$34 million for one U.S. House primary. $83 million from one billionaire for one governor’s seat. Tuesday’s vote across seven states is the first session of the 2026 cycle where the money has run ahead of the candidates, and where two of the marquee Republican contests double as wagers President Donald Trump has placed, declined to place, or watched a donor place for him.
By the time polls close in Kentucky, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Idaho, and Oregon, Trump’s grip on his own party will have been tested in three distinct ways: a personalized enforcement campaign against an incumbent who voted no, a hands-off posture on a Senate seat he wants flipped, and a Democratic governor’s coattail audition in a state the president carried twice.
The $34 Million Wager in Vanceburg
The Kentucky 4th District primary between eight-term Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein has crossed the most expensive U.S. House primary on record, with total spending above $34 million as of Monday. Massie’s own campaign account raised $5.5 million. Gallrein’s raised $3.1 million. The rest is outside money.
Where the Outside Money Came From
The breakdown matters because it shows two donor universes converging on a single northern Kentucky district that includes the rural Ohio River counties around Vanceburg, Massie’s hometown, plus part of the Cincinnati suburbs. The biggest super political action committee in the race is MAGA KY, which has spent roughly $7.5 million. The United Democracy Project, the campaign arm of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington), has spent $4.1 million. The Republican Jewish Coalition’s RJC Victory Fund has spent another $3.9 million.
Pro-Israel groups together account for more than $15 million of the spending against Massie, a tally driven by his public opposition to U.S. involvement in the Iran war and to weapons transfers. Hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer has funded both MAGA KY and the United Democracy Project. Miriam Adelson, the casino executive who put $106 million into a Trump-aligned super PAC in 2024, has channeled money through Preserve America.
The Hegseth Visit Tell
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth campaigned with Gallrein in Kentucky on Monday in what he described as a personal capacity. Massie’s reading was sharper.
You don’t send the Secretary of War to Kentucky during a war if you think your candidate is up 10 points. That’s what you do when you realize your whole campaign is imploding.
That is Massie speaking to CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe on the eve of the vote. The congressman has acknowledged the race tightened to roughly even from what he believed was a comfortable lead before the air war began. A Spectrum News 1 poll released May 13 showed Gallrein leading; the Massie campaign disputes the sample. By Tuesday evening, both sides will have their answer.
Georgia’s Self-Funder Problem
Republican Gov. Brian Kemp is term-limited, and the open seat has triggered the most expensive primary in Georgia history. Television ad spending alone has topped $100 million according to AdImpact, a media-buying tracker, with billionaire healthcare executive Rick Jackson accounting for $56 million of it.
Jackson, who entered the race late and promised to become Trump’s “favorite governor,” has now put more than $83 million of his own money on the table. Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones has raised $4.4 million in contributions and loaned his own campaign nearly $17 million, much of it traced to the Jones family’s gas station and convenience store empire. The anti-Jones group Georgians for Integrity has spent close to $20 million on negative ads.
State Attorney General Chris Carr, who declined to pursue an election fraud case Trump pushed in 2020, and former Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously refused the president’s request to “find 11,780 votes,” are also on the ballot. Raffensperger has spent $2 million on television, a fraction of the leaders’ war chests. The state GOP took the rare step earlier this cycle of waiving its long-standing primary neutrality rule so leadership could rally behind the president’s pick.
A candidate needs 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff. With seven Republicans splitting the field, a June 17 runoff is the base case scenario for both parties. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms leads the seven-way Democratic field and carries the first endorsement former President Joe Biden has issued since leaving office. Former Republican Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who switched parties last year, is also seeking the Democratic nomination.
The Senate Race Trump Has Not Touched
Sen. Jon Ossoff is the only Democratic senator standing for reelection in a state Trump won in 2024, which makes Georgia the cleanest Republican pickup opportunity on the 2026 Senate map. The president has not endorsed anyone in the primary to challenge him.
Reps. Mike Collins and Buddy Carter and former Tennessee head football coach Derek Dooley have spent months attacking one another. Kemp endorsed Dooley. An April Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll put Collins at 22 percent, Carter at 13 percent, and Dooley at 11 percent, with more than half of Republican voters undecided. The contest is heavily favored to advance to a June 16 runoff between Kemp’s pick and a Trump-leaning member of Congress, the exact dynamic state Republicans had hoped to avoid.
The Cook Political Report shifted the general election from toss-up to lean Democratic last month. An April special election elsewhere in Georgia produced a double-digit leftward swing from 2024 margins. Ossoff, who has raised more than any Senate Democrat this cycle, will spend the summer watching whichever pair survives Tuesday spend down their cash on each other.
Shapiro’s Four-Front Audition in Pennsylvania
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is unopposed in his own primary for a second term and has spent it boosting House candidates in four districts. The slate doubles as a test of his ability to move swing voters with a national audience watching: a strong showing in November positions him for the donor conversations that decide who runs for the White House in 2028.
The four targets share an outline. Each has a Trump-aligned or Trump-tolerant Republican incumbent, each was carried by Vice President Kamala Harris or Trump by a single-digit margin in 2024, and each has a Democratic challenger personally backed by the governor.
| District | GOP Incumbent | Shapiro-Backed Democrat | 2024 Margin |
|---|---|---|---|
| PA-1 (Bucks County) | Brian Fitzpatrick | Bob Harvie, county commissioner | R +13 |
| PA-7 (Lehigh Valley) | Ryan Mackenzie | Bob Brooks, firefighter and union leader | R +1 |
| PA-8 (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre) | Rob Bresnahan | Paige Cognetti, Scranton mayor | R +5 |
| PA-10 (Harrisburg/York) | Scott Perry | Janelle Stelson, former TV anchor | R +1.3 |
The 7th District in the Lehigh Valley is the cleanest opportunity. Mackenzie unseated Democratic Rep. Susan Wild by about a point in 2024, and Northampton County has voted for the eventual national winner in all but three presidential cycles since 1920. Stelson lost to Perry by roughly 5,100 votes last cycle in the 10th and is running again. The 8th District flips on Luzerne County, a former Democratic stronghold that has voted for Trump in three straight presidential cycles.
The 1st District is the toughest reach. Fitzpatrick is the rare House Republican in a Harris-won seat, and he won by nearly 13 points last fall. Bucks County’s 12 elected offices have flipped from a Republican supermajority to a Democratic supermajority since Fitzpatrick first took the district, an electoral undertow the congressman has so far defied at the federal level. CBS News reported in April that Catholic voters in Bucks, who make up more than a third of the county, are watching the administration’s posture on Pope Leo XIV and the Iran war.
Alabama, Idaho, Oregon: The Quieter Slate
Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey set an August 11 special date for House primaries in the state’s 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 7th Congressional Districts after the Supreme Court last month narrowed the Voting Rights Act for majority-minority districts. That ruling lets Alabama use its 2023 map, which carries only one majority-Black district. House primaries in the state’s other three districts go forward Tuesday.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville is the front-runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination but faces two challengers. Six Republicans are running for the Senate seat Tuberville is vacating; four Democrats are seeking that party’s nod, including former Sen. Doug Jones, whom Tuberville defeated in 2020.
Idaho holds primaries for governor and both U.S. House seats Tuesday; the state’s congressional delegation is facing primary challenges from the right. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek faces nine Democratic primary challengers, with 14 Republicans on the GOP side including former Portland Trail Blazers player Chris Dudley. Sen. Jeff Merkley, first elected in 2008, faces nominal Democratic opposition before what is expected to be a routine general. Oregon voters also decide a statewide gas tax measure to fund infrastructure.
What Tuesday Tells Us About Republican Power
The president’s enforcement record this cycle is short and one-directional. In Indiana earlier this month, Trump-backed challengers ousted nearly every state senator who had crossed him on redistricting. In Louisiana on Saturday, Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump after January 6, failed to advance to a runoff after the president endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow. Kentucky 4th is the third notch on the same belt if Gallrein wins.
Three factors make this one different from the prior two. Massie raised more direct campaign money than any of the targets in Indiana or Louisiana. He sits in a deep-red district where party-line voters know him personally. And the air war against him was funded less by Trump-orbit donors than by pro-Israel groups acting on their own priority list, which complicates the narrative Trump has been selling: that loyalty to the president is what is being rewarded or punished.
The Georgia governor’s primary points a different way. The president endorsed Jones, but Jackson’s $83 million in personal spending has functionally crowded out the value of that endorsement, forcing Jones to loan himself nearly $17 million and run a campaign as if he were a self-funder too. If Jackson finishes in the top two and forces a runoff, the lesson for 2028 Republican primary fields is that a billionaire can buy a seat at the runoff table whether or not the president wants them there.
And then there is the Senate race Trump never weighed in on. Republicans wanted Georgia to be the cleanest of their 2026 pickups. The president did not give them a candidate. By Wednesday morning, the cost of that silence shows up in a runoff calendar that stretches Republican spending and donor attention through June while Ossoff banks his cash for the fall.
The bet in Vanceburg pays today. The bet on Georgia pays in November.
