June 03, 2026 12:43 PM UTC

Mainstream Dems Win Big In Tuesday Primaries

• 0 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Last night’s primary elections in several states provided some leading indicators of where Colorado’s own primary voters may land later this month with ballots about to go in the mail–and as Politico kicks off our roundup in California, results are better than some expected for Democratic incumbents and primary challengers backed by party leadership:

The Democratic establishment swung back in California on Tuesday.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass advanced to a November runoff in a better-than-expected showing in her reelection bid, while Xavier Becerra was in solid position to make the runoff in the race for governor — both blunting a surge of outsider energy and massive spending in the nation’s most populous state.

While the governor’s race was still not called early Wednesday, and Bass still has a runoff to contend with, early results suggested the limits of anti-establishment currents that threatened for months to upend the party apparatus in this heavily Democratic state.

Meanwhile in Iowa, as CNBC reports, a Democratic U.S. Senate primary for that state’s open seat went solidly to the candidate favored by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer:

State Rep. Josh Turek soundly defeated state Sen. Zach Wahls on Tuesday in Iowa’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, the Associated Press projected. The primary was one of the party’s most closely watched races as Democrats seek to regain control of the Senate in November’s midterm elections…

The battle between Turek and Wahls was emblematic of a larger struggle within the Democratic Party between its more moderate and progressive wings, and became a referendum on Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The general election for Iowa’s Senate seat could be crucial for Democrats’ push to retake the chamber. To do so, they’d need to flip four states that Trump won, such as Iowa, Texas, North Carolina, and Maine, while also successfully defending seats currently held by Democrats in states such as Georgia, Michigan, and New Hampshire.

In both states, a substantial gap is evident between the rage from far-left activists directed against Democratic incumbents and candidates perceived as “establishment,” versus the much more accommodating view of primary voters–who remain focused on resisting the Trump administration’s excesses rather than purging the Democratic Party of the insufficiently progressive. For many rank-and-file Democrats, the shrill attacks on mainstream Democratic candidates from left-wing challengers are difficult to distinguish from Republican campaign ads, and get tuned out the same way.

In Colorado, you can combine these results with a huge resource mismatch between the Democratic incumbents and lefty underdogs on the primary ballot in our U.S. Senate and CO-01 races and take away good news for John Hickenlooper and Diana DeGette respectively. In the closely-watched CO-08 Democratic primary, these trends could suggest a tighter race between progressive Manny Rutinel and “establishment” Shannon Bird than Rutinel’s confident supporters expect.

The moral of the story? Don’t believe the hype. Like Tuesday’s results in California and Iowa, Colorado election results have repeatedly shown that the perennial disaffection of Democratic Party activists against their own incumbents and so-called “anointed” candidates simply isn’t shared by primary voters.

For most Democrats, the enemy is not other Democrats. It’s the party of Donald Trump.