Primaries Mike Flood (R) is projected to win special House contest to replace Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.)

Nebraska Republican state Sen. Mike Flood is projected to win a special election to replace former congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R) in the House, according to the Associated Press.

Flood will serve the remaining six months of Fortenberry’s term and will be able run for a full term in the same seat — Nebraska’s 1st District — in November.

Flood, who originally jumped into the race to challenge Fortenberry, became the party’s de facto candidate when Fortenberry resigned from Congress in March after being charged with lying to the FBI.

Flood, who served as speaker of the state Legislature between 2007 and 2013, has campaigned alongside House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and ran on a platform critical of Washington Democrats. He has not been endorsed by former president Donald Trump.

BRANDON, Miss. — An hour after the polls closed, a local restaurant was packed with Michael Guest supporters watching the results roll in. The mood was festive, with folks milling around, alternating between catching up with friends and visiting the buffet to load up on barbecue and shrimp. Every few minutes, someone would stand near the front and the place would fall quiet. With each announcement, Guest, the Republican incumbent, was pulling ahead of challenger Michael Cassidy. Cheers erupted throughout.

The campaign was feeling “very confident,” said Rob Pillow, Guest’s communications director, and early rough estimates showed a higher voter turnout than in the June 7 primary. “In some counties, we surpassed the count from June 7 as early as noon,” Pillow said.

Just before 10 p.m., Guest was projected to be the winner.

When he walked in the door, the room broke into cheers and applause. Standing next to his family, with the backdrop of the American flag, Guest thanked those gathered. His son led the room in a chant of “two more years.” Addressing the crowd, Guest said: “Thank you. Thank you is really not enough.”

“We were down on the night of the seventh, looking at a three-week runoff, knowing that we didn’t even get the most votes on that primary election. But we have been amazed at the people who have come out with your love and your support and your kindness and your belief in us,” Guest said.

Rep. Blake D. Moore won the Republican nomination for his seat representing Utah’s 1st District.

Moore will advance to the general election in November, in which he’s seeking a second term in office. He defeated Tina Cannon, a former county commissioner, and Andrew Badger, a defense intelligence analyst.

Moore will face Democrat Rick Jones, who ran uncontested. The seat, like the rest of Utah’s four districts, is safely red.

Moore was one of the few House Republicans who voted to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. This commission, ultimately, was not created because of pushback from other congressional Republicans. During the campaign, Badger criticized Moore for this vote, accusing him of caving in “to the radical left.”

Moore has clarified to voters that he did not vote in support of the current House select committee investigating the insurrection. He has, however, said he’s “consistent in denouncing the political violence at our nation’s Capitol on January 6th.”

Rep. Mary E. Miller (R-Ill.) is projected to win the Republican nomination for Illinois’s 15th Congressional District, according to the Associated Press, defeating a fellow GOP lawmaker after redrawn maps placed them in the same district.

With 75 percent of the votes counted, Miller had about 58 percent of the votes to Rep. Rodney Davis’s (R-Ill.) 42 percent.

Miller was endorsed by former president Donald Trump. Over the weekend, Miller came under widespread criticism after she appeared at a rally with Trump and thanked him for “the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday,” referring to the high court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Miller’s campaign explained the remarks as “a mix-up of words” and said she had misread her prepared script. But Davis quickly blasted Miller’s speech as “just another part in a disturbing pattern of behavior she’s displayed since coming to Congress.”

Davis also resurfaced a speech Miller had given in Washington last year in which she quoted Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

“Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future,’ ” Miller said then. She later apologized.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) is projected to win the Republican nomination for New York governor, according to the Associated Press, defeating Andrew Giuliani, the son of the former New York mayor.

With 47 percent of the votes reported, Zeldin had about 43 percent of the vote to Giuliani’s 24 percent.

Zeldin, a four-term congressman, was first elected to represent New York’s 1st District in 2014. A vocal supporter of former president Donald Trump, Zeldin voted in January 2021 against certifying Joe Biden’s election win.

In launching his gubernatorial campaign, Zeldin seized on the sexual harassment allegations that had been lodged against then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D).

“The bottom line is this; to save New York, Andrew Cuomo’s gotta go,” Zeldin said in a statement last April.

Giuliani previously worked on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and served four years as an aide in Trump’s White House. In a debate last week, Zeldin mocked Giuliani’s political experience as being the equivalent of “the Chick-fil-A runner at the White House outranked by the Easter Egg Bunny.”

Zeldin also revealed last year that he had been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in November 2020 but was in remission.

Zeldin will face New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D), who is running for election to a full term, in November.

Sen. Mike Lee cruised to victory Tuesday night in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate and will now face Evan McMullin — who is running as an independent — in the general election.

Lee defeated a challenge from two other Republicans, Ally Isom and Becky Edwards, who sparred with him during the party’s only primary debate over his 12-year record in the Senate.

“I’m tired of career politicians who will say anything to get reelected,” Isom said. “What I want to see is action.”

Lee, who has faced questions about his furious efforts to overturn the 2020 election to keep then-President Donald Trump in power, will now face McMullin, who is running with the backing of the state’s Democratic Party.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, a congressman since 2013, businessman and former MMA fighter, is projected to advance to a runoff for the Republican nomination for Senate in Oklahoma on Tuesday.

Mullin, 44, is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation and one of a handful of Native Americans in Congress. He will face T.W. Shannon in the Aug. 23 runoff.

Mullin, whose campaign website includes several photos of former president Donald Trump, describes himself as “a strong supporter of President Trump’s agenda to defeat the socialists in Washington, D.C., defend our cherished traditional values and protect the sanctity of life.”

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R), 87, had announced in February that he would step down next year. He easily won reelection in 2020, and the winner of the special election in November would serve until 2027.

In tweets in response to Supreme Court rulings, Mullin said of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, “The Scales of Justice have weighed in favor of life,” and he hailed the decision in favor of a former high school football coach who lost his job after leading postgame prayers at midfield, the court’s latest decision favoring the public exercise of faith over concerns about government endorsement of religion.

MILLCREEK, Utah — In the Salt Lake City suburb of Millcreek, where the boundaries of the state’s four congressional districts nearly all touch, Amelia O’Neill arrived at the community library polling station with the hope of unseating the incumbent senator, whom she called “disappointing.”

But what really got O’Neill, 30, out of her seat to vote in a Republican primary, when she usually identifies as a Democrat, was the Supreme Court ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, she said.

“It made me get off my butt and actually get here,” said O’Neill, who grew up in a conservative Mormon household and changed her affiliation to vote in the primary Tuesday. “I feel discouraged as a woman. How can I feel important with that kind of ruling?”

In a country that is deeply polarized, she doesn’t see the ongoing hearings held by the Jan. 6 congressional committee, which she has been following, as having much of an effect on those friends and family who remain staunch supporters of Donald Trump.

“I can’t picture how we can bridge anything,” she said. “I keep picturing fabric being torn — torn at the seams. We’re going to get ripped in half.”