Seven GOP Incumbents Lose Primary, Runoff Races

Following Tuesday’s runoff races and June’s primary elections, seven Republican lawmakers are ousted at the state Capitol. That includes two lawmakers in leadership roles.

“There's just an anti-incumbency wave out there,” News 9 political analyst Scott Mitchell said.

In this primary cycle, the shake-ups were massive, not only in the number of lawmakers rejected by their constituents but also in the powerful roles they occupied at the statehouse.

The seven Republicans out of a job at the state capitol include the man who was set to lead the state Senate next session, Greg McCortney who was beaten in June, and Tuesday, House budget chairman Kevin Wallace was defeated in his runoff election.

In the past five elections, incumbents running for re-election won their seats an average of 96 percent of the time. While we have seen this wave of anti-incumbency before in 2020 when seven incumbents were ousted, there was not a sizable shake-up in leadership.

While some of the Republican primary winners still have general election match-ups we asked Mitchell what the incoming class of lawmakers could look like.

“I do know that they’re disrupters,” he said. “But they’re going to be sitting in the back. So what we are talking about is Greg McCortney is not going to be leading the senate, Kevin Wallace is not going to be the appropriations and budget chair, but the people replacing them ain't going to be on the front row.”

Mitchell said with the shake-up at the ballot box the presumptive leaders of the House and Senate have been slow to name their leadership teams.

Of the seven Republicans who beat their incumbent opponent, only three of them will face a challenger in November's general election.