The results are in: Former Massachusetts U.S. Sen. Scott Brown will face Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen in a November midterm race that could decide control of the U.S. Senate. Brown, who faced nine opponents but was always considered the race’s front-runner, won New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. Senate primary Tuesday, according to the Associated Press.
Here’s the lowdown on the rest of Tuesday’s primary elections:
In Massachusetts, five candidates vyed for two ballot spots in the race to be governor.
On the left, state attorney general Martha Coakley succeeded in her bid for the Democratic nomination four years after losing a Senate seat to Scott Brown — whose name was on New Hampshire’s ballot today, instead. With 90% of the vote in, Coakley had a roughly 5% margin of victory over her opponents.
Coakley defeated both Donald Berwick, a former Obama administration health care official, and the state’s treasurer, Steve Grossman. Coakley earned national support and was endorsed by EMILY’s List, but Grossman had the nod of the state party and The Boston Globe’s endorsement, something he promoted in the final weeks of the primary.
Related: ‘30 in 30’: Women Candidates to Watch in 2014 – Martha Coakley
On the right in Massachusetts, Charlie Baker — another 2010 alumni who ran on the Republican ticket against Deval Patrick, the now-outgoing Democratic governor — won his race in a landslide. He triumphed with 74% of the vote over Mark Fisher, a businessman aligning himself with the tea party. Baker served as the state secretary of finance and administration after running Harvard Pilgrim Health Care.
Baker ran in the style of former Gov. Mitt Romney — just conservative enough and just moderate enough — while Fisher aimed to fire up the far right of the party who were frustrated by their mostly blue state.
In Massachusetts’s 6th District, Democrat Seth Moulton, an Iraq War vet, defeated incumbent Rep. John Tierney —who was viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in this cycle — for the Democratic nomination. Moulton pulled in 49% of the total vote. Tierney will now retire after 18 years in Congress.
Moulton will face Republican Richard Tisei, the state Senate minority leader, in November. If Tisei wins, he could be the first openly gay Republican member of Congress.
Nearby in Rhode Island, Democrats ran a moneyed gubernatorial primary. The three candidates facing off spent $10 million in an attempt to come out ahead.
Rhode Island’s General Treasurer Gina Raimondo defeated Providence Mayor Angel Taveras handily in what was expected to be a closer race. With 96% of the vote in, Raimondo held a decisive 42% to 29% lead. The grandson of longtime Rhode Island senator Claiborne Pell, Clay Pell trailed the others with 27%. He had hoped to capitalize on starpower with an ad featuring his wife, the former Olympic skater Michelle Kwan.
Increasingly, the race in Rhode Island became a referendum on how to handle the ballooning pension costs: Raimondo championed an aggressive overhaul she oversaw in 2011 that curbed benefits and angered unions. Meanwhile, Taveras supported his own city pension fix, a less aggressive reform, but one that earned labor’s begrudging support, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Related: ‘30 in 30’: Women Candidates to Watch in 2014 – Gina Raimondo
In New York, incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo beat back a primary challenge from the left, defeating Zephyr Teachout, who slammed the governor for being too conservative, despite Cuomo’s several victories on gun control and same-sex marriage.
Teachout’s campaign earned extra press when details emerged of a federal investigation into Cuomo and his aides’ interference and shuttering of the Moreland Commission, which was a probe that aimed to root out corruption in Albany, the state’s capital. “People ask me why vote for you, what are your qualifications?” Teachout said in a radio interview on Monday morning. “One of them is that I’m not under federal investigation.” Still, Democratic voters were undeterred, giving Cuomo a 60% to 36% victory. Although Teachout did not prevail, she garnered more votes than expected. “Today’s outcome is a testament to the progress we have made together over the last four years: restoring economic opportunity, replacing dysfunction with results, putting people before politics and re-establishing New York as a progressive leader for the nation,” Cuomo said in his official victory statement. In Delaware, Republicans chose Kevin Wade to face — and likely lose to — Democratic Sen. Chris Coons in November. Wade’s opponent, retired Air Force veteran Carl Smink, was an 81-year-old far right candidate who believes the Heavens recruited him to run and went as far as to say he feared Sharia law would be implemented in the country, according to the Delaware News Journal. In New Hampshire, former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown ran — and won — on this state’s ballot for the first time. After losing his 2012 reelection race in Massachusetts, he moved and declared a challenge against New Hampshire’s Democratic incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen; the pair have been duking it out since before he declared, but Brown had to secure his party’s nod first. In New Hampshire’s 1st District, former New Hampshire Republican Rep. Frank Guinta defeated Dan Innis, one of two openly gay Republican on Tuesday’s ballots. Guinta will face off against incumbent Democrat Carole Shea Porter, who lost to Guinta in 2010 but beat him in 2012. In the state’s 2nd District, Republicans faced off for the chance to challenge Rep. Ann McLane Kuster, the Democratic incumbent. One the GOP’s rising stars, front-running state Sen. Marilinda Garcia won her party’s nomination with nearly 50% of the vote Tuesday night in a race against former state Sen. Gary Lambert, a tea partier she painted as being far-right. Garcia, a Hispanic woman, supports a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants — something she’s been attacked for during the race — but has earned the support of everyone from the Club for Growth to Texas and tea party darling Sen. Ted Cruz, who campaigned for her over the weekend.
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