Tennessee Democratic US Senate Primary vote percentage totals.

Mark Clayton 30 percent
Gary Gene Davis 15.4 percent
Park Overall 15.1 percent
Larry Crimm 11 percent
Dave Hancock 10.2 percent
Benjamin Roberts 10 percent
Thomas Owens 8.3 percent

The winner is… Mark Clayton.  He’s ran before.

Mark Clayton is the former vice president of the Public Advocate of The United States — the same deeply paranoid, gay-hating outfit that misappropriated a gay couple’s wedding photo for use in a political advertisement earlier this year, and last week published what was supposed to be a funny song about child-molesting gay scoutmasters.

These offenses against taste and sanity don’t begin to describe the full breadth and depth of Clayton’s weirdness, or the Public Advocate’s. Mother Jones has an instructive breakdown, which informs us that Clayton once believed the Chinese government had teamed with Google to destroy his political career; that Clayton has denounced Arnold Schwarzenegger as a sort of Austrian Manchurian candidate whose mission is to bring Nazi eugenics to America; and that Clayton’s deepest fears include the construction of a superhighway from Canada to Mexico, the completion of which would for some reason destroy the United States. […]
Elsewhere, he warns of an encroaching “godless new world order” and suggests that Americans who speak out against government policies could some day be placed in “a bone-crushing prison camp similar to the one Alexander Solzhenitsyn was sent or to one of FEMA’s prison camps.” (There are no FEMA prison camps.)

Apparently the state party had asked Park Overall to run.  She’s an actress, best known as a cast member of the sitcom Empty Ness from decades back.  The thought seemed to be that she would have thrown out an occasional one liner and had an amount of fun in her run up to a loss in November that would have made for some good occasional copy.  It’s instructive that the candidate considered to be her main opponent, as per actually spending some money on the thing, came in fourth.  Overall wasn’t that famous, and Mark Clayton was first on the ballot.  So he wins the primary.  And the Democratic Party in the state disowns his candidacy.

And… the problem for the party.  If you’re a Democrat running for the House in rural Tennessee and you see Barack Obama at the top of the ticket and Mark Clayton under him, you’re probably already thinking about calling it a day.

Texas US Senate Democratic Primary election run-off results.
Paul Sadler 63.1 percent
Grady Yarbrough  36.9 percent

At least the state party got their lackluster candidate in.  The county map totals would be worth a look.   I’ve covered Yarbrough’s campaign here:   Yarbrough is popularly believed to have gotten through off of his name, but there’s probably a bit of minority identity politics in there, and the map should show that I think.  Anyway… it is instructive that the Democratic Primary came down to the party establishment pick (reluctantly) versus whoever’s name popped out best… and that last time Yarbrough won he was a Republican where his name didn’t help any.

Mississippi.  He has a famous name.

Albert Gore, Jr.  At least here this old man aligns with party policies, and there’s not much reason anyone else would’ve won.   Let’s see the vote totals.

Albert Gore 56.8 percent
Roger Weiner 24.4 percent
Will Oatis 18.8 percent

Yeah, he probably won because of his name.  The party might have preferred the Afghanistan War veteran, but I doubt they worry too much.

Maine.  The Democrat that is dumped from the party.

There’s nothing wrong with Maine’s candidate.  May be too left for the state party’s liking, and her narrow victory exposed some geopolitical rifts with a gun-toting opponent who’d not step anywhere near Occupy crowds she’s willing to speak to.  But the matter with Cynthia Dill is that she has essentially been dumped by the party, who is running with the Independent Angus King.  It is an interesting situation, that will only lead to a bitter campaign by Cynthia Dill and random flounderings about the rise of the Charlie Crists of the world.

Wyoming.  One chance to avoid embarrassment.

Just to be sure it’s two perennials and an elected official somewhere.  The two dozen Democrats in this state — trust me:  you want Chesnut.   At least the neo-nazi that is running is in the Republican Primary — that saves the party from another case of the situation in Tennessee.  Just trying to warn your state party.

The Republican sacrificial lamb senate races follow a different dynamic.  There are no shortage of “rich men on an educational crusade to teach capitalism” or “Ron Paul Revolution” figures to fill the void of party shrugs.  The former follows the model in Delaware and the latter Minnesota.   Or there’s Rhode Island‘s example — we see that type of promotional purpose campaigning out there.
And yet we Still, there was talk that Orly Taitz could win the California primary in the new Top 2 jungle system, but she didn’t … I don’t know that that’s a shame in balancing the gnashing teeth qualities of party schadenfreude.  I note that the party invited Alan Keyes to run against Obama in 2004, and that someone like Ted Cruz is about to win an easy victory in Texas, so things are balanced away already anyway.

I will be watching to see how Vermont’s Senate primary turns out.  This is actually kinda interesting… it’s moderate of old school type against Tea Party conservative for the sake of taking on and losing badly to the one avowed Socialist in the Senate.  I want to see what Vermont is, and this election will show a bit of what Vermont is.

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