Primary elections live updates Georgia rebuffs Trump candidates for governor, attorney general, secretary of state

The Democratic primary election in Texas between longtime congressman Henry Cuellar and challenger Jessica Cisneros in the state’s 28th Congressional District remains too early to call, the Associated Press said Wednesday evening.

Cuellar leads Cisneros by 175 votes, or 0.4 percentage points, out of 45,209 ballots from Tuesday’s contest counted as of 6 p.m. Eastern time.

The AP said it will continue to track the count and consider declaring a winner whenever election officials confirm they are done tabulating all outstanding ballots.

Although the election hasn’t yet been called, Cuellar declared victory Tuesday night. Cisneros, however, has not conceded. If Cuellar’s lead holds, she could ask for a recount, which, per state rules, her campaign would have to pay for. On Wednesday, her campaign sent a fundraising email seeking donations for a recount.

Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, confronted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — the Republican incumbent he’ll challenge in November — on Wednesday afternoon during a news conference in Uvalde, Tex., the site of the mass shooting that left 21 dead.

Abbott was giving updates on the school shooting when O’Rourke approached the stage the governor was sharing with other state officials, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R). O’Rourke told them it was long past time to act to prevent mass shootings like the one at Robb Elementary School.

As our colleagues Sergio Flores, Amy B Wang and Marisa Iati report:

Speaking over the objections of Patrick, O’Rourke said Abbott should have taken action after other high-profile mass shootings in Texas, such as at Santa Fe High School in 2018 and at an El Paso Walmart in 2019.

“The time to stop the next shooting is right now, and you are doing nothing,” O’Rourke said. “You’re offering us nothing.”

The situation immediately got tense. Patrick yelled at O’Rourke that he was “out of line,” while Sen. Ted Cruz (R), who was standing behind Abbott, told O’Rourke to “sit down.”

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin then got up from a folding chair on the side of the stage and called out that O’Rourke was “a sick son of a b----” for coming to the news conference “to make a political issue.”

Abbott, meanwhile, avoided eye contact with O’Rourke.

“This is on you. Until you choose to do something, this will continue to happen,” O’Rourke said. “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state, or they will continue to be killed.”

Read more about the confrontation here.

Former state representative Brad Finstad has won the Republican primary in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, according to the Associated Press.

Finstad, who previously worked in the Agriculture Department, will face former Hormel CEO Jeff Ettinger (D) in the race for the seat of the late Rep. Jim Hagedorn (R). Hagedorn died in February at 59 after a battle with kidney cancer.

“I’m filled w gratitude for the support of voters across #MN01,” Finstad said in a tweet Wednesday. “Thank you also to my fellow GOP candidates for inspiring Southern Minnesotans to vote in this special primary election. I’m looking forward to all of us working in unity to keep this seat red in Aug & Nov.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee congratulated Finstad on his victory and hailed him as “a common-sense conservative who will give Minnesotans the representation they deserve in Washington.”

The special election for the remainder of Hagedorn’s term is set for Aug. 9, with another election in November for a full two-year term.

Finstad won about 38 percent of the vote, while state Rep. Jeremy Munson won 37 percent. Former Minnesota Republican Party chair Jennifer Carnahan, who is Hagedorn’s widow, won 8 percent.

Carnahan led the money race but faced significant self-inflicted obstacles. Last year, a recording surfaced in which Carnahan said of her husband, “Jim’s gonna be dead in two years. So be it.” Carnahan was also forced to resign as state party chair amid allegations that she oversaw a toxic work environment. She had faced scrutiny over her ties to a top GOP donor who was indicted on a charge of sex trafficking; Carnahan has maintained that she knew nothing about the allegations.

In a statement Wednesday, Carnahan said she intends to “continue serving as a leader within the Republican Party” and vowed to “keep my husband’s legacy of conservative leadership alive and well.”

On the Democratic side, Ettinger bested a field of candidates including Sarah Brakebill-Hacke and Richard Painter, a former Republican who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2018 and previously served as an ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.

President Biden signed an executive order on policing Wednesday, marking the second anniversary of George Floyd’s death.

The order, as our colleagues reported this month, calls for the creation of national standards for the accreditation of police departments and a national database of federal officers with substantiated complaints and disciplinary records, including those fired for misconduct. It also will instruct federal law enforcement agencies to update their use-of-force policies to emphasize de-escalation. It drew support from leaders of major policing organizations.

Biden preceded the signing with remarks on Floyd’s death, and the Tuesday massacre of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Tex. He was joined by Floyd’s family, as well as by Vice President Harris, members of his Cabinet and lawmakers.

“We’re here today for the same purpose — to come together and say, ‘Enough,’ ” Biden said.

Turning to Floyd’s daughter, Gianna, Biden recalled the time she told him that her father was “going to change history.”

Biden recognized that it’s hard for victims’ families to go on without their loved ones, but praised them for summoning “the courage to find purpose through your pain, to serve justice.”

“That’s why the executive order I’ll be signing today is so important,” Biden said. “It’s a measure of what we can do together to heal the very soul of this nation, to address profound fear and trauma, exhaustion, particularly Black Americans have experienced for generations.”

Biden also noted that he pushed for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act before settling for an executive order. Senate Republicans blocked that measure.

“Our Republican colleagues opposed any meaningful reform,” Biden said.

Watch Biden’s remarks here:

After news of the school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., that left 21 dead, Republican lawmakers were criticized online for accepting funds from the National Rifle Association.

As The Washington Post’s Tim Bella writes, 19 current or recent Republican senators have taken at least $1 million each in campaign contributions from the NRA over their careers, according to data compiled by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence in 2019.

And of all 15 Republican senators running for reelection this year, all but one — Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — are reported as having received some funding from the NRA.

Among the lawmakers at the top of the list:

• Sen. Marco Rubio: The Florida senator has received $3.3 million from the NRA during his career. In the aftermath of the Texas shooting, Rubio tweeted that the tragedy “should spur Congress to act on proposals that can pass & actually make a difference like our bipartisan Luke & Alex School Safety Act.” That bill does not tackle gun control but rather codifies into law the Federal Clearinghouse on School Safety.
• Sen. Ron Johnson: The Wisconsin senator has received more than $1.2 million from the NRA during his career. Johnson, after the shooting, also promoted the same bill as Rubio. “Something this horrific, children being slaughtered in their school, it does not get worse than this,” Johnson said.
• Sen. Todd C. Young: The Indiana senator has received just shy of $2.9 million from the NRA during his career. “I am deeply saddened by the horrific shooting today,” Young tweeted after the shooting.

All other Republican senators running for reelection have received smaller sums from the NRA — ranging from $18,513 (South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott) to $638,942 (Montana Sen. John Thune).

Read more about these donations here.

The Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary race between celebrity TV host Mehmet Oz and businessman David McCormick is heading to a recount, the Pennsylvania acting secretary of state said Wednesday.

Oz and McCormick, acting secretary of state Leigh M. Chapman said in a statement, have vote totals within a difference of 0.5 percent, the standard that triggers a mandatory recount under Pennsylvania law.

As of Wednesday morning, McCormick trailed the celebrity doctor by a margin of less than 0.1 percent — or 902 votes, according to numbers Chapman released Wednesday.

Counties can begin their recount Friday, Chapman said. They must begin no later than June 1. The recount must be completed by noon June 7, with results submitted to the Department of State by noon June 8.

Chapman said the recount would cost the state more than $1 million in taxpayer funds.

This is the seventh time the automatic-recount provision has been triggered in Pennsylvania since the passage of a 2004 law establishing the rules. Out of those, three recounts were carried out, and three were waived by the second-place finisher.

“In all three cases in which the recount was carried out, the initial results of the election were affirmed,” Chapman noted.

The Oz campaign did not immediately comment on the recount, but McCormick, ahead of the state’s announcement, said his campaign looked forward to “a swift resolution.”

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) is still holding a razor-thin lead over immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros in one of the most closely watched primary runoffs in the country.

As of Wednesday morning, Cuellar was leading Cisneros by 175 votes in the Democratic primary runoff, with about 98 percent of precincts reporting.

And though the election is extremely close, Texas rules do not feature an automatic recount.

If Cisneros — or, if the tables turn in the next few hours, Cuellar — wants a recount, the campaign has to request and pay for it, according to the Texas secretary of state’s office. Under the rules, the trailing candidate can request a recount within two days after all votes are tallied.

As our colleagues Felicia Sonmez and Marianna Sotomayor explain, the margin of victory must be less than 10 percent of the leading candidate’s vote total.

The final result is likely not to be known for days, the Texas Tribune pointed out, given that mail-in ballots will still be counted if they were postmarked by Tuesday and were received by counties by 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Cisneros’s campaign has not yet said on whether it might pursue a recount.

In a tweet late election night, Cisneros said the election was still “too close to call.”

“We are still waiting for every ballot and eligible vote to be counted,” Cisneros said. “This fight isn’t over.”

But Cuellar declared victory in a statement early Wednesday morning — even though the race has not yet been called, and Cisneros has not conceded.

Just a few months ago, many analysts thought Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) had no shot at winning a Republican primary after having stood firm against former president Donald Trump’s efforts to reverse the 2020 presidential election results in the state.

What accounted for Raffensperger’s comfortable win over Trump’s handpicked candidate, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.)?

In exploring that question, The Post’s Amy Gardner notes that Raffensperger put in a lot of legwork that was easy to overlook. She writes:

Raffensperger put 40,000 miles on his Ford F-150 pickup truck, crisscrossing the state to speak to anyone who would listen. Early this month, he drove nearly four hours to Savannah for a Rotary lunch — and stayed the rest of the afternoon for a meet-and-greet with just over a dozen members of the local Jaycees.

The miles paid off: Raffensperger racked up huge margins in Metro Atlanta, but he also held his own across the state. He defeated Hice by more than 20 points in the congressional district of pro-Trump firebrand Marjorie Taylor Greene. Hice scored some of his biggest wins in his own congressional district, but the numbers were too low to affect the margin.

You can read Amy’s full story here.