Fringe candidates and House Republicans fare poorly

THIS autumn Democrats must defend ten Senate seats in states that President Donald Trump won. They may well flip Republican-held seats in Nevada and Arizona, so Republicans have to pick off at least a few of those ten seats if they want to retain their majority. Primary elections in three of these states—West Virginia, Indiana and Ohio, as well as North Carolina—were held on May 8th. Viable candidates prevailed in all three, partly by emphasising their affinity with Mr Trump. Yet even though Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House, anti-establishment anger still animates their base.

The fear for what remains of the Republican establishment was that Don Blankenship would prevail in West Virginia, where Mr Trump won 68.5% of the vote in 2016. Mr Blankenship is a doughy, charmless ex-convict who praised China’s “dictatorial capitalism” and spent a year in prison for conspiring to evade federal mine-safety standards after an accident killed 29 men at one of...Continue reading

Source: United States https://ift.tt/2KRJUoQ

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