Tuesday’s primaries

Democrats look to reshape Southern politics. Tuesday’s primaries will be key.

Primaries in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky and Texas feature a potentially historic governor's race and a seismic shift in Texas' congressional delegation.

By STEVEN SHEPARD, SCOTT BLAND, ELENA SCHNEIDER and DANIEL STRAUSS

The 2018 midterms move on Tuesday to four Southern states where Democrats are seeking to redefine the region’s shifting politics and prepare for the battle for control of the House of Representatives this fall.

Primaries in Arkansas, Georgia and Kentucky — along with runoffs in Texas for races in which no candidate received a majority of votes in the March primary — include a handful of congressional districts critical to Democrats’ chances to win back the chamber.

Two battleground districts in particular — in Lexington, Kentucky, and outside Houston — feature examples of the continuing battle between establishment Democrats and insurgent candidates, who are proudly spurning party bigwigs in their efforts to win primaries.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Democrats are poised to nominate an African-American woman for governor five months after winning a special Senate election in neighboring Alabama — a victory the party credits, in large part, to black women, who voted resoundingly for now-Sen. Doug Jones. Former state Rep. Stacey Abrams would be the first African-American woman to serve as a governor, and the first elected African-American governor in the deep South of any gender.

Polls close statewide at 7 p.m. Eastern time in Georgia and Kentucky, 8:30 p.m. in Arkansas and 9 p.m. in Texas. But look out for some results in Kentucky and Texas an hour earlier, when polls close in parts of the states that are in the Eastern time zone.

Here are five things to watch as the results roll in Tuesday night:

Which Stacey will win in Georgia?

Only two African-Americans have been elected governor in U.S. history. But a large slate of candidates is trying to change that in 2018 — starting in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams is the front-runner in Tuesday’s Democratic gubernatorial primary.

Abrams, who would be the first black female governor ever and has for years been tabbed as a rising star, has been embroiled in a tough primary with Stacey Evans, a former colleague in the state House. But Abrams’ vision of energizing infrequent voters to flip Georgia has attracted an extremely broad network of local and national support, including EMILY’s List and other groups supporting women, progressive groups, African-American groups — as well as Hillary Clinton, who taped a robocall backing Abrams, according to The New York Times, and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Abrams is one of several African-American candidates seeking to make history in governors races in Maryland, Kansas and elsewhere this fall, as well as a handful of majority-white congressional districts around the country. Another one of those candidates is Colin Allred, a former NFL player and Department of Housing and Urban Development attorney who has a primary runoff Tuesday for the right to take on Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) in the suburbs of Dallas.

Still, many of those candidates, starting with Abrams and Allred, will have tough roads ahead if they win their primaries.

A Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race in Georgia in over a decade, and the crowded GOP primary speaks to the opportunity Republicans still have to control the state. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle is the front-runner for that nomination, but he could end up in a July primary runoff against Secretary of State Brian Kemp, another contender who has previously won statewide office.

Democrats face another round of inside-out House primaries

Democratic House hopefuls have battled over health care, impeachment and a host of other issues this year. But they have clashed not only on policy but on politics, especially when an “outsider” is fighting against a party-supported “insider” candidate.

The biggest of those races is in Houston, where Democrat Laura Moser, a former journalist, drew the national spotlight this winter after the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee posted research on her and tagged her as a carpetbagger who would put at risk the party’s efforts to defeat GOP Rep. John Culberson. But Moser capitalized on the attacks, rallying activists to her side and clinching a spot in the Democratic runoff against Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, an attorney backed by EMILY’s List.

Fletcher entered the runoff with more cash in the bank, outspending Moser on TV ads. But Moser believes her ground game — and a rejection of Washington meddling — will put her over the top in a race that will test the Democratic Party’s power to shape its primaries.

Moser said that if she loses, “it’ll say that big money and big footing still matters.”

In Kentucky, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray was a top recruit for Democrats after carrying the red-leaning 6th Congressional District during his 2016 Senate loss. But Amy McGrath, a veteran who caught fire online and raised more than $2 million, has painted Gray as a member of the Democratic establishment, and she and Gray have squabbled over who would be a break from the status quo.

Below-the-radar campaigns have featured this, too: Underfunded Rick Trevino has tried to turn his primary runoff against Gina Ortiz Jones, whom the DCCC endorsed after the initial primary, into an insider-outsider contest for a top Democratic target district in West Texas. The theme has been prevalent across the map so far this year; we’ll see whether it carries anyone to victory on Tuesday.

Conservatives aim to reshape the Texas delegation

There are five Republican runoffs in Texas for GOP-held open seats, as the state undergoes a broad transformation of its influential congressional delegation. Two of the retiring members are committee chairmen: Jeb Hensarling of Financial Services and Lamar Smith of Science. Another, Rep. Joe Barton, is a former committee chairman.

The retiring members aren’t exactly moderates, but they have worked closely with House leadership — though Barton, who isn’t seeking reelection after a sexting scandal, has had his run-ins with GOP brass. But their replacements could move the delegation and the GOP conference in a different direction.

The conservative Club for Growth — which seeks to pull the party to the right on fiscal issues — is playing in four of the five runoffs, backing Bunni Pounds in the 5th District, Ron Wright in the 6th, Chip Roy in the 21st and Michael Cloud in the 27th. Roy, a former staffer of Sen. Ted Cruz, also has his old boss’ endorsement.

Pounds is also backed by Vice President Mike Pence. She’s seeking to defeat Lance Gooden, who was the first-place finisher in the primary 11 weeks ago, winning 30 percent of the vote to Pounds’ 22 percent.

In the 6th District, Wright won 45 percent of the vote in the primary and will face second-place finisher Jake Ellzey (22 percent) on Tuesday. In the 21st District, Roy (27 percent in the primary) faces Matt McCall (17 percent). And in the 27th, Cloud (34 percent) finished narrowly behind Bech Bruun (36 percent) in the primary.

The return of Georgia’s 6th District?

Democratic excitement turned into Democratic deflation in the Atlanta suburbs last year, when Jon Ossoff came up short in his bid to flip a longtime Republican district in a special election. But while GOP Rep. Karen Handel has had time to solidify her standing since then, the fact remains that this diverse and highly educated district has a lot of the same attributes as districts that have become top 2018 battlegrounds — just with a dose of special election fatigue added in.

Before Democrats really get down to figuring out whether they can challenge Handel again, the party needs to nominate its candidate. Ossoff is not running again, but Tuesday’s four-way contest includes some notable names, including local TV anchor Bobby Kaple and gun-control activist Lucy McBath.

Kaple has outraised the Democratic field, but McBath has gotten over $830,000 of outside spending support from Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, the political arm of an activist group McBath worked with after her son was shot and killed.

There are better targets on the 2018 map for Democrats — as Ossoff’s close loss ultimately showed. But there’s a chance we could all end up again paying attention to this slice of Georgia when the battleground map solidifies in the fall. The state’s most recent battleground House races have taken in more rural territory, but the fast-changing Atlanta suburbs may, if November is kind to Democrats, give the party an opportunity here or in GOP Rep. Rob Woodall’s 7th District, both of which President Donald Trump won by narrower margins than other recent GOP presidential candidates.

The two Sams

It’s the name you know: Sam Johnson — a Plano, Texas, attorney — is vying to be the Democratic nominee to replace a retiring GOP congressman in the North Dallas suburbs.

The retiring member’s name? Sam Johnson.

It’s reminiscent of the cheesy 1992 movie “The Distinguished Gentleman,” in which Eddie Murphy, a con man, wins a special congressional election in South Florida running an underground campaign because his name — Jeff Johnson — is identical to that of the deceased congressman.

But being Sam Johnson’s namesake didn’t help the Democratic candidate, who received only 29 percent of the vote in the March primary. Lorie Burch, another attorney, finished just shy (49.61 percent) of the majority needed to win the nomination. State Sen. Van Taylor easily won the GOP nomination in March and will be favored to win the reliably Republican seat.