Primary season winds down with contests in Arizona, Florida

Primary voters were set to head to the polls in Arizona, Florida and Vermont on Tuesday night in the country’s second-to-last batch of nominating contests before the general election, now only two months away.

In Arizona, the results of the evening’s Republican primaries will help determine who will succeed controversial Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, who is leaving behind a complicated legacy after four years in office.

During her first and only term, Brewer championed the hardline immigration legislation that made it a state crime to be in the country illegally and compelled state and local law enforcement to check the documents of anyone suspected of violating the law. At the same time, Brewer broke from other Republican governors in choosing to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. In the race to replace her on the ticket, Brewer has endorsed Scott Smith, the former mayor of Mesa, who is seen as more of a moderate and is likely to preserve the Medicaid expansion. His top competitor is state Treasurer Doug Ducey, perceived as the conservative option and endorsed by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, as well as former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The winner will face off against Democrat Fred Duval, a former member of Arizona’s Board of Regents, which governs the state’s public universities.

Arizona’s congressional primaries will feature a race to determine whether retired Air Force Col. Martha McSally – backed heavily by the Koch brothers and the National Republican Congressional Committee – will be granted a re-match with Democratic Rep. Ron Barber, who beat her by less than 2,500 votes in 2012. There is also a contest to see which Republican will challenge Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick in November: state house Speaker Andy Tobin, who said the recent border crisis could lead to Ebola coming to the United States, or state legislator Adam Kwasman, who mistook a bus of YMCA campers for unaccompanied child migrants. Finally, there is the Democratic primary to replace Rep. Ed Pastor, the first Hispanic congressman from Arizona, who is retiring after 20 years in Washington.  

Meanwhile, Florida’s primary will test whether former GOP Gov. Charlie Crist has been able to complete his political metamorphosis — this time around, he is running as a Democrat. Crist stepped down after one term as Florida governor to run for the Senate seat of then-fellow Republican Mel Martinez in 2010, but it soon became apparent that he was poised to lose the primary to tea party challenger Marco Rubio. Crist dropped out of the GOP primary and launched a campaign against Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek as an independent. Crist lost decisively and in 2012, he re-invented himself again, endorsing President Barack Obama and registering as a Democrat.

But do Florida voters buy it? Crist has been running his campaign for governor this year as if he is already the Democratic party’s nominee, lobbing attacks against incumbent GOP Gov. Rick Scott. How easily Crist can dispatch his primary opponent, Nan Rich – a state lawmaker who has billed herself as “the real Democrat” – will show whether that confidence was warranted.

The Sunshine State also features a congressional primary in which it is anyone’s guess whether former Rep. David Rivera, R-Fla. – under FBI investigation for financing a fake candidate to run against his opponent in 2012, Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Fla. – is still running. Rivera suspended his campaign earlier this year but seems to have resumed campaigning this month. Still, Miami-Dade School Board Member Carlos Curbelo is the frontrunner in a district Republicans hope they can wrestle away from Democrats in November.  

Both Florida and Arizona have long had voter ID requirements in place – Florida since 2011 and Arizona since 2004 – but the restrictions are unlikely to have a large impact on primaries.

Vermont is expected to have a tamer evening. The victor of the Republican primary Tuesday does not have much of a shot against two-term incumbent Gov. Peter Shumlin.