Elections in Georgia and California overshadow remaining US primary races

US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump continued their march toward their parties’ nominations on Tuesday, while other notable early picks took center stage.

The Democratic incumbent and his Republican challenger easily won their respective parties’ elections in the southeastern state of Kentucky and the northwestern state of Oregon just weeks before the first of two scheduled debates. The race between Biden and Trump is a rematch of the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claimed was rigged to prevent him from defeating Biden.

In the western state of California, Republican state Assemblyman Vince Fong won the special election to replace former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who resigned in December after 16 years in office. McCarthy resigned as hardline Republican conservatives mounted a successful campaign to remove him as president after just nine months in office.

Fong, who was once on McCarthy’s staff, defeated Mike Boudreaux, a local sheriff, in Tuesday’s special election to serve out the remainder of McCarthy’s term. The two men advanced to a second round of voting after becoming the top two finishers in a March 19 special election. Fong and Boudreaux will face off again in the November general election for a full two-year term.

In the southeastern state of Georgia, Fani Willis won the Democratic primary for re-election as district attorney or chief prosecutor of Fulton County, which includes the state capital, Atlanta.

Willis is prosecuting Trump and 18 others on charges of election interference in the 2020 election, including participating in a “fake elector” scheme and Trump’s personal phone call to state election officials in January 2021 asking them to ” will find” with 11,780 votes. , one more than Biden’s margin of victory, so Trump could declare victory in the state.

Willis was embroiled in a brief controversy earlier this year after it was revealed that she was in a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor she hired. An attempt by a group of defendants to disqualify Willis from the case ended with the judge allowing him to remain, but only if Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor, resigned from it. But the state appeals court agreed to review an appeal of the judge’s order by Trump and several of his co-defendants.

Willis’ Republican challenger will be attorney Courtney Kramer, who served in the Trump White House and Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. Willis is considered the favorite to win re-election in the deeply Democratic-controlled county.

Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the former president’s case, won the nonpartisan election to remain in his seat on the Fulton County Superior Court.

[Parte de la información para este informe provino de The Associated Press]

Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channels Youtube, WhatsApp and to the newsletter. Turn on notifications and follow us on Facebook, x and instagram.