On Tuesday, voters in California, Iowa, New Jersey, and North Carolina will cast ballots for their state’s downballot primaries. (Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota are also up, but there isn’t much to see there.) Below is our look at the key races to watch. The first polls will close at 7:30 PM ET in North Carolina, and as always, we’ll be liveblogging all the results at Daily Kos Elections.
● CA-24: Under California election law, all candidates run on the same ballot in what is known as a "top-two primary," where the two candidates with the most votes advance to the November general election, regardless of party. The most compelling such primary is in California’s 24th Congressional District, an open seat in the Santa Barbara area that Barack Obama won 54-43. However, both sides seem to believe that there’s a good chance that two Republicans, Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian and businessman Justin Fareed, could advance to the general election and give Team Red an automatic pickup here.
Fearing such a scenario, the DCCC and the pro-Democratic House Majority PAC have been spending big to help their preferred candidate, Santa Barbara County Supervisor Salud Carbajal, who has also been endorsed by retiring Rep. Lois Capps. Meanwhile, the NRCC recently launched a $220,000 buy that hit Carbajal while simultaneously trying to boost his Democratic rival, Santa Barbara Mayor Helene Schneider, in an effort to split the left-leaning vote. Carbajal is a strong fundraiser and he’s been saturating the district with ads. If he fails to make it to November, it would represent a major humiliation for Democrats, but it would also serve as a rebuke to the supposed “good government” reformers who foisted this system on California, which is poised to deny voters in a blue district the chance to vote for a Democrat.