Your Guide to the August 20 Primaries
GOP factions wage war in Florida, Alaska, and Wyoming on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis’ decision to remove multiple Democrats from local office plays out at the polls.
Similar factional wars are rocking the GOP in the states with primaries on Tuesday, on opposite sides of the nation’s map.
Wyoming’s ultraconservative Freedom Caucus is vying for more power in the legislature. In Florida, election deniers are targeting GOP officials, while Matt Gaetz bids for a new term less than one year after ousting Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. In Alaska, the bipartisan caucus currently running the state Senate faces existential threats this year as conservative Republicans want to take back the chamber.
Also on Tuesday’s menu: the aftermath of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ decisions to remove multiple elected Democratic officials from office, replacing them with Republicans. A DeSantis appointee is running for reelection as Broward County sheriff as a Democrat, while the Tampa prosecutor, suspended by the governor, is trying out the first step of his comeback.
Here’s your Bolts guide to the critical elections taking place in these three states on Aug. 20.
Be sure to return to this page on election night: We’ll update this page with results. And note that this guide is not exhaustive; it is Bolts’ selection of important races to monitor.
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Federal Offices
U.S. Senate
| Result | |
|---|---|
| Florida (Democratic primary) Republican Rick Scott barely squeaked into the Senate six years ago. Florida has shifted right since then, but some Democrats hope Scott’s reelection bid is a sleeper Senate race this year. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell is favored to win the Democratic nomination and take on Scott but faces three competitors on the primary ballot; Stanley Campbell, a former Navy pilot, secured a surprise endorsement from the AFL-CIO. | Mucarsel-Powell |
U.S. House
| AK-AL (GOP primary) The first four candidates in the primary will move on to a general election that will be decided through ranked-choice voting. The three frontrunners (Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola and two Republicans, Lieutenant Governor Nancy Dahlstrom and businessman Nick Begich) are all highly likely to grab these first spots, so Tuesday’s stakes may seem low. But a lot is happening beneath the surface. Begich has said he’ll drop out if he finishes behind Dahlstrom, an outcome that Democrats hope to avoid; some say Begich’s presence in the 2022 general election helped Peltola beat Sarah Palin, the former governor. Also, a Democratic group is making a play to further muddle the GOP picture; they’re boosting a minor Republican, Gerald Heikes, likely in a bid to get him the fourth spot and into November over third-party candidates. | Peltola, Begich, and Dahlstrom secure the first three spots, in that order. |
| FL-01 (GOP primary) Matt Gaetz, one of the Republicans who led the charge against Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year, faces primary challenger Aaron Dimmock. Gaetz has gleefully attacked Dimmock, who has ties to McCarthy’s networks, as a proxy for the former Speaker’s faltering revenge tour. | Gaetz |
| FL-15 (GOP primary) In March, Trump unexpectedly called on someone to challenge Laurel Lee, a Republican who was Florida’s chief elections official before joining Congress in 2022. Lee had refused to order an audit of Florida’s results in 2020, and then she’d endorsed DeSantis for president. And yet, once Lee landed challengers—including one, James Judge, who is backed by far-right figures like Steve King—Trump ended up endorsing her anyway. | Lee |
Presidential primaries
| There are no presidential primaries. These states all held these races on standalone election days earlier this year. | |
State and local Offices
Criminal justice offices
| Result | |
|---|---|
| Florida | Hillsborough County state attorney (Dem primary) Andrew Warren, the Tampa prosecutor suspended by DeSantis in 2022, is now running for his old job back, Bolts reports this week. Before facing the Republican who DeSantis appointed to replace him, he is first running for the Democratic nomination against local attorney Elizabeth Strauss, who is making the case that she is a safer bet because DeSantis could remove Warren again if he were to win. | Warren |
| Florida | Broward County sheriff (Dem primary) When DeSantis suspended the Broward County sheriff, he replaced him with Gregory Tony, who quickly switched to run as a Democrat in this staunchly blue county. Tony, who later backtracked on a local reform meant to reduce low-level arrests, is now seeking a second full term in this primary, Bolts reported in June. | Tony |
| Florida | Miami-Dade County sheriff (GOP primary) Miami-Dade is electing its first sheriff since the 1960s, and that has triggered a very crowded local race. Republican Rosie Cordero-Stutz, who currently works in the Miami-Dade Police Department, has gotten a swath of high-profile endorsements, including Trump’s, but she faces ten primary opponents, including Joe Sanchez, who is attacking Cordero-Stutz as insufficiently conservative. | Cordero-Stutz |
| Florida | Miami-Dade County sheriff (Dem primary) On the Democratic side, four candidates are all law enforcement veterans, and apparent frontrunner James Reyes is riding endorsements from the county mayor and police unions. | Reyes |
Election administration
| Florida | Miami-Dade County supervisor of elections (Dem primary) Miami-Dade this year is also choosing its first elected supervisor of elections. The Democratic frontrunner is J.C. Planas, a former Republican lawmaker who says he switched parties to protest Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Planas, who works as an election law professor, faces two opponents, including campaign consultant Willie Howard who has stressed that he is a “tried-and-true Democrat.” | Planas |
| Florida | Supervisor of elections (GOP primaries) Republicans who echo unfounded conspiracy theories about election fraud are running to take over local election systems in Florida this year. In the GOP primaries, these candidates are trying to oust seven incumbent Republican supervisors of elections, including in populous Collier, Lake, and Pinellas counties. | |
School boards
| Florida School board elections are a hot battleground in Florida, just like they were in 2022. DeSantis has endorsed 23 candidates as part of an ongoing effort to push these boards to the right. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, have endorsed 11 candidates. Teachers’ unions and the conservative group Moms for Liberty are also involved in these elections. Counties to watch include: Duval, Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Sarasota counties. |
Legislative primaries
| Alaska | District L (all-party primary) In Alaska elections, the first four candidates in a primary get to move forward. But across the state’s ten Senate races, just one drew more than four candidates—so there are no primary stakes in the other nine. Keep an eye on the five-way race in District L. Rather than caucus with the GOP, Republican Senator Kelly Merrick has joined the bipartisan caucus of Democrats and moderate Republicans that runs the chamber, and three conservative Republicans are running to oust her, as is one Democrat. As the Alaska Beacon reports, who moves forward here is just the first step in the major intra-GOP battle to be waged throughout the state in November. | Merrick, two other GOP candidates, and one Democrat, move to the general election. |
| Florida | SD7 (GOP primary) The Trump and DeSantis rivalry has spilled into this GOP primary to replace a retiring Republican senator: Trump is backing St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar, while DeSantis (alongside many other prominent Republican leaders) is backing state Representative Tom Leek. | Leek |
| Florida | SD25 (Dem primary) Alan Grayson, the wealthy firebrand who strongly clashed with his party’s establishment while he served in Congress, is trying yet another comeback in the open race to replace a retiring Democratic senator Victor Torres. Grayson, who is self-funding his campaign once again, faces Carmen Torres, the retiring incumbent’s wife, and state Representative Kristen Arrington. | Arrington |
| Wyoming | Senate (GOP primaries) The Wyoming GOP’s far-right faction has gained a lot of influence in the legislature, organizing under the Freedom Caucus name like in Congress. Now it’s looking to gain more ground. USA Today identifies Districts 14, 20, and 22 as the key Senate primaries on that front. In particular, Speaker Albert Sommers, a critic of the Freedom Caucus, is looking to move to the Senate but faces an ultraconservative competitor in District 14. And in District 20, Senator Ed Cooper faces a far-right challenger who casts himself as a political refugee after moving to Wyoming from Colorado during the pandemic. | Freedom Caucus won District 14, not 20 and 22. |
| Wyoming | House (GOP primaries) The same intra-GOP divides are playing out in the Wyoming House. For one, USA Today reports, several Republican incumbents who’ve been attacked by the Freedom Caucus face far-right challengers: Bob Nicholas in HD7, Landon Brown in HD9, and Dan Zwonitzer, an openly gay lawmaker who has helped defeat bills restricting the rights of LGBTQ+ residents, in HD43. Inversely, the Freedom Caucus is defending state Representative Rachel Rodriguez-Williams in HD50, and trying to get new allies into office in open races in HD24 and HD30. Also watch HD4, where a lawmaker who relativized the horrors of slavery is running for reelection. | Freedom Caucus won HD43, HD50, HD24, and HD30, thoughnot HD7 and HD9. |