The Latest: Alaska, Florida and Wyoming hold primaries as California voters pick Swalwell successor
Aug 18, 2026, 8:18 AM
This combo shows U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, left, in Palmer, Alaska, on Aug. 17, 2026 and a candidate in Alaska's U.S. Senate race, Dan Sullivan, right, in Petersburg, Alaska, on July 3, 2026. (AP Photos/Mark Thiessen/Becky Bohrer)
Credit: AP Photo/Mark Thiessen; Becky Bohrer
(AP Photos/Mark Thiessen/Becky Bohrer)
Voters in Alabama, Florida and Wyoming are deciding Tuesday which candidates to advance to the general election in key races for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House, as California holds a special election to decide who will serve out the rest of U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s term.
Swalwell resigned from Congress amid sexual assault allegations earlier this year. Regardless of who is chosen to replace him, the 14th Congressional District seat is guaranteed to remain under Democratic control.
Florida’s primary will choose candidates to complete the remainder of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s term in the U.S. Senate. There’s also an open contest to replace term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis, featuring Rep. Byron Donalds on the Republican side and former Rep. David Jolly as a Democrat.
Alaska voters will narrow down a wide field of candidates for a competitive U.S. Senate seat that’s expected to play a pivotal role in determining which political party will hold a majority in the Senate next year. Among the 16 candidates running in the all-party primary, the most notable are Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan and Democratic former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola. The top four vote-getters will advance to the general election regardless of party affiliation and the winner in November will be determined by ranked choice voting.
An unusually high number of open-seat races are on the ballot in Wyoming’s primary after two prominent Republican officials announced their retirements. The upcoming departures of Gov. Mark Gordon and U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, along with U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s decision to run to replace Lummis, mark the first time in 32 years that Wyoming has had open seats for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House at the same time.
The five Republicans competing to become Wyoming’s next U.S. senator include one with an overwhelming funding and name recognition advantage: Harriet Hageman.
Hageman seeks the GOP nomination after two terms as Wyoming’s representative in the U.S. House.
Through July, Hageman had over $900,000 still available to spend on her campaign, eight times more than the funding runner-up in the GOP race, rancher and business owner Sam Mead.
Former oil field services business owner Jimmy Skovgard had $3,200. The Federal Election Commission had no campaign finance records online for the other two Republican candidates — massage therapist Jill Edwards and U.S. Air Force veteran and attorney John Holtz.
Former state legislator Jim Byrd, one of two Democrats seeking the party’s nomination, had about $350 cash on hand, according to the FEC.
The winner will succeed Republican U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, who is retiring.
Independent commercial fisherman Bill Hill is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Nick Begich in the race for Alaska’s only House seat.
Hill, a former educator, has focused on issues such as affordability and reining in the influence of ultra-wealthy people and special interests in politics. Hill lives in a fishing community of about 425 people in southwest Alaska, where goods are brought in by plane or barge.
In July, the highest-profile Democrat in the race, pastor Matt Schultz, suspended his campaign and urged voters to back Hill.
No other candidates in the crowded race have reported raising money. Begich has been endorsed by Trump.
The special general election pits California state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a progressive who’s championed housing issues, against San Francisco Bay Area transit leader Melissa Hernandez, a moderate who’s made cracking down on crime central to her campaign.
Hernandez, who is raising more money, has accused her rival of being too soft on crime, which Wahab denies. Wahab, who won the June primary decisively, says she’s better positioned to fight against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
A generation ago, Florida decided a presidential race by mere hundreds of votes and court fights that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet Democrats haven’t won a presidential race, Senate contest or gubernatorial election there since 2012.
It’s gotten so dire for the party that they’re expected, for the second governor’s race in a row, to nominate a former Republican. The leading candidate this time is former Rep. David Jolly, a critic of President Donald Trump who joined Democrats in 2025 after shifting his position on abortion and the Affordable Care Act.
That kind of move didn’t work four years ago, though. Former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist won the nomination and got trounced by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Alaska has open primaries, meaning all candidates are listed on one ballot. It uses ranked choice voting in general elections.
In each race in the primary, voters get one pick. The four candidates with the most votes advance to the November election, where voters can choose to rank the candidates in order of preference. The top races on the ballot — for U.S. Senate, U.S. House and governor — each feature more than a dozen candidates. Few races for state legislative seats have more than four candidates running in Tuesday’s primary.
Alaska voters approved this system in 2020, which supporters say lends itself to more moderate candidates, and it was first used in 2022. There have been several efforts to repeal it, including one heading to the November ballot.
