The left took it on the chin in Oregon Tuesday.

Major progressive figures had mobilized in a safe blue congressional district — and their preferred pick lost. Establishment Democrats, meanwhile, successfully blocked a more liberal candidate from winning the nomination for a key battleground seat.

That means Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s sister won’t be joining the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in Washington next year. And that national Democrats get their candidate of choice to take on Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer — and avoid a rematch of a race they lost in 2022.

Many of the congressional primaries that were held across Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky and Oregon were for safe seats — meaning the victors are poised to cruise to victory come the fall. But a handful of battleground races were finalized on Tuesday, setting up competitive races, particularly in Oregon.

In addition to establishment Democrats’ big win in the Republican-held 5th District, general election contests were also set between Democratic Rep. Val Hoyle and veteran Monique DeSpain in the 4th District, and between Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas and repeat candidate Mike Erickson in the 6th.

Donald Trump-backed candidates had a good night, as did incumbents. But an abortion-rights playbook flopped for a former Democratic representative in Georgia, and the presidential candidates faced some of their final primary tests of their base appeal.

Here’s what happened in Tuesday’s primaries:

Progressives had a tough night

Progressives had a rough time in Oregon.

In the hopes of avoiding a 2022 repeat, national Democrats mobilized to block Jamie McLeod-Skinner in the race for the 5th District — one of over a dozen GOP-held seats that President Joe Biden won in 2020. McLeod-Skinner unseated then-Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader in the primary two years ago running to his left. But Chavez-DeRemer beat her by 2 points in the general election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quickly identified state Rep. Janelle Bynum — who was backed by the likes of Mainstream Democrats PAC — as its preferred candidate and spent around $1 million on a joint buy with her campaign. Bynum will now be the party’s candidate for a seat Biden would’ve carried by almost 10 points — and she’s facing an opponent, Chavez-DeRemer, whom she defeated in state House races in both 2016 and 2018.

In the open and safely Democratic 3rd District, the biggest candidates were all progressive, but state Rep. Maxine Dexter bested Susheela Jayapal, a former Multnomah County Commissioner — despite her roster of impressive liberal endorsements. There was little daylight between the two candidates on major policy areas, but Jayapal was backed by a star roster of progressives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and her sister, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. 

Dexter received millions in dollars of support from 314 Action PAC, which supports STEM-educated Democrats, while Jayapal was hit with millions of dollars in attack ads from Voters for Responsive Government, a pop-up super PAC whose funders won’t be disclosed until next month.

And in the district attorney race in Multnomah County — which encompasses liberal Portland — progressive incumbent Mike Schmidt trailed Nathan Vasquez, who had more moderate Democratic backing, in early returns. (The Associated Press had not projected a winner as of 1:30 a.m. Eastern Time Wednesday.)

Trump’s endorsement is still king

Two Trump endorsees were among the GOP primary winners Tuesday.

Vince Fong, Kevin McCarthy’s handpicked successor, won a special election in California. Brian Jack, a top Trump political hand who helped the former president snag endorsements from members of Congress, finished first in the race for an open House seat in Georgia, though he still faces a runoff next month.

Their performances preserved Trump’s string of successful endorsements in open House seats. His endorsement of Brad Knott in North Carolina’s 13th District convinced Knott’s runoff opponent to drop out after early voting had already begun in last week’s runoff. And Trump earlier this spring elevated political unknowns like Addison McDowell in North Carolina, who was running against a former congressman, and Brandon Gill in Texas, who had to overcome super PACs looking to thwart him.

His endorsements in these open seats and others help cement his grip on Congress that could prove crucial in a second Trump presidency. Most of his endorsees so far are in deep red districts and poised to have long congressional tenures — a trend that helps Trump further remake the party in his image.

Incumbents prevail

Public approval of Congress is near record lows, but congressional incumbents keep winning.

Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho — a member of the pragmatic Republican Main Street Caucus — easily batted away two underfunded challengers and is poised to coast to a 14th term.

In Kentucky, Republican Reps. Thomas Massie and Hal Rogers, along with Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey, all skated to victory in their contested primaries. While none had a serious primary challenge, Massie’s victory is notable: He had endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Trump (whom he backed once DeSantis dropped out) and voted to oust House Speaker Mike Johnson earlier this month.

Massie has also been the chief — and, at times, sole — critic of Israel in the House GOP conference, and the AIPAC-funded super PAC aired ads in Kentucky markets outside of Massie’s district in an attempt to tarnish his brand for a potential statewide race later this decade. (Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell is retiring in 2026, and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is term-limited in 2027.) In a statement after his win on Tuesday, Massie said his victory is a “referendum on thousands of independent votes” that he has cast in Washington.

In Georgia, Democratic Reps. Lucy McBath — who was running in a new district that did not overlap with her current constituency due to redistricting — and David Scott, whose health had some concerned about his reelection bid, also easily fended off their challengers.

No House incumbent has been ousted by a primary challenger so far this cycle, with the exception of Rep. Jerry Carl (R-Ala.), who faced a rare member-on-member primary and was defeated by Rep. Barry Moore.

Further down the ballot in Georgia, Fani Willis, the prosecutor in the Georgia election interference case against Trump, won her Democratic primary. And Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, the judge overseeing the Trump trial in Georgia, also won his nonpartisan election for a full four-year term.

An abortion-rights based campaign falters

Abortion-rights messaging has propelled Democrats and liberal-leaning candidates to victory in even the reddest of states since the overturning of Roe v. Wade two years ago. But that tactic faltered on Tuesday night for a nonpartisan seat on the Georgia state Supreme Court.

Former Blue Dog Democratic Rep. John Barrow lost his challenge against Justice Andrew Pinson, who was appointed to the court by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in 2022 and was running for a full six-year term. Barrow staked his campaign on a vow to protect abortion rights.

It wasn’t a novel plan: In last spring’s Wisconsin state Supreme Court election, liberal Janet Protasiewicz leaned on such messaging in her campaign for an open seat, flipping ideological control of the court. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Daniel McCaffery emphasized abortion rights in his bid to fill a vacancy. He ultimately won and expanded Democratic control.

Barrow’s loss isn’t necessarily an indictment of the saliency of abortion-rights messaging. Incumbent justices in the Peach State are rarely unseated, and Pinson benefited from the support of Kemp in the final stretch of the campaign. The Georgia race also failed to attract the widespread attention and investment from national groups that the others had.

“The real lesson of Wisconsin — it was a crash course, if anybody needed it — is that judicial candidates have a right to remain silent, alright, but they also have a right to speak, and to speak their mind on controversial issues, even controversial issues that are likely to come before them in court,” Barrow said in an interview prior to Election Day. “And that’s because the voters have an even more important constitutional right to know what the hell they’re voting for.”

The protest vote continues on

Biden faced another “uncommitted” headache on Tuesday — but this one is quite different from the protest votes he’s faced from the left in other states over the Israel-Hamas war and other issues.

Eighteen percent of Kentucky Democrats voted “uncommitted,” enough to send unaffiliated delegates to the August national party convention in Chicago.

“Uncommitted” even carried seven of Kentucky’s 120 counties, but all of them were deep-red counties where ancestral Democratic registration handed primary ballots to voters who’ve long left the party except on paper. The Biden protest vote came from the right on Tuesday, not the left.

That’s a different problem from Michigan back in February, where the top “uncommitted” county was Washtenaw, home to the University of Michigan. Or in Wisconsin last month, where the top-performing “uninstructed delegation” county was Dane, site of the state capital and the University of Wisconsin.

Oregon presented a test of the Biden protest vote from the left, but it mostly fizzled out. With a little more than half the estimated vote counted late Tuesday night, Biden had 89 percent of the primary vote, with Marianne Williamson at 7 percent, and just 4 percent writing in another name.

The only state holding a binding Republican presidential primary was Kentucky, and it was no problem for Trump, who won about 85 percent of the vote. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley captured just 6 percent statewide — though she ran a little stronger in the cities of Louisville (11 percent) and Lexington (15 percent), and in some of the old-line suburban Republican counties like Oldham (12 percent), Woodford (12 percent) and Kenton (9 percent).