Tuesday's primaries.

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A tight primary for the Senate in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania continued to count ballots from its Republican Senate primary on Wednesday morning.

The final result could be delayed in part because of a printing error in Lancaster County that officials there say left about 22,000 ballots that could not be read by scanners.

The first person Oz thanked during a speech at his election night party outside of his own family was former President Donald Trump, whose endorsement catapulted him into an open career.

But while Trump helped Oz personally, Trumpism, the evolving forces the former president unleashed within the GOP, could have hurt him.

Conservative Kathy Barnette ran as Trump's heir, tapping into grassroots Republican antipathy toward Oz.

And though Ella Barnette is third in the race when the final ballots are counted, she seems to have taken the necessary votes away from the famous doctor.

It's a dynamic unique to the Republican primary: Trump is such an absorbing force in the GOP that when the candidate endorsed by Trump and those seeking to push Trumpism even further aren't the same person, it makes room for a less inspired candidate. on Trump like McCormick.

And it's a major reason the race remains too close to decide.

Republican US Senate candidate Mehmet Oz waves to supporters following the primary results in Newtown, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 2022. (Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

An election denier could have power over the 2024 Pennsylvania election

In state Sen. Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania Republicans have nominated for governor a prominent voice promoting Trump's lies about voter fraud, raising the possibility that someone who already tried to override the will of voters in 2020 would have power over the electoral machinery of one of the nation's most important presidential battleground states in 2024.

The Trump-backed Mastriano will face Democratic State Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who has consistently defended Pennsylvania's electoral process and 2020 results, in the race to replace Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf.

The winner could play a major role in the 2024 election: In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state, the person in charge of running Pennsylvania's elections and approving its constituents.

Mastriano was in Washington for the "Stop the Steal" rally prior to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. He attempted to conduct an Arizona-style partisan review of the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and made debunked conspiracy theories about the election a centerpiece of his campaign.

National Republicans kept Mastriano at arm's length Tuesday night.

But Trump remains the gravitational force within the GOP, and Mastriano's victory in the primaries shows that those willing to do his bidding could have far more power to thwart the will of voters in 2024 than they did in 2020.

• 6 takeaways from the Senate primaries in Ohio and Indiana

Madison Cawthorn's Burnt Bridges in the North Carolina Primary

Despite a late turnout from Trump, Rep. Madison Cawthorn could not survive his string of scandals, nor the GOP's efforts to make him an example to other far-right figures.

He was ousted from his Western North Carolina congressional seat by state senator Chuck Edwards.

The tactics behind the scorched-earth approach of Cawthorn's critics within the party were key to his defeat.

Senator Thom Tillis and other leading North Carolina Republicans not only openly denounced Cawthorn, they identified and supported a single opponent in the field of eight candidates.

Although the vote against Cawthorn fractured among several contenders, the efforts to elevate Edwards as the main alternative paid off.

Cawthorn's loss was also a loss for Trump, who took to his own social network, Truth Social, to advocate for the 26-year-old congressman on Sunday night.

Trump wrote: "He's made some dumb mistakes recently, which I don't think he'll make again... Let's give Madison a second chance!"

The evolution of Democratic "eligibility"

What it means to be a top Democratic recruit is changing.

On Tuesday night, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a six-foot-tall, balding, tattooed former mayor known for wearing shorts and hoodies, won the Democratic primary for the Pennsylvania Senate.

In North Carolina, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley largely cleared the field in the primary and landed a nomination that could make her the state's first black senator.

Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman won the Democratic primary on May 17, 2022.

(Credit: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Their victories are part of a shift within the Democratic Party, where what constituted a good recruit in past cycles meant someone who was much more like the people Fetterman and Beasley defeated.

In Pennsylvania, Fetterman, whom Democratic voters considered authentic and feisty, defeated Rep. Conor Lamb, a polished Navy veteran who has beaten Republicans in tough races and has a warm relationship with President Joe Biden.

And in North Carolina, Beasley was so widely viewed as the frontrunner that another Democratic rising star who would have been a top recruit in years past, state Sen. and Army National Guardsman Jeff Jackson, ended his campaign. months before the primary, falling behind Beasley as he ran for a House seat.

If what appeals to Democratic primary voters translates to November eligibility in the two vacant races left by retiring Republicans, it could play a key role in determining which party controls the Senate next year.

Far-right candidate in Idaho collapses

Idaho Governor Brad Little easily fended off an attempt to remove him from office by his own Lt. Governor, Janice McGeachin.

McGeachin, who was elected lieutenant governor separately from Little (because in Idaho the two offices are elected in their own races rather than a single ticket) was part of a series of far-right candidates seeking to seize control of state government.

Trump endorsed her, even though Little had also endorsed Trump's election lies and joined Texas' legal effort to overturn some states' 2020 results.

McGeachin had made headlines by using her status as interim governor when Little briefly traveled out of state to implement coronavirus-related executive orders banning mask and vaccine mandates.

Little immediately rescinded those orders upon her return.

Outside groups fare modestly in big Democratic House primary gamble

Outside groups swamped moderate Democratic candidates ahead of races in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Oregon in a bid to outbid progressive outsiders and blunt the left's recent momentum in House primaries.

But with almost all votes, the returns on those investments appear to be mixed.

A pair of selected progressive candidates in North Carolina lost heavily, while Summer Lee, a Pennsylvania state representative vying to become the first black woman elected to Congress from the commonwealth, was in a close race with her rival. moderate in Pittsburgh's District 12.

Lee faced more than $3 million in spending from the United Democracy Project, a super PAC aligned with the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee and the Democratic Majority for Israel.

She received considerable support from the Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party, but those groups still had a lot of spending.

In Oregon, incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader, who had the backing of President Joe Biden along with a couple of big spending groups (the Center Forward, a pharmaceutical-backed PAC, and Mainstream Democrats, funded by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman) who bolstered his campaign fell behind progressive challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner as votes poured in from the largest county in the newly drawn 5th district.

The implications of Tuesday's results will also weigh on next week's successful runoff in Texas, where Jessica Cisneros is trying to unseat moderate incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar, another big beneficiary of outside financial organizations.

US primary elections