Last night’s primaries
By Is this the first time a Tea Party/Freedom Caucus Republican has lost a primary to a moderate/establishment-friendly/willing to compromise candidate?
Apparently it was also a bad night for team Brownback:
At least 10 conservative Republicans in the Kansas Legislature have lost their seats in the primary election.
They included Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, of Nickerson, who was defeated Tuesday by retired Hutchinson Community College President Ed Berger.
Four other conservative GOP senators were ousted as well. They were Tom Arpke of Salina, Forrest Knox of Altoona, Jeff Melcher of Leawood and Greg Smith of Overland Park.
At least five conservative Republicans in the House lost seats as well, all of them in Johnson County. They were Rob Bruchman of Leawood, Brett Hildabrand of Shawnee, Jerry Lunn of Overland Park, Charles Macheers of Shawnee and Craig McPherson of Overland Park.
Moderate Republicans made the election a referendum on the state’s budget problems and battles over education funding.
Indeed, the failure of Brownbackism probably hurt Huelskamp a good deal, if it brought out moderate voters. Whether that mattered more or less than Boehner kicking him off the Ag committee, I couldn’t say.
Meanwhile, over in Washington, Inslee’s weak first term as governor doesn’t appear to be bad enough to give the Republicans much of a shot at Olympia, and the tremendous margin of victory for Seattle’s housing levy victory would seem to bode well for the city putting up big enough margins to carry the Sound Transit III vote in November.