President Donald Trump claimed his latest seat Saturday when Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana failed to clear the runoff in the state’s top-two Republican primary.
Cassidy, a physician by trade, had attempted to make nice with Trump after he voted to convict the president in 2021 by supporting the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Health and Human Services Secretary. But Trump didn’t buy it and instead endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow. She and former Rep. John Fleming will now face off in a runoff primary. That result came after Trump knocked off five Republican Indiana state senators earlier in the month who opposed his efforts at redrawing the state’s congressional map mid-decade to give him an advantage in the 2026 midterm.
On Tuesday, Trump will get another chance to further consolidate his grip on the Republican Party with a handful of primary contests, including a chance to knock off one of the biggest thorns in his side.
But Democrats will keep their eyes on primaries across the nation, given that both Pennsylvania and Georgia will hold votes, which will set the stage for whether they can win back the states after Trump flipped them in 2024. Many of the races set for Tuesday will be about more than just who wins, how Democrats perform or if Trump strengthens his hold on the Republican party
It could have a significant impact on the nation’s future and the political landscape in 2028.
Here’s your primer to tomorrow’s primaries, what to watch and why they matter.
Kentucky’s 4th district: What happens with Massie?
No Republican has frustrated Trump more than Rep. Thomas Massie, the idiosyncratic libertarian from Kentucky. Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) led the discharge petition to force a vote to release files related to Jeffrey Epstein. The Kentuckian voted against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill. He has sharply criticized the president’s war in Iran as well.
Now, Trump and a host of Republican allies have a chance to knock off Massie as they get behind retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. It’s a strategy they used to defeat former House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Bob Good of Virginia in 2024 when, like Massie, he backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination for president.
The ads have already gotten ugly, with one group called MAGA Kentucky running an AI ad accusing Massie of being in a “throuple” with Squad members Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.). In addition, Axios reported that Hold the Line PAC, which is affiliated with former January 6 rioter Derrick Evans, ran an ad hitting Gallrein for being backed by billionaire donor Paul Singer, which features a Jewish Star of David.
Massie sounded optimistic when talking to reporters Thursday.
“What I hear from my constituents the most is ‘I don’t agree with Massie all the time, I might agree with him 80 percent of the time, but at least we know where he’s going to be, because he’s been consistent and he’s been principled and he’s fighting,’” he told The Independent.
Polling is neck-and-neck at the moment. But the primary might have wide-reaching implications. Trump already raged against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a fervent supporter of Trump’s, for campaigning with Massie. But it also might represent an important breaking point: If Massie survives a primary, it will give other Republicans permission to distance themselves from Trump.
Pennsylvania: Three House seats and one ambitious governor
Last week, we broke down how Pennsylvania’s 3rd district is quickly becoming a proxy war between progressives such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who endorsed Chris Rabb, and moderates such as the state’s Gov. Josh Shapiro, who are backing Sharif Street for the open seat.
But that’s only one race to watch in the Keystone State. Shapiro, who won his first race for governor by 15 points and nearly became Kamala Harris’s running mate in 2024. Now he wants to assert his dominance and win with overwhelming force to show he can win the key commonwealth in the 2028 presidential election.
In addition, the state has three House races that will be prime for the picking–the 7th, the 8th and the 10th. In the 7th, Democrats want to knock off freshman Republican Rep. Ryan MacKenzie as they hope to flip the House majority in the midterms. While progressives and moderates are on opposing sides in the 3rd, former firefighters’ union president Bob Brooks picked up the endorsements of Shapiro and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
By contrast, former Rep. Susan Wild, who previously held the seat, and pro-choice group EMILY’s List endorsed Carol Obando-Destine. Lastly, Ryan Croswell, a former Marine and prosecutor in New York, is also running.
In the 8th district, Scranton Mayor and Democrat Paige Congetti is running unopposed in her primary to face Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan in the heavily white working-class 8th district. The 8th features Joe Biden’s hometown and Luzerne County, an ancestrally Democratic territory that now votes for Trump. In the 10th, former news anchor Janelle Stelson is running in the Democratic primary against Justin Douglas. Stelson hopes for a rematch against hard-right former Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Scott Perry.
For governor, Shapiro has a wide lead over his expected Republican opponent Stacy Garrity. If his coattails are big enough to give Democrats three House seats, he has a strong case for the White House.
Georgia: A battleground fight
Both Republicans and Democrats have every reason to keep an eye on Georgia. A record 1 million voters, or 14 percent of the total voting population, cast their ballots during the early voting period.
Republicans need to hold onto the state as Atlanta and its suburbs have moved decidedly to the left, even as Trump won Georgia in 2024 after it voted for Biden in 2020. Special elections since then have shown voters move significantly to the left even in deep-red areas.
Gov. Brian Kemp, the state’s popular Republican incumbent, is term-limited and, much to the chagrin of Republicans, passed on challenging incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, the only incumbent Democrat in a state Trump won.
That turned the Republican primary into a three-way fight between Rep. Buddy Carter, Rep. Mike Collins and Kemp’s preferred candidate, former University of Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley. So far, Trump has stayed out of the race, despite his dislike for Kemp for refusing to overturn the 2020 election results. Ossoff, for his part, has built a massive warchest of $32.5 million for the general election, according to his latest filing with the Federal Election Commission.
The race for governor is an even bigger mess. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who rebuffed Trump as well, is almost a non-factor. Trump has endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones. But Jones has been unable to close the deal against self-funded businessman Rick Jackson for the Republican nomination.
On the Democratic side, former Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms leads most polling and is ahead of former state Sen. Jason Esteves, former Republican Lt. Gov Geoff Duncan who switched parties and DeKalb County Executive Officer Mike Thurmond. Former President Joe Biden endorsed Bottoms, who served in his administration.
But Bottoms faces significant criticism for leaving office after one term amid a crime wave and the aftermath of Covid-19.
Democrats have not won the governorship in Georgia since 1998. But there’s something deeper at play here: Republicans need to hold Georgia’s governorship to prevent Democrats from getting their foot in the door and potentially turning Georgia into another Virginia. After the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision all but killed the Voting Rights Act, Gov. Brian Kemp called for a special session of the legislature to redraw the congressional map for the 2028 election. Democrats flipping the governorship could block any potential redistricting effort to give Republicans a boost in the Congressional map.
Then there is the 2028 factor. Like Shapiro, Kemp has long been floated as a presidential candidate for a post-Trump Republican Party. But some Democrats have also begun to speculate whether the young telegenic Ossoff might make a run for the White House soon. That makes Democrats flipping the governorship even more important so that Democrats could appoint his replacement in a swing state.
