The results are in from yesterday’s Primary election and the results
promise some highly contested battles shaping up for the November general election.
In the race for retiring Senator Roy Blunt’s seat, Trudy Busch-Valentine won the Democrat primary over Marine veteran Lucas Kunce by a roughly 5% margin state wide. Busch-Valentine had a wide band of support across the state including Kansas City and her home counties in the St. Louis area. Kunce carried a number of counties, mostly in out-state areas in mid-Missouri and along the north-eastern and south-eastern borders of the state.
Busch-Valentine will face Republican challenger and current Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt in November’s general election. Schmitt won by a huge margin over challengers Congresswoman Vicki Hartzler and ousted, former Governor Eric Greitens. Hartzler and Greitens combined vote totals were still over 30,000 votes short of Schmitt’s victory total. While Hartzler won a majority of counties in her representative district area of Mid Missouri, Schmitt had broad support state-wide. Greatens carried three counties in Missouri’s boot-heal region.
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II was victorious over challenger Maite Salazar and will once again face Republican Jacob Turk in the November general. Turk, whose campaign was virtually non-existent until the week prior to the election faced two Republican challengers, Jerry Barham and Herschell Young in the Primary. This will be Turk’s eighth attempt at unseating the incumbent Cleaver.
More locally, Incumbent State Representative Ingrid Burnett who represents the State’s 19th House District scored a victory over challenger Wick Thomas. This is Thomas’ second attempt at unseating Burnett who will face Republican Karen Spalding in November. If Burnett wins that election, she will serve her fourth and final term in the state house.
In the Jackson County Legislature race for the County’s 1st District, Manny Abarca IV scored a decisive victory over challengers Justice Horn and South Kansas City resident Geoff Gerling. Abarca will face Republican Christina McDonough Hunt in November.
The race for Jackson County 2nd District was won handily by Vanessa Huskey over two Democrat challengers. No Republican filed for the seat.
The tightest of the local races was easily the race for Jackson County Executive where embattled incumbent Frank White faced Democrat challenger Stacy Lake. White prevailed over Lake by a razor-thin margin inside the Kansas City limits and an 11% margin outside the city limits.
On the Republican side of the County Executive race, County Legislator Theresa Galvin carried the day over her two challengers Preston Smith and Jason Pearson setting up what promises to be a hotly contested race for the County Executive seat in November.
In terms of voter turnout numbers, according to the Kansas City Election Board, of the 222,345 registered voters in Kansas City, 43,956 ballots were cast representing a 19.77% voter turnout.
Jackson County Election Board numbers, representing those areas outside the Kansas City limits were roughly 9% higher. Of the 234,018 registered voters, 65,882 ballots were cast for a 28.2% voter turnout.
