By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
The Senate battlegrounds in Alaska and Florida are now set heading into the midterms, CBS News reports, with control of the chamber potentially riding on how those races break in November.
The bigger surprise came out of Florida, where state Rep. Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist, pulled off an upset victory over a more moderate Democratic opponent to win her party's Senate nomination, according to CBS News. The result immediately drew a mixed reaction from Nixon's own party: on CBS's "The Takeout," Democratic strategist Matt Bennett and Republican strategist Mike Hahn both suggested — from opposite sides of the aisle — that Nixon and candidates like her could complicate Democrats' chances in the general election, according to the network's reporting. That is a strategist's opinion, not a settled fact, and voters in November will be the actual test of it.
CBS News' account does not name Nixon's Democratic primary opponent or her Republican general-election rival, nor does it detail the Alaska matchup beyond noting the field is now set. Those gaps should be filled before drawing conclusions about either race's trajectory.
What is clear: with the House and Senate both closely divided, a single state primary result is enough to reshape national strategy overnight. Florida's result is a reminder that the loudest fights over the direction of the Democratic Party are happening not in Washington, but in state primaries most of the country isn't watching.
— Read the footnotes. The story's always in the footnotes.
— Compiled from reporting by CBS News.
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