Voters in North Carolina and Kentucky rebuffed President Trump and voted for Republican candidates the president did not back in these two states.
In North Carolina, voters for the Grand old Party picked 24-year-old investor Madison Cawthorn, who uses a wheelchair following an accident, over Trump-backed real estate agent Lynda Bennett, an AP report reads. In Kentucky, voters chose Thomas Massie, a libertarian-minded maverick, who Trump once said was a ‘disaster for America’ and should be ejected from the party.
Massie was running against Todd McMurtry, a lawyer.
Results for House elections in New York faced days of delay as swamped officials count mountains of mail-in ballots. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, states have been accepting mail-in votes. And due to a deluge of votes coming in, counting has been going on at a slow pace. Counties have till eight days after election day to count and release the result of the ballots.
New York typically sees 5 per cent of votes to come in form of mail-in votes, but this time, officials expect a vast majority to vote using mail-in ballots.
Though Cawthorn has said he is a Trump supporter and Massie has been largely conservative, them being voted as state representatives is an embarrassment to Trump, whose re-election campaign is in dire need of a fresh narrative given the racial unrest and the virus pandemic.
In Kentucky, first-time legislator Charles Booker was hoping a late surge would carry him past former Marine fighter pilot Amy McGrath for the Democratic Senate nomination from Kentucky. In New York, political newcomer Jamaal Bowman hopes to disrupt House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel’s bid for a 17th term.
In New York City District Joe Crowley is on track to become speaker. At both Kentucky and the New York polls, Democrats kept a watch to see whether the racial unrest sparked by George Floyd’s death would result in a large turnout of progressive African-American voters.