James B Renacci

After a year and half of wondering which senators might retire, if the parties would land star recruits, and how messy primaries would play out, the matchups in nearly all of the most competitive Senate races will be set after the votes are counted in Montana on Tuesday.

Republicans in Big Sky Country are likely to select either state Auditor Matt Rosendale or former district judge Russ Fagg to take on Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, leaving just a couple of unknowns on the broader Senate map, five months before Election Day.

Civil rights groups and Ohio voters filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging the state’s congressional districts as unconstitutional, as the Supreme Court readies decisions in similar cases about whether maps can be rejected if they entrench an advantage for one party.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, seeks a new congressional map for Ohio. But it almost certainly comes too late in the 2018 election cycle to affect districts ahead of the November vote. Ohio already held its primary election under the current map on May 8.

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Senate Democrats are still defending 10 states that President Donald Trump won in 2016, but six months out from Election Day, the most vulnerable senator remains a Republican.

Nevada Sen. Dean Heller no longer faces a primary threat, but he’s the only Republican up for re-election in a state Hillary Clinton won, and in this national environment that’s a tricky place to be.

Ohio Republican state Sen. Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O’Connor, the Franklin County recorder, will face off in the August special election to fill former GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi’s seat in the 12th District.

Balderson won the GOP primary with 29 percent of the vote, finishing narrowly ahead of Liberty Township Trustee Melanie Leneghan, who had 28 percent. The fight between them had become a traditional Republican proxy war.

Ohio Rep. James B. Renacci won the Republican nomination for Senate on Tuesday night to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.

He finished first in the five-candidate field with 47 percent of the vote, ahead of Cleveland businessman Mike Gibbons, his closest challenger, who took 34 percent. 

Tuesday marks the first big primary day of 2018. Voters go to the polls in Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina.

Most of the exciting action is on the Republican side. In all of those states (except for North Carolina), Democratic senators are trying to hold on to seats in territory President Donald Trump won in 2016, which means the GOP primaries are high-stakes contests. (More on that below.)

Five incumbent House Republicans running for Senate have co-signed a letter nominating President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.

It’s a move that could curry favor with the president and his supporters just a week before pivotal primaries in states such as West Virginia and Indiana, two Trump states where GOP candidates are trying to align themselves with the White House.

“Accessible” Attacks: Three Democratic candidates recently compared and contrasted their accessibility to the incumbents they are challenging, but neither Ken Harbaugh (OH-07) nor Dean Phillips (MN-03) nor Elissa Slotkin (MI-08) appear to have a working phone number on their campaign websites.

Bonchon Bust: The previously infallible Korean fried chicken establishment made a critical mistake by removing popcorn chicken from the menu and thinking kids wouldn’t notice that they now offer popcorn shrimp instead.