WASHINGTON — Six-term Republican Sen. Thad Cochran and Tea Party favorite challenger Chris McDaniel dueled at close quarters in Mississippi’s primary election Tuesday night, a struggle in a party divided along ideological lines.
Meanwhile, GOP governors in South Dakota, Alabama, Iowa and New Mexico coasted to renomination.
On the busiest night of the primary season, Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, a state senator, overwhelmed a fistful of Republican rivals in Iowa after uniting rival wings of the party and will challenge Rep. Bruce Braley this fall for a Senate seat long in Democratic hands.
In a third Senate race on the busiest night of the primary season, former Gov. Mike Rounds won the Republican nomination in South Dakota — and instantly became the favorite to pick up a seat for the GOP in its drive to capture the six the party needs to gain a majority this fall.
Five states picked candidates for governor, including California, where Democrat Jerry Brown cruised to renomination to a fourth term.
Dozens of nomination races for House seats dotted the ballot, too, including 38 in California’s open primary system, which awarded spots on the November ballot to the two top vote-getters regardless of party.
The marquee contest of the night was in Mississippi, where returns from 95 percent of the precincts showed Cochran narrowly ahead in a three-way race but just below the 50 percent threshold to avoid a June 24 runoff.
“People of this country were somehow awakened, and we’ve been asleep for far too long,” McDaniel told supporters.
Officials said the vote tally did not include provisional ballots, at least some of them cast as a result of the state’s new voter ID law.
The heated race was between a 76-year-old pillar of the GOP establishment who has helped funnel millions of dollars to his state and a younger state lawmaker who drew backing from Tea Party groups and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
The campaign took a turn toward the sensational when four men, all McDaniel supporters, were arrested and charged with surreptitiously taking photographs of the senator’s 72-year-old wife, who suffers from dementia and has long lived in a nursing home.
Republican governors winning renomination included Robert Bentley in Alabama and Dennis Daugaard in South Dakota while Susana Martinez in New Mexico had no opponent.
Two-term Attorney General Gary King won New Mexico’s Democratic nod.
New voter identification laws also were in effect in Alabama. No difficulties were immediately reported.
