The state of New Jersey had its primary elections on Tuesday and although this is a moderately Democratic state, there were some interesting features.

Three term congressperson Andy Kim won the Democratic primary for the senate seat and seems well on the way to becoming the state’s senator. The incumbent Robert Menendez is on trial for corruption and is vowing to run as an independent but his chances look slim. Kim should be a far better senator than the awful Menendez.

More interesting is that the candidate that serial sex offender and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) endorsed for the Republican senate nomination failed to win.

During a rally in Wildwood last month — in the home county of GOP Senate candidate Curtis Bashaw — Trump endorsed Bashaw’s main rival for the nomination, Mendham Borough Mayor Christine Serrano Glassner.

“I’m giving her my complete and total endorsement,” Trump said at the May 11 rally, calling Bashaw a “Christie person,” referring to former Gov. Chris Christie.

Serrano Glassner ran as a Trump loyalist, even saying she would not have voted to certify the results of the 2020 election that he lost. She is also married to Trump adviser Michael Glassner.

But Bashaw, a more moderate and openly gay hotelier from Cape May with a history of donating to Republicans and Democrats — but never Donald Trump — had his own powerful endorsements: From the bulk of New Jersey’s county committees. That gave him favorable ballot placement with the county line, which Republicans retained this year even though a lawsuit tossed it for the Democratic primary. Bashaw also out-raised Glassner 3-1.

In the end, the Trump endorsement wasn’t enough to carry it for Glassner. With 62 percent of precincts reporting, Bashaw defeated her 48 percent to 37 percent, according to the Associate Press.

This shows that SSACFT’s ability to carry his favored candidates over the finish line even in purely Republican contests is limited.

There were other warning signs for SSACFT in Tuesday’s results.

Donald Trump showed weakness in the suburbs in Tuesday’s primaries, while Joe Biden’s problem with the protest vote appeared to fade.
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A week after Nikki Haley earned 22 percent of the vote in Indiana’s open GOP primary, the widespread expectation was that different rules in the states voting on Tuesday would take a huge chunk out of support for her zombie presidential candidacy.

That didn’t exactly happen. Even though Haley likely won’t end up matching her Indiana total in Maryland, Nebraska or West Virginia, there are still some warning signs for Trump in the results.

Unlike Indiana, where voters can pick any primary ballot they’d like, the GOP primary was open only to registered Republicans in Maryland and Nebraska, and registered Republicans and independents in West Virginia.

Despite its semi-open primary, West Virginia was the Trumpiest of the three states: The former president captured 88 percent of the vote there. But there were significant pockets of Trump resistance among Republicans in Maryland and Nebraska.

It wasn’t shocking to see Haley break 30 percent in the affluent D.C. suburbs of Montgomery County, Maryland. Trump has been weakest in the suburbs throughout the primary process, and Montgomery County towns like Bethesda and Takoma Park represent the beating heart of the Trump resistance.

But it’s more concerning for Trump that she’s at 23 percent in Douglas County, Nebraska, the population center for that state’s 2nd Congressional District. Now-President Biden won the Omaha district’s electoral vote in 2020 thanks to GOP defectors, and Tuesday’s primary showed they’re still not on board with Trump.

But the caveat is that we are still nearly five months away from the election and so should be wary of reading too much into these results.