House races

Indiana state Rep. Jackie Walorski has won the GOP primary to face Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) in November.

Walorski, a top GOP recruit who the party hopes will make the district competitive again, easily won her primary. She led her closest competitor 57-31 with 46 percent of precincts reporting. The race has been called.

Donnelly won a largely uncontested race with 67 percent of the vote in 2008, but Republicans have redoubled their efforts to go after him this cycle. To that end, Walorski has been named to the NRCC's Young Guns program, where she has reached the second of three stages -- contender.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) has won his primary amidst some uncertainty, but he may finish below 50 percent.

Even if Indiana GOP Reps. Mark Souder and Dan Burton win their respective primaries, tonight's results won’t reassure establishment candidates.

For those following tonight's primary results in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio, make sure to follow us on Twitter for live-tweeting throughout the night. We'll get you the latest results fast and keep you up to date on what the numbers mean.

Aaron is @aablake

Sean is @sjlmiller

President Barack Obama urged voters to support "a Democrat" in a Hawaii special election, though he didn't get more specific than that.

The president recorded a robocall for voters in the state's 1st congressional district, where Democratic primary voters are split between former Rep. Ed Case (D) and state Sen. Colleen Hanabusa (D).

"Aloha, this is President Obama on behalf of the Democratic Party. As you know, there's an election for Congress taking place, and your support for a Democrat is crucial for us to continue pushing forward our agenda for change," Obama says in the call, which was sponsored by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

"I need a Democrat who will support my agenda in Congress," the president said. "It's crucial that you vote and you vote Democratic."

The Republican candidate in the race, Charles Djou, has benefited from a split field ahead of the May 22 special election to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D), who resigned.

Democrats have stayed neutral in the race, but have hoped that one of the two candidates might prevail with high turnout in the traditionally Democratic district.

Cross-posted to the Briefing Room.

Businessman Mac Warner is rising in the polls in next week’s GOP primary in Rep. Alan Mollohan’s (D-W.Va.) district, even as his family’s business deals with myriad troubles, including several previously unreported tax liens.

A lawsuit filed by PNC Bank against Warner and his family’s collapsed rental housing business in February shows the business owed tax liens in Monongalia County of more than $23,000, as of mid-2009. And a separate document shows the Warners owed a lien of $10,000 in 2003.

The news comes as internal GOP polling shows Warner has surpassed former state Sen. Sarah Minear in polling and is running first in the key Clarksburg and Parkersburg media markets in Mollohan’s district. The national GOP favors former state Del. David McKinley in the race, and the underfunded Warner is threatening to play spoiler.

Warner’s campaign declined to comment on the tax liens, citing the fact that Warner put his assets in a blind trust when he launched his congressional run. The liens were issued before that time.

“We simply cannot comment on this either way, whether it’s accurate or not,” Warner campaign manager Anthony Conchel said. “Clearly we are shooting up in the polls, which explains McKinley’s desperate attacks in these final days – only days after he said he instructed his campaign not to go negative.”

Conchel referred comment on the liens to Warner’s brother, Kris Warner, who is also listed in the PNC suit.

We bet you didn’t know that the 17th Amendment was such a hot-button issue this year.

The issue has already made its way into the races of at least two of the GOP's top 10 House recruits, and one of them has already stumbled over it.

The 17th Amendment provides for direct election of U.S. senators, and it turns out it isn’t too popular in the Tea Party movement. It’s a strange issue to be taking a position on, but when the base calls for something, it’s hard to say no.

And nobody knows that better than Steve Stivers.

The former Ohio state senator said in a 912 Project questionnaire last year that he supported repealing the 17th Amendment, and then he reasserted that position in a January interview with The Hill.

But after Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy’s (D-Ohio) campaign began to make an issue of that position, Stivers backed away from it in recent days.

“I made a mistake," he told the Columbus Dispatch. "I answered that question wrong. It was not intentional.”

Stivers is one of 10 candidates who have attained the status of Young Gun in the NRCC’s program for top candidates. Late last week, another one of the 10, Iraq veteran Vaughn Ward, also came out in favor of the amendment.

Ward, who is running against Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) and faces a primary with a candidate who has come out for a repeal, said he agrees with that position.

“The framers of the Constitution believed that the Senate was to be picked by our state legislature, and through the 17th Amendment, they changed that,” Ward said on a local public television program (see it at about the 15:00 mark here). “And I think that that’s been part of the problem of eroding away state’s rights, where that body, the Senate, is no longer beholden to and tied to the state.

“When you look at how come state’s rights have been so abrogated, it’s because of things like the 17th Amendment that has taken away those rights from our states."

Satisfying the framers' intent is generally a winning position to take, but do most people want their senators elected by their state legislatures?

Mitt Romney is backing state Rep. Jeff Perry in the GOP primary in Rep. Bill Delahunt's (D-Mass.) district.

Delahunt's retirement has led candidates to flood the race, including on the GOP side, where Perry faces a primary with former state Treasurer Joe Malone.

Romney chose Perry over Malone on Monday, citing their work together when Romney was governor in the mid-2000s.

"As Governor, I worked closely with Jeff on initiatives to reduce spending, lower taxes, and reform government," Romney said. "He will be a strong conservative voice against the Washington culture of higher taxes, higher spending, and higher debt.  I am looking forward to the contributions he will make in the U.S. House of Representatives."

Romney's political action committee is donating $2,500 to Perry's campaign, with the funds being devoted to the primary.

Former Rep. James Traficant filed paperwork Monday to run as an independent against Rep. Tim Ryan (D) in Ohio's 17th congressional district.

Traficant, who represented the district until 2002, when he was expelled from the House following a conviction on corruption charges, had been deciding between challenging Ryan, or Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-Ohio) in a neighboring district.

The flamboyant former congressman was released from a federal prison last September, and had been flirting with the prospect of a comeback in his native Youngstown area, where he remains somewhat personally popular.

Ryan has won reelection fairly comfortably over Republican opponents in the past few election cycles, though Traficant ate into his margin of victory when he was first elected in 2002, and Traficant ran again for Congress from his jail cell.

Ryan is a former staffer for Traficant, whose decision to challenge Ryan was first reported Monday by the Youngstown Vindicator.

Cross-posted to the Briefing Room.

Republicans hold an eight-point lead in the Hawaii special election as the mail-in voting begins in the race, according to a new Honolulu Advertiser poll.

The poll shows Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou (R) with 36 percent of the vote, former Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) at 28 percent and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa (D) at 22 percent. Just 13 percent of voters are undecided.

The poll is significant because voting beings this week, and voting is being done only by mail. That means a significant amount of the final vote total will begin to tabulate, and whoever has the momentum right now can start to build a lead in the May 22 race.

A two-week-old Research 2000 poll from the liberal website Daily Kos showed Djou with a smaller lead, besting Case 32-29, with Hanabusa at 28 percent.