Indiana Primary Results: Voters Make Picks In House, State Legislature Races

Indiana voters went to the polls Tuesday to select their party's nominees for state and national seats.

Joe Bock, a Democrat and professor at Notre Dame, beat three challengers for the chance to face Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski in the general election.

Incumbent Rep. Susan Brooks (R) secured her renomination with a safe majority, easily beating a challenge from the far right.

The Daily Kos noted that two incumbent Republicans in the Indiana state House who voted against the state's same-sex marriage ban lost their primaries Tuesday.

Reps. Rebecca Kubacki and Kathy Heuer will not represent the Republican Party in the general election.

The Associated Press reported earlier on Tuesday's primary elections:

Tuesday marked the beginning of the political primary season in earnest, and over the next several months Republicans will hold numerous contests featuring incumbents or other establishment figures against tea party challengers. Some of the races are in states where the identity of the party's candidate might mean the difference between victory and defeat this fall, such as Alaska, Georgia, Iowa and Kentucky, as well as North Carolina. In other areas, it will matter less, including Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Hagan, whom Republicans have made a top target in their drive to win a Senate majority in the fall, won renomination over a pair of rivals with about 80 percent of the primary vote

Tillis scarcely had time to savor his victory over Brannon, Harris and five others before the Democrats unloaded on him Tuesday night.

"No one in the country has done more for the Koch brothers than Thom Tillis — cutting public education nearly $500 million, cutting taxes for the wealthy while refusing pay raises for teachers and killing an equal pay bill," the party's Democratic senatorial committee said in a statement referring to the billionaire businessman brothers whom party leaders hope to make into national whipping boys in the fall campaign.

The National Rifle Association countered for Tillis, saying in a statement of its own that "Thom has long been one of most effective gun rights advocates in North Carolina."

Tillis ran as a conservative with the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Right to Life Committee and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. American Crossroads, a group founded by Karl Rove, aired television commercials supporting him.

Brannon had the backing Paul, the Kentucky senator. Harris countered with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, whose popularity with evangelical voters briefly made him a force in the race for the 2008 presidential nomination.

Hagan is among the Democrats' most vulnerable incumbents in a campaign season full of them, a first-term lawmaker in a state that is ground zero in a national debate over the health care law that she and the Democrats voted into existence four years ago. Americans for Prosperity, a group funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, has run about $7 million worth of television commercials criticizing Hagan for her position on the law.

Boehner's nomination to a 13th term in the House was never in doubt, despite challenges from tea party adherents J.D. Winteregg and Eric Gurr. His seat is safely Republican for the general election, as well, and it will be up to fellow Republicans — assuming they hold their House majority — to decide if the 64-year-old Ohioan serves a third term as speaker.

Kasich was unopposed for nomination to a second term as governor, a race viewed as a possible prelude to a 2016 run for the White House.

Fitzgerald wasted no time in pocketing his primary triumph, blasting out an email that declared, "As of tonight, this race is officially between me and Gov. Kasich."

North Carolina hosted the most closely watched race of the night, at the intersection of the tea party's long-running challenge to the Republican establishment and the GOP campaign to gain the six seats needed to win a Senate majority in the fall.

Establishment figures made little or no secret of their desire for Tillis to prevail, fearful that any other challenger to Hagan could mean a replay of 2010 and 2012, when Republicans lost winnable Senate races in Nevada, Indiana and Missouri.

"You can't defeat Kay Hagan with a factionalized (party)," Tillis said at one point, making a case for his own nomination.

Paul, whose upset victory in a 2010 primary in Kentucky served notice that the tea party was a force to be reckoned with, hailed Brannon. The first-time candidate is "a true believer and we need true believers in Congress," Paul said as Brannon battled the establishment.

For his part, Harris damned Tillis with the faintest of praise, saying Monday the state assembly leader is the man to support "if you want an establishment ... style of United States senator, someone that is going to work in the system."

If Republican Party leaders preferred Tillis, Democrats seemed to want anyone but him, or at a minimum, a runoff that would require Republicans to battle one another into midsummer.

Hagan's campaign recently sent out a mass mailing that said Tillis had once called Obamacare a "great idea" — an obvious attempt to influence the outcome of the primary by holding down his support among conservative primary voters. Tillis favors the law's repeal, and in fact called the law "a great idea that can't be paid for."

An outside group dedicated to electing Democrats ran a television ad assailing Tillis over severance packages that went to two members of his legislative staff said to have had inappropriate relationships with lobbyists.