Republican Rep. Young Kim advanced Tuesday to November’s general election in a Southern California district that was reshaped as Democrats responded to Republican gerrymandering in other states.
Democrats redrew the 40th Congressional District in a way that put Kim in competition with another Republican U.S. House member, Rep. Ken Calvert, who earlier advanced to the general election. That means Kim and Calvert will have months more to battle each other in a GOP vs. GOP match.
The seat represents an area southeast of Los Angeles.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Republican-turned-Independent Rep. Kevin Kiley and former Democratic state Sen. Richard Pan both advanced to the November election on Tuesday, setting up a significant test of whether Democrats' redraw of California's House of Representatives' maps will pay off for the party.
For a few days after last week's primary, the suburban Sacramento district was a possible warning sign for Democrats, as Kiley and a long-shot Republican who ran on peace in the Mideast held the top two slots in the nonpartisan primary. But the state's slow but regular tally of late Democratic-mail ballots catapulted Pan onto the November ballot.
Democrats broke up Kiley's conservative Northern California district, so the congressman opted to run in the new, Democratic-leaning 6th Congressional District, left the GOP and became a vocal opponent of partisan redistricting.
California Democrats scrambled their map to counter gains Republicans made in Texas and elsewhere after President Donald Trump called for the GOP to create as many conservative seats as possible in its bid to hold onto the House of Representatives in November.
California’s 52 House races provided a miniature of national trends. That included the fallout from redistricting ahead of this year’s midterm elections, this time with Democrats redrawing the map, the generational battle among Democrats and questions of whether moderates or liberals are better positioned to win in swing districts.
Also on Tuesday in the state's capitol region, a major generational Democratic clash was set up as Sacramento City Councilwoman Mai Vang advanced to face longtime incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui on the November ballot.
The 81-year-old congresswoman has held the Sacramento-based seat since the death of her husband, former Rep. Bob Matsui, in 2005. Bob Matsui had represented the district since the 1970s.
Vang, 41, is one of a slew of Democrats across the nation mounting an explicitly generational challenge in the wake of Joe Biden’s presidency.
“People are tired of leaders who answer to their biggest donors instead of the families they represent,” Vang said in a statement after the race was called. “The squeeze on working families doesn’t check your party registration — and neither will I.”
Matsui released her first ad of the general election Tuesday night, focusing on a local mother whose son had muscular dystrophy and who praised Matsui for legislation funding therapies for the disease.
Two other veteran House Democrats in California also made it past younger challengers to the November ballot. Rep. Brad Sherman, 72, a 15-term congressman representing part of Los Angeles, will face a Republican in the fall. Mike Thompson, 75, is seeking his 13th term in a Northern California district.
In San Francisco, a wealthy progressive challenger was unable to crack the top two slots to fill retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat. Instead, state Sen. Scott Wiener and city Supervisor Connie Chan will face off to replace the former House speaker.
The 7th District seat held by Matsui is considered a safe one for Democrats, but was redrawn as part of the party’s bid to add five more U.S. House seats elsewhere. Voters signed off on the changes with a constitutional amendment last year.
Democrats initially were concerned about getting locked out of the general election in a San Diego-area seat under the state’s primary system, which sends the top two vote-getters to the November ballot regardless of party. But San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert managed to emerge from a large field of other Democrats and will face Republican Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor.
The party got a scare in a redrawn district near Sacramento when an independent and a long-shot Republican candidate shared the top two slots after the initial ballot count. Later results showed one of the Democratic candidates, former state lawmaker Dr. Richard Pan, leaping into the top two.
In Southern California, Democrats drew two prominent Republican members of the House into the same district, triggering a monthslong primary battle between Rep. Ken Calvert and Rep. Young Kim over who has been more loyal to Trump. Calvert, who represented a larger share of the district before the remap, won one of the two top slots.
And in the Central Valley, Republican Rep. David Valadao, widely considered one of the most vulnerable House Republicans, is waiting to see if he will face centrist Democrat and Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains or progressive political science professor and school board member Randy Villegas in November.
Sacramento council member Mai Vang, who is running for Congress, speaks at her election night party in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday,, June 2, 2026.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., speaks during an election night event Tuesday, June 2, 2026, in Sacramento, Calif. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Sacramento council member Mai Vang, who is running for Congress, holds a child during an election night party in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday,, June 2, 2026.(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
Voters across Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota were casting ballots Tuesday in another day of primary elections in America, but much of the political world was focused on Maine’s high-stakes U.S. Senate contest.
The results aren't in question. Neither Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins nor Democratic challenger Graham Platner faces serious opposition for their party’s nomination. And yet Tuesday marks an especially significant moment for Platner, the embattled veteran and oyster farmer, who's fighting to rebuild his credibility in a campaign rocked by controversy.
Elsewhere, President Donald Trump’s clout within his party was being tested anew in states like South Carolina and Nevada, where he’s endorsed his favored candidates. Democrats hope to build momentum in Nevada in their broader push to reclaim key governor’s seats.
Here's the latest:
The state lawmaker who has represented a district in the Columbia area for three terms defeated businessman Billy Webster and attorney Mullins McLeod.
Seen as a rising star in the state party, Johnson was tapped to give this year’s Democratic response to Republican Gov. Henry McMaster’s state of the state address.
The winner of the November general election will succeed McMaster, who has been in office since Nikki Haley left her term early to join the first Trump administration.
Democrats have not won a general election for governor in South Carolina since 1998, and Republicans have controlled all statewide elected offices for more than a decade.
The Charleston pediatrician secured the nomination in her campaign to keep Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham from a fifth term.
Andrews, who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in 2022, has challenged what she’s characterized as Graham’s waffling positions over the course of his political career.
No Democrat has won a U.S. Senate seat in South Carolina in decades, and Republicans in recent history typically take statewide seats by double-digit margins.
When he last ran in 2020, Graham defeated his Democratic opponent, Jaime Harrison, by a 10 percentage point margin.
Platner is holding his event at Blue Hill YMCA in the town of Blue Hill, about 30 miles from his hometown of Sullivan. Supporters were gathering to hear a speech from Platner, which is expected after results come in.
Platner is expected to win the primary because his main competition, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign weeks ago. The winner will face longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
The mood at his event is high, with the crowd expecting a victory and beginning to assemble in front of a podium where Platner will speak.
Las Vegas resident Laurie Trowbridge voted for Alexis Hill because of Hill’s stance on data centers. Hill has pledged to stop new tax abatements on data centers and require them to implement renewable energy policies.
“We don’t have enough water for data centers,” Trowbridge said. “And they pollute everything, and we can’t have it. We have enough problems in the state without adding that to it.”
Teresa Ray, also a Las Vegas resident, voted for Attorney General Aaron Ford because of his experience as a leader.
“He has shown me since he’s been attorney general that he’s going to be the one that should be able to lead Nevada into a better place than where we are now,” Ray said.
She hopes that if he is elected, he will be able to encourage other Democrats to “grow some spine” and send a better message to voters.
Juliana Palyak studied the Republican candidates for South Carolina governor for months. She didn’t like any of them.
Finally as primary day came, she said she decided to vote for self-funded businessman Rom Reddy.
“I do not want career politicians any more. I am tried of it,” Paylak said of the other four candidates who are all currently in elected office.
Her disgust extends to Trump, who has lost her support by going to war in Iran and not keeping other promises made during his campaign.
“His social media. It’s ridiculous,” Paylak said.
In-person Election Day voting concluded in Maine at 8 p.m. ET.
Comparable primaries from past elections can offer clues about when to expect the first vote results and how long the vote count might take.
In the 2024 general election, the AP first reported results at 8:44 p.m. ET, or 44 minutes after polls closed. About 50% of the total vote had been counted by 12:54 a.m. ET, and counting stopped for the night at 4:11 a.m. ET. By 3:13 p.m. ET the day after Election Day, about 90% of the vote had been counted.
Some of Maine’s primary elections could advance to ranked choice voting if no candidate wins a majority of first-choice votes. This could delay the release of final results for another week or two.
Hilton has made the case that the state desperately needs new leadership following more than 15 years of Democratic dominance.
He’ll face Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Biden administration health secretary, whom The Associated Press previously determined had won enough votes. Election day was a week ago.
Hilton faces a challenging electorate in the November election, as California has nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans. If elected he would be the first GOP candidate to win statewide office since 2006.
Gov. Joe Lombardo thanked campaign volunteers Tuesday afternoon in front of a Las Vegas polling location, taking pictures and signing supporters’ shirts as people huddled under a tent in the 94 degree heat.
The Republican governor, who is expected to easily win his primary, touted his record on improving education and “expanding upon the economy and the jobs front, healthcare, and public safety.” He said next on the list is working on affordable housing.
“We’re running again because we still got a lot of work to do in that space,” Lombardo said at his campaign’s booth. Along the sidewalk leading to the polling location, campaigns sent up booths in a last effort to sway voters.
Lombardo will likely face either Attorney General Aaron Ford or Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill in November.
Election day in California was one week ago, but candidates in the race for governor are still waiting to find out who will be paired in a November runoff for the state’s highest office.
Democrat Xavier Becerra qualified last week, but it’s still not clear if the second spot will be claimed by Republican Steve Hilton or Democrat Tom Steyer.
Becerra told reporters Tuesday that he was “anxious to find out who … is going to be in there with me.”
California has a notoriously slow vote count, and Becerra said, “I don’t think it’s a great thing that it takes such a long time.” But he also defended the system, saying he would oppose “anything that reduces a Californian’s chance to vote.”
Earlier in the day, Hilton said the vote-counting system that can sometimes take weeks or longer to determine a winner desperately needed a complete overhaul.
“It’s insane,” Hilton said.
Two of the GOP candidates said they felt the use of ranked choice voting in the GOP primary made for an uglier election season.
Maine uses the ranked the style of voting for some races, including governor primaries, though it will not be used in the general election for governor. Ranked voting could factor heavily in Tuesday’s results because there are seven Republican candidates and five Democrats.
Jonathan Bush, one of the Republican candidates, said the role of ranked choice voting is to “make people less trusting of our democracy right now.” Another Republican, Owen McCarthy, said it led to candidates attacking each other.
“The thing with ranked choice voting is it’s supposed to make the race nicer. It didn’t make the race nicer,” he said.
The state’s primaries seemed to be on the verge of being upended over Trump’s push to reshape congressional districts ahead of the November elections.
However, the Republican-controlled state Senate rejected a plan to cancel congressional votes and schedule a new primary under revised districts.
The new lines had been designed to help Republicans oust U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, currently seeking his 18th term and the state’s sole congressional Democrat.
Some senators, including Republicans, said it was simply too late to make a change. Last weekend, South Carolina Democrats celebrated during their annual fundraising dinner and convention.
The Maine Democratic Senate candidate has been scrutinized recently after reports that he sent sexually explicit text messages with several women while married to his wife, Amy Gertner.
Gertner has called news coverage of the issue “gossip.”
Genevieve McDonald, a then-campaign staffer for Platner, told The Associated Press that Platner was “sexting multiple women while married” and “the campaign tried to assess that as an election vulnerability.”
According to The Wall Street Journal, Gertner told the campaign in August about the messages, which she had discovered on Platner’s phone last year. Platner’s campaign team reportedly decided that the texts were private and being handled by the couple, who were married in 2023.
The two are in counseling, Gertner has said, and Platner has his own therapist.
Graham often faces primary challengers, and he’s vying against several on Tuesday. But leading up to this year’s primary, several Republicans bowed out before voting began.
André Bauer, a former South Carolina lieutenant governor nominated as ambassador to Belize in both of Trump’s terms, ended up shuttering his bid after only a month as an announced candidate.
And Paul Dans, a chief architect of Project 2025, bailed on the last day to remove his name from ballots.
Mark Lynch, a Greenville businessman, is still running. On social media, Trump has said Lynch “would be a DISASTER for the Republican Party” if elected.
Maine supporters of Graham Platner said Tuesday that ousting incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins was on their mind.
Merrill Poddle of Ellsworth, Maine, said he voted for Platner. He questioned how much Collins actually stands up to President Donald Trump.
“The only time that she’s ever voted against him, what he wants, is when she knew it was gonna pass anyway,” he said. “She always has concerns, but that’s about all she ever has.”
Anne Dickens, also of Ellsworth, said she’s backing Platner as well. She questioned whether Collins had a vision for Maine.
“I think that Susan Collins has had her chance. She’s been too conservative and too much with the Trump view,” she said.
Among the several quirks about Maine, it’s one of just two states that uses ranked choice voting for its statewide elections.
It’s a system, adopted in 2016, that allows Maine voters to rank their lesser choices.
If no candidate wins a majority of first-place votes, then other rounds of tabulation begin without the last-place finisher. That candidate’s votes are reallocated to other candidates based on the second-place choices of their voters. The process continues until one candidate has a majority.
The Senate Democratic primary election isn’t expected to head to ranked choice voting, but other races might, including the one for governor.
Democratic governor candidate Nirav Shah has campaigned asking to be voters’ second choice if he can’t be their first, joking in a recent ad that “second choices are still pretty good … most of the time!”
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No Democrat has held the congressional seat that represents Reno and rural northern Nevada, but Democrats aren’t ruling it out this year after longtime GOP Rep. Mark Amodei announced his retirement.
“A lot of things have to go our way in November, and I think we should be honest about that,” said Erik Jimenez, chair of the Democratic Party of Washoe County, the most populous county in the district. “But I’ll say from our volunteer base in Washoe and just rank-and-file voters across the district, we have never seen more people excited about Congressional District 2 than we do now.”
Former state lawmaker Teresa Benitez-Thompson and businessman and investor Greg Kidd are among those on the Democratic primary ballot. They've focused on the economy, healthcare and artificial intelligence regulations.
Democrats are banking on Trump’s growing unpopularity and the district’s large number of nonpartisan voters. In the Republican primary, they're hoping that Trump-backed candidate David Flippo will defeat James Settelmeyer, a former lawmaker with the backing of Gov. Joe Lombardo, believing it would be easier to draw a contrast.
North Dakota’s lone U.S. House member faces a partial rematch of her 2024 nomination race in a state primary Tuesday. Also on the ballot is a proposed amendment to the state constitution, while residents of Fargo will elect a new mayor.
Republican U.S. Rep. Julie Fedorchak seeks a second term. She faces another primary challenge from former foreign service officer Alex Balazs, who placed fourth in the 2024 contest with 4% of the vote behind her and others. Fedorchak went on to win the general election with 69% of the vote against Democrat Trygve Hammer, who also is running again and will face the winner of this year’s Republican primary.
Voters will also choose nominees for several top statewide offices, although candidates for most of those offices, such as secretary of state, state attorney general and state agriculture commissioner, are running unopposed.
Many of the state’s top elected offices, such governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer and both U.S. Senate seats, won’t be up for election until 2028 or later.
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More than a year before filing even opened for this year’s contests, Graham’s campaign said Sen. Tim Scott and Gov. Henry McMaster would chair his 2026 run.
Scott, South Carolina’s junior senator, chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
McMaster is the state’s longest-serving governor, having been elected twice after serving the remaining two years of Nikki Haley’s term after she became Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations.
Democrats and Republicans will pick nominees for governor to replace Mills as the Democrat’s time in office is winding to a close.
It’s a crowded field. Democrats are choosing between Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows; former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson; former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Hannah Pingree; energy executive Angus King III; and former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Nirav Shah.
Republicans will choose between former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Bobby Charles; healthcare executive Jonathan Bush; former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason; University of Maine System trustee Owen McCarthy; former Paris, Maine, selectman Robert Wessels; and businessmen David Jones and Ben Midgley.
Mills is termed out and will appear on the Democratic ballot for U.S. Senate, although she suspended her campaign weeks ago.
As Nevada voters participate in primary elections Tuesday, the state Democratic Party has launched a website — www.thelombardotrumpway.com/ — to highlight GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo’s connections to the White House.
The site is an effort to connect the governor to the economic fallout from Trump’s tariffs and the Iran war. Lombardo is considered one of the most vulnerable governors in the country.
The Democrats vying to challenge Lombardo include state Attorney General Aaron Ford, who has the backing of the Democratic congressional delegation and former Vice President Kamala Harris. He would be the first Black man elected governor of Nevada. He’s facing Democrat Alexis Hill, a county commissioner in northern Nevada who campaigned as a candidate willing to shake things up.
Republicans have held all statewide-elected positions in South Carolina for more than a decade, but several Democrats are competing in primaries Tuesday for some of the state’s top posts.
Annie Andrews, a Charleston pediatrician who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in 2022, is vying for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Lindsey Graham. Also in that contest is Brandon Brown, a former HBCU vice president and owner of funeral homes in Greenville.
In the governor’s race, state Rep. Jermaine Johnson and Greenville businessman Billy Webster are running in the Democratic primary. They’re joined by Mullins McLeod, an attorney who withstood calls from party leaders that he quit the race following an arrest last year for disorderly conduct.
The South Carolina senator’s bid for a fifth term coincides with the war he’s pushed for years. Graham has a close relationship with Trump and they speak regularly about the conflict.
But as voters mull whether to send Graham back to Washington, they’re also reckoning with the ongoing war, which has caused fissures among some of Trump’s most vocal supporters.
Graham frequently pushes Trump to take even more aggressive action, at one point suggesting that the U.S. military seize Kharg Island, which is critical for Iran’s oil industry.
Rep. Nancy Mace says one of her supporters was assaulted at a Monday event with Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette, one of her rivals in South Carolina’s governor’s race.
The man was escorted from Evette’s rally, then walked the sidewalk speaking into a megaphone. Then another man wearing an Evette campaign hat is seen on video grabbing the device from his hands.
Court records show the Evette supporter, Blake Garrison Kirsch, was charged with third-degree assault and battery Tuesday. No attorney was listed. Evette’s campaign said Kirsch was not a staffer and had been removed from the campaign’s finance committee since the altercation.
Asked about the incident Tuesday, Evette told reporters after voting in Taylors she was “saddened” by the situation and doesn’t “tolerate violence on any level.”
Washoe County Commissioner Alexis Hill faces state Attorney General Aaron Ford, whose fundraising has dwarfed hers —$2.3 million compared to Hill’s $100,000. He also has the support of the entire Democratic congressional delegation and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hill, a local official in the county that includes Reno, has run a grassroots campaign, promising to shake up the status quo in the Democratic Party. Ford has largely ignored her, fixing his sights on the November election.
The winner will most likely face Republican Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, who's running for reelection.
Brenda Wood said she voted for Republicans in the primary because she doesn’t believe Platner’s campaign promises and expressed dissatisfaction with his party generally.
“I think the Democrats have been a disgrace to Maine for years,” she said.
Annette Babcock, also from Sullivan, said she supported Platner, whom she said she’s met a few times and likes because he’s not an established politician.
She did not sound concerned over recent controversies surrounding his campaign.
“The Republicans don’t have much moral high ground to stand on when they’re criticizing him for what he’s done when Trump is a convicted felon,” she said.
The road for the Democrats to take back the U.S. Senate goes through Maine. That road starts today.
The Democratic Party needs to net four seats to retake the Senate majority, and thinks some of its best chances are in states like Maine, North Carolina, Alaska and Ohio. The party is set to officially pick its nominee in Maine on Tuesday.
Oyster farmer and combat veteran Graham Platner is the party’s presumptive nominee because his main rival, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, suspended her campaign weeks ago. Mills remains on the ballot. David Costello, who hasn't campaigned aggressively, is also on the ballot.
After voting at her precinct in Taylors on Tuesday, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette said she was confident about how her campaign for governor had gone.
But if she doesn’t win the primary outright and has to campaign for two more weeks in a runoff, the Republican said she’d work hard to win over voters who didn’t initially support her.
President Donald Trump is backing Evette’s bid and the candidate said that, while she thinks that will help her in this “proud Trump state,” she’ll focus primarily on her own stances, like cutting taxes and regulations.
Platner’s campaign has spent months navigating controversies about a tattoo of a Nazi symbol that he had covered up and his history of inflammatory online postings.
Platner has said he was drunk on leave with some fellow Marines many years ago when he got a skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest. He had it covered up last year after saying he learned that it was a Nazi image.
There has also been much attention on his former social media and Reddit posts, which were dismissive of military sexual assaults, insulting of police and rural residents and used homophobic slurs, for which he's apologized.
A person walks past a sign for a drive-through ballot drop-off outside the city hall in Las Vegas, Tuesday, June 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Lindsay Robinson, with daughter Scottie, walks to cast her ballots in the Maine Primary, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Mary Saunders looks over her choices one last time before casting her ballots in the Maine Primary, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, in Augusta, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
