The NPR Politics Podcast - Voters reject the establishment in this week’s primaries

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Voters in several of this week’s primary races rejected incumbents and politicians backed by Washington leaders in favor of outsiders. We discuss that and other takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries, plus how the Supreme Court’s ruling that lets Alabama redraw its congressional map changes the outcome of the mid-decade redistricting arms race. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political reporter Stephen Fowler, and political correspondent Ashley Lopez.This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics. And I'm Ashley Lopez and I also cover politics. And we are recording this podcast at 108 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, June 4th, 2026. The mid-decade redistricting arms race seems to be finally over. The Supreme Court ruled this week that Alabama can redraw its congressional districts overturning a lower court decision that said that the state's Republican backed map intentionally discriminated against black voters. We're going to get to all of that. But we also had a packed primary slate this week, and we want to start there. So, Stephen, what are your big takeaways from the races that happened this week? So there were six states that had primaries spanning New Jersey on the East Coast, all the way out to California and the West Coast. And a big thing that we have been seeing in the midterm so far this year is this sort of anti-incumbent, anti-Washington-based backlash. In a lot of cases, that hasn't actually looked like incumbents losing, but it's people getting a lot of the share of the vote that

haven't raised a lot of money or don't have campaign websites, but they're just not the incumbent. There's one interesting race I want to start off with, and that's the South Dakota governor's primary on the Republican side. It was a four-way race between the incumbent governor, the one House of Representatives member that represents the whole state, the state House speaker, and a car salesman, Toby Dodin. And the car salesman actually finished first, the head of the incumbent governor, that goes to a runoff. And you can't really read too much into that there because there is a runoff. But it just goes to show you that primary elections are pretty fascinating. And that also brings me to the Iowa governor's race, where on the Republican side, there were five people running to replace.

the outgoing Governor Kim Reynolds last Friday. President Trump endorsed Randy Feinstra. He's a congressman from Northwest Iowa, and Feinstra lost narrowly to Zach Lane. And this is the first time that Trump has actually had one of his major picks lose in this election cycle. Lane positioned himself as an outsider and Iowa first and had the backing of the Make America Healthy again kind of wing of the party, even touted support from the restaurant's steak and shake, and he narrowly beat Feinstra. And that kind of has big reverberations for what is already expected to be a close governor's race in Iowa in the fall. So, I mean, the thing to note about like Trump's endorsements, first of all, this one was a late one from what I understand. And two, like he's mostly been

backing candidates that pretty much looked like they were going to win. But this one was a late one. And yeah, like Feinstra had probably the most name recognition. But if you look at the polls, he backed someone who was losing support over time, like the polling look like Feinstra was going to lose, which I thought it was interesting that he was backing a candidate that was like not going in the right direction. So it was one of those weird situations where I think Trump went against his own instincts and he backed someone who was kind of losing juice well like right before the election took place. But in general, Trump like has a good batting record right now because he's been picking people who have been favored to win. Stephen, do you agree with that? This is not really a sign of Trump's influence in the Republican Party waning. and more a sign of just the specific rates or the specific candidate? Yeah, I think that's a safe assertion to make because looking at the corpus of Trump endorsements in 2026, he has been picking people way earlier in the cycle than he has historically. He has been picking safer people, you know, incumbents that don't really have challengers or things.

And in the open races like this, elsewhere in the country, Trump has played Kingmaker. and in some cases offered things like ambassadorships to people to drop out to clear the field for his choice. And so this was a one-off in a few senses. And I spent some time reporting in Iowa, and the sense on the ground there, too, is that Iowa is a unique case because it is a state that has felt the impact of the Trump administration policies the hardest. We're talking about the war in Iran that's led to rising fertilizer prices, you know, tariffs and things like that. So if there were to be a state where Republicans might have some different thoughts than Trump on what the future of their party is, it would be Iowa. Got it.

Well, speaking of Iowa, we did a pod about that state and how Democrats are trying to win there and in other rural states earlier this week. But I'm curious, is there anything you saw there, Ashley, that was interesting? Yeah. I mean, the Democratic Party for the Senate seat there, which is one of the seats that Democrats are hoping to flip. I think this might be one of their more bullish goals, but it does seem to be possibly in the mix for them. So Democratic voters, when they were voting in that primary, were probably thinking about this. Like, who is going to possibly help Democrats flip the Senate seat and what is a pretty conservative state, right? So the race was between state rep Josh Turrick. This is a Paralympian. You want a couple gold medals and the House seat that he has in the Iowa House is one that has a lot of Trump voters. Like that seat went for Trump. So, like, his pitch to voters was like, I can win in sort of red places. This is why I could be a better, more electable candidate.

And then there was a younger, more progressive candidate, state senator, Zach Walls. He was born in 1991, very young candidate. Most notably, I think it's kind of funny. Like, I'm a millennial. So I remember this, like, viral clip of him as like a young man talking about gay marriage during the Obama years. It was, and he was talking about his gay moms. Anyways, you could, anyone could look that up. It was like a very viral moment.

Anyways, but voters decided on TURIC. They decided to not pick Zach Walls, who, by the way, was explicitly anti-establishment, which is a strategy because Democratic voters are saying they are very unhappy with the leadership in their party. But ultimately, Turek won because voters there were like, in terms of electability, we think someone who has proven to win with Republican voters might be the better bet if we want to flip this seat. And Turek also had a lot of money behind him. including money from the establishment, from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the group vote vets, spend a lot of money supporting his campaign, even though Turk himself is not a veteran. And it's yet another example of this split of the Democratic Party and what Democratic voters in Democratic areas think the direction of their party should be versus what Democrats in purpleish,

reddish areas seem to think. Well, moving then from a sort of red state to maybe one of the most blue state, that we have, California also held primaries. We do not yet have complete results there, but Ashley, what are we seeing so far? Yeah. So just some backgrounder on California, they have a kind of weird primary system. They have nonpartisan primaries. Just a couple states have them. So for those who don't know how that works, it's basically all candidates, regardless of party, are on the ballot. And that ballot is before voters regardless of party. So everyone's on the same ballot. All voters get to weigh in. And as of now, in the Cal of

governor's race, which is probably the most closely watched race. The Republican is ahead, Steve Hilton, and he is slightly ahead of Javier Bacera, a Democrat, as well as Tom Steyer, who is also a Democrat. And there's a similar dynamic at play with the Los Angeles mayor's race, where there are three people kind of in the mix for the top two spots with incumbent mayor, Karen Bass, and the lead. You have Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star who is currently in second, but as more votes are being counted and those votes are probably more Democratic, there's a third candidate who's a Democrat who could end up taking the second spot. Same with these House races. In the aftermath of California's redistricting, you have a few high-level takeaways of older incumbent

Democrats that faced younger primary challengers on the backs of generational change. Those incumbents are all making it to the general election. And in some cases, the challengers are not. You also have have some Republicans who were drawn into less favorable districts that are trying to eke it out into the general election. And there will still be time for all of the votes to be counted. But, you know, so far, those are some of the top-level takeaways from the results we do have. Got it. I do want to drill down a little bit on the vote counting process, which is still going on here on Thursday, a couple days after the election. President Trump posted online multiple times. about this. He said, quote, Democrats are trying to steal the governor of California primary and the

mayor of Los Angeles primary away from two great Republican candidates. Here we go again with very late and massive numbers of mail and ballots, end quote. This sounds really familiar, Ashley, in terms of President Trump talking about mail ballots, talking about California elections. Can you explain what's going on here? Yeah, this is a piece of misinformation that Trump has touted since 2020. This is called the Red Mirage. And for folks who paid attention to 2020 and 2024, this is not unfamiliar to you. Basically, California is a vote by mail state, meaning a lot of voters get a mail and ballot, whether they ask for it or not and vote that way. And they have a pretty long window to return that ballot. So as long as it's postmarked by election day, if it gets to

officials a week after election day, they can still be counted. And so because Republicans tend to vote in person, those votes get counted first, which is why it looks like Steve Hilton is ahead in a state that is very blue. But there are still lots and lots of mail and ballots making their way to local officials right now. And so over time, you're going to see that number for the Democratic candidates go up. I mean, also because this is a crowded primary with lots of Democrats in it, those Democratic votes are like split between a bunch of people, whereas there was one Trump-backed Republican candidates. So a lot of Republicans are going to be voting for the same candidates. And so Trump is making the case that Steve Hilton has more votes than other candidates, but that is just

not how this works. And also we have until June 9th, local officials are going to be counting ballots. So there's still a lot of time. And as we know, people are procrastinators. It happens very often that big batches of ballots come in sort of late. Okay. Well, we've covered a lot of ground here. Are there any other results from this week that you guys want to touch on? Well, there is one race in New Jersey. that is more about the November general election, but is still worth noting. That's New Jersey's 7th District, where the incumbent representative Tom Keene has not been seen in public since March. He has an undisclosed illness. It has been disclosed to House Speaker Mike Johnson, but he told reporters that it's not a big deal to him,

and he's not going to share that information. He said, quote, it's not a scandalous thing at all. People deal with health issues. maybe that's a news flash for you, but even members of Congress get sick as well. Here's why that does matter. This is one of the few battleground seats that Democrats were hoping to flip in November before this sort of health issue. And so now that the primary is done, we have the Democratic nominee Rebecca Bennett. She's a former Navy helicopter pilot, works in health care, is a political moderate.

And for now, she has the campaign field to herself while Tom Keene is out. And so less about the primary, more looking ahead to the November general election. But that is a race worth watching. All right. Well, we can take a quick break here more on all of this in just a moment. And we're back. So let's talk now about redistricting. As we've talked a lot on the pod, there was a big Supreme Court decision earlier this year about the Voting Rights Act, came in late April.

And after that, the Supreme Court was asked then to weigh in on Alabama's congressional map. We got a resolution to that case this week. Ashley, can you get us up to speed? Yeah. So basically, the court is allowing Alabama to use a map that only has one majority black district out of its seven congressional districts. And this is a reversal of the situation before. Because of a lower court ruling, the state was asked to draw, you know, a second black majority seat because the state has more than a quarter of its population is black. And they felt like having such little representation for its racial minorities was discriminatory. And so now the Supreme Court has said, go forth with this one-seat map, which is, like I said,

a reversal of where it stood before. Got it. And kind of the first sign we have, I guess, of this new reality of how the Supreme Court feels about race and district drawing. Yeah, I mean, Calais, which is this Louisiana voting rights case that, you know, sent shockwaves through most of the voting world recently. Alabama was the first test case in this new framework of how courts look at racial gerrymandering, what is allowed and what isn't. And what we saw is that maps that have less representation for racial minorities is permissible in a way that wasn't before. Got it. And Stephen, we also had a couple developments recently in Louisiana and South Carolina when it comes to gerrymandering and redistricting. Can you get us up to speed? Yeah. So after the Supreme Court said Louisiana's old map was discriminatory,

lawmakers in Louisiana went back to the drawing board and in some marathon legislative sessions came up with a map that was passed that eliminates one of the two majority black districts there. And then in South Carolina, you had the opposite happen where lawmakers went into a session to redraw the maps. And there were enough Republicans that stood up and said, this doesn't feel right. People are already voting. I can't do it. and ultimately the plan in South Carolina to draw out the one majority black district failed. Man, this is a lot to keep track of, Ashley, with all the different states now that have redrawn mid-cycle. Yeah.

Can you get us an update on just where we stand final tally-wise? Yeah, so let's start with Republicans because they have drawn more seats to possibly favor their party heading into the midterms. They have now drawn 16 additional seats in these new House maps that could favor their party. And then Democrats have drawn about six new seats. Utah's complicated. There was one more seat that was drawn by the legislature, which is not Democrats, but it was like sort of a compromise made by state lawmakers. And then California, of course, had this ballot measure asking voters to allow California

Democrats to draw more seats that could favor the party. And so now it's about net 10 favoring Republicans. And this is, you know, guesswork, right? We don't know how voters are going to vote. if in a wave election, this could not be enough to save Republicans from losing the House. But this does give them a bit of an edge. Actually, what it does, it creates a situation where it's more likely that control over the house will remain to be squeaky close.

Like it'll be just a few seats there. But we'll see. You know, when you have wave elections, it's sort of harder to predict what's going to come out of this. But for right now, Republicans have a pretty significant advantage. And it's worth noting there's kind of a dividing line. here with the Supreme Court decision for calculating these seats. You know, Louisiana's new map makes it where every Republican district is super-duper Republican,

even in a year where the Republican Party is not popular, and Democrats would have a large advantage in the popular vote. Those district maps probably will not break. Same for the new district maps in Tennessee, where they drew out the majority black district in Memphis. it is solidly super Republican, even in a bad year for Republicans. But some of the other states, Texas, Florida, even North Carolina that did it before this redistricting arms race, you have situations where, if Democrats are super popular and Republicans aren't, you could see some of those things backfire.

So, you know, if you mark this in your calendars for November of this year, when we come back and talk about this on the podcast, I'll be interested to see how those states fared when it comes to who actually won, quote, unquote, the redistricting race. Yeah, I mean, if you look at special elections and look, special elections are not predictors of general elections, but Democrats have been cleaning up in districts that were favored to Republicans. You know, just because a district is written to favor one party does not 100% give you an outcome. It is just a help. Okay. And so even thinking beyond 2026, are these congressional maps what we're going to be working on up until the next census in 2030?

Or are we going to see another wave of this after the midterms? I mean, I think this is going to be like, I don't think this is the end of this. For one, Democrats have already said they plan in 2028 to gerrymander in places like Illinois, New York. At least they're talking about it. You know, I don't know if that was just a threat to keep Republicans from continuing to redraw. I don't think so. And mostly that's because the rules are different now. And President Trump put down a gauntlet that said, this is okay now.

And because Republicans did it, Democrats have no reason but to counter. And now if Democrats redraw, then Republicans are going to feel like they should redraw. Like, there's nothing holding back any party from doing this. And I don't see a reality in which any party in this polarized environment will choose to disarm. Right. It feels like if this is going to stop, it's going to stop with Congress doing something. thing, which I guess we'll just have to remain to be seen, whether that actually comes to pass from all this dissatisfaction with this crazy redistricting arms race. But we can leave it

there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Stephen Fowler. I cover politics. And I'm Ashley Lopez. I also cover politics. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast.