Republican lawmaker from California Vince Fong has won the special election to fill the post of former Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy‘s seat, NBC News Projects, a victory that will fill a narrow majority in the House of Representatives that has given GOP leaders in Washington heartburn.
Fong, who was endorsed by McCarthy and former president Donald Trump, won the race in California’s 20th District against a fellow Republican, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux. Fong, once an aide to McCarthy, will now serve out the remainder of his former boss’ term. McCarthy resigned in December, two months after becoming the first House Speaker in history to be impeached.
Unlike most states, California uses a top-two primary system in which all candidates, regardless of party, appear on the same ballot. And if no candidate receives a majority of votes in a special election — as Fong and Boudreaux failed to do in the March primary — the top two vote-getters will advance to a head-to-head matchup.
Once Fong is sworn in, the Republican Party will have 218 seats in the House of Representatives to the Democrats’ 213, with four vacancies. That will result in Speaker Mike Johnsona little more muting, as some conservative members of the party have threatened in recent months to scuttle key rules and pieces of legislation.
Fong and Boudreaux will face off again in November in the regularly scheduled general election.
Voters also went to the polls Tuesday for primaries in four other states — Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Oregon — setting matchups in key battlegrounds and settling intraparty feuds.
Top figures in Trump’s election case in Georgia win their elections
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing Trump’s case over Georgia’s election fallout, easily defeated a Democratic primary challenger on Tuesday, The Associated Press predicted.
And the judge who oversaw the case, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, won his nonpartisan election to a four-year term, according to the AP.
Elsewhere in Georgia, NBC News projects the conservative Supreme Court justice Andrew Pinson defeated former Democratic Rep. John Barrow, who focused his campaign on his support for abortion rights.
Pinson, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022, will serve a six-year term on the nonpartisan court.
The Republican Party’s primary in Georgia’s second district has attracted some attention, even as Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop heavily favored to win in November. That’s because Chuck Hand, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge related to his conduct during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, is one of the Republican Party’s challengers.
With no candidate reaching 50%, Hand is expected to advance to the June 18 runoff against the top vote-getter in the Republican primary, Wayne Johnson, who served in Trump’s Department of Education.
Trump’s pick for Georgia’s third district, former White House political director Brian Jack, failed to win a majority in his Republican primary. NBC News has predicted he will move to a runoff against Senator Mike Dugan. The winner will be favored in the general election to replace retiring Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson in the conservative district.
Key races in Oregon, Kentucky and Idaho
National Democrats got their preferred candidate in Oregon’s 5th District, a key target in their bid to flip control of the House of Representatives, with state Rep. Janelle Bynum winning the party’s primary. She will face GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer in November in a district that Joe Biden carried in 2020.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took sides in the primaries, a rare move for the group, giving Bynum a boost in the race for attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who lost to Chavez-DeRemer by 2 points in 2022.
There will be a rematch this fall in Oregon’s 6th District, where businessman Mike Erickson won the Republican Party primary to face Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas. Erickson lost to Salinas in 2022 by nearly 3 percentage points. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the race as a lean Democrat.
Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter will most likely go to Congress next year after winning the Democratic primary in the deep blue 3rd District.
Dexter, a physician, received support from 314 Action, which supports candidates with a background in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). She defeated former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, whose sister, Pramila Jayapal, represents Washington’s 7th District and chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Across the country in Kentucky’s 4th District, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie secured a primary victory over two challengers.
Although Massie was the odds-on favorite, he has found himself at odds with powerful Republicans in recent years. He joined the recent failed effort to oust Johnson as chairman, endorsed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis against Trump in the Republican Party presidential primaries and faced blowback from Trump in 2020 when he opposed the relief bill for pandemics while Trump was president. A pro-Israel group also ran ads attacking him ahead of the primaries.
And in Idaho, Rep. Mike Simpson fended off a pair of Republican primaries in the deep-red 2nd District, the AP predicted. Although his opponents were not particularly well-funded, Simpson did spend money on advertising to shore up support prior to the primaries.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
