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(CNN) — Bill Haslam, the mayor of Knoxville and considered a moderate Republican, easily won the Tennessee GOP primary for governor Thursday, the Tennessee Department of State’s website reported.

With all of the state’s precincts reporting, Haslam had 47.5 percent of the vote as he defeated Congressman Zach Wamp and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey.

Haslam, who helped fund some of his own campaign, will now face Mike McWherter, a Democratic businessman and son of a former governor. The race is to succeed Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, who is prevented by term limits from running for a third term. Political handicappers think Republicans have a good shot at winning back the governor’s office.

Republican Governors Association spokesman Tim Murtaugh in a statement: “Bill Haslam emerges as a strong candidate headed toward November, having beaten a pair of qualified office holders in a spirited primary. As Tennessee faces great economic challenges, Bill Haslam will be a strong voice for job creation, fiscal restraint and individual freedom.

“A successful mayor and businessman, he has the leadership experience necessary to create jobs and grow the economy. We look forward to seeing him elected the next governor of Tennessee.”

Democratic Governors Association executive director Nathan Daschle said, “Mike McWherter has spent his career growing jobs and strengthening the economy. The only thing Bill Haslam has increased in his career is Knoxville’s taxes and unemployment rate.”

“Voters are looking for someone with the know-how to move the state in the right direction, and that candidate is Mike McWherter,” Daschle added.

The race grabbed national attention last month because of controversial comments by two of the challengers.

Wamp appeared to suggest that Tennessee should consider secession in light of mandates forced on the states by the Obama administration’s health care bill. The eight-term congressman later stepped back from those comments.

Ramsey also drew attention to himself last month after he was seen in a YouTube video questioning whether Islam is a religion. He was expressing his opposition to the expansion of a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, which has become a hot-button issue in the city about 35 miles southeast of Nashville.

Ramsey, who has been endorsed by 20 Tea Party organizations, said he is a supporter of religious freedoms, but such protections may not extend to bringing “Shariah [Islamic] law into the state of Tennessee … into the United States.”

“Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, a cult, whatever you want to call it,” he continued. “But certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time, this is something we are going to have to face.”

Following criticism, Ramsey defended his comments, saying, “My concern is that far too much of Islam has come to resemble a violent political philosophy more than peace-loving religion.”

In a high-profile Congressional primary, two-term Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen overwhelmingly defeated former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton. The campaign in the 9th District, which covers Memphis and has a large African-American population, was dominated by race.

With all precincts reporting, Cohen had 78.7 percent of the vote to Herenton’s 21.3 percent.

Herenton has been urging voters to elect him as the only African-American member of the state’s congressional delegation, saying, “It is as if only white people live in the great state of Tennessee. No African-Americans. I believe that it is very clear to the majority of the citizens of this community that we lack representation.”

Cohen, who served as a state lawmaker in the area before being elected to Congress, has campaigned on what he’s done for education and health care in the area. “I represent everybody and I work hard for people to get them opportunities. And I just think that race should not be an issue in 2010,” he said.

President Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus backed Cohen.

Stephen Fincher won the 8th District Republican primary. Fincher collected 48.5 percent of the vote over Ron Kirkland at 24.4 percent and George Flinn at 24 percent. The race, for Rep. John Tanner’s seat, is noteworthy because the Center for Responsible Politics has called it the most expensive House primary in the country,

Fincher will face Roy Herron, who easily won the Democratic primary.

Haslam wins Tennessee GOP primary for governor

(CNN) — Longtime Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel of New York will be the subject of the House ethics committee’s first corruption trial in almost a decade unless his attorneys reach an agreement to settle his charges.

The House ethics committee on Thursday will make public a report of Rangel’s alleged violations. After a nearly two-year investigation of Rangel, the committee’s report could bring a trial by a panel subcommittee in September.

A formal hearing would be a trial-like session involving formal charges with lawyers for the House acting as prosecutors and Rangel’s attorneys defending him, but some experts don’t foresee Rangel making it to the trial stage.

“I think all sides are going to be motivated to reach some kind of resolution short of the public hearings,” said Robert Walker, former chief counsel and staff director of both the Senate and House ethics committees.

Rangel said he welcomes the trial. He has said that “sunshine will pierce the cloud of serious allegations.”

The outcome of the hearing could range from dropping all charges to reprimand to expulsion from the House of Representatives.

Video: Rep. Rangel addresses ethics charges

Video: Rangel: ‘I look forward to responding’

As a result of his 2002 corruption trial, former Rep. James Traficant, an Ohio Democrat, became the second member of Congress to be kicked out since the Civil War.

Charles Tiefer, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said Traficant’s case “hardly even counts as a serious precedent.”

At the time of his ethics hearing, Traficant already had been convicted of taking bribes and other charges in a court of law. He spent seven years in prison and was released last year.

“A trial, particularly of a senior congressman, on charges that have been headline news, would be one of the most striking committee proceedings the House can have,” said Tiefer, who was solicitor and deputy general counsel of the House for 11 years.

Rangel temporarily stepped down as Ways and Means Committee chairman following the announcement of an ethics investigation of several allegations, including failure to pay taxes on a home in the Dominican Republic.

The congressman has also admitted a failure to report several hundred thousand dollars in assets on federal disclosure forms. In addition, he is under scrutiny for the purported misuse of a rent-controlled apartment for political purposes, as well as for allegedly preserving tax benefits for an oil-drilling company in exchange for donations to a project he supported at the City College of New York.

The House ethics committee previously admonished Rangel for violating rules on receiving gifts. Specifically, the committee found that Rangel violated House gift rules by accepting reimbursement payments for travel to conferences in the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008.

Should Rangel face a trial, it would play out in what Walker described as a cross between a courtroom trial and a congressional hearing.

Both sides would deliver opening statements and present their cases. They could also call witnesses, who could be cross-examined by the other side.

In a public hearing, there is more leeway given to the committee in terms of admissibility of evidence, Walker said.

Following the evidentiary part of the process, there would be closing arguments, and the case would go back to the jury.

In a House ethics trial, the “jury” is made up of an eight-member adjudicatory subcommittee whose members are allowed to question witnesses.

The subcommittee that would consider Rangel’s case comprises four Democrats and four Republicans, according to the ethics committee document.

It said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, is the panel’s chair. Other Democratic members are Reps. G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, Kathy Castor of Florida and Peter Welch of Vermont. The four Republicans are Reps. Michael McCaul of Texas, Mike Conaway of Texas, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania and Gregg Harper of Mississippi.

The jury then would have to determine whether each charge was proven by the standard of “clear and convincing evidence.”

“That is less than ‘proof beyond a reasonable a doubt,’ which would be the standard at a criminal trial, but it’s more than the standard of just ‘preponderance of the evidence, which would be the standard at a civil trial,” Walker said.

Despite the outcome, the trial phase could be detrimental to Rangel, Tiefer said.

“It hurts his public image to parade a sequence of witnesses who testify that he is guilty of receiving favors and so forth, and it also arguably hurts the image of those connected with him in his party delegation,” he said.

If he adequately disputes the facts, he could persuade the committee to moderate or even drop all of the charges, Tiefer added.

The whole matter could be dismissed with no further action if the subcommittee decides that no wrongdoing was proven, but if members decide punishment is warranted, they would then have to decide whether to sanction Rangel.

“If they determine that it was a technical violation, the committee could then issue what’s called a letter of reproval, which is not an actual sanction,” Walker said.

If the committee decides more serious punishment is in order, such as reprimand, censure or expulsion, the full House must vote on the issue.

A simple majority vote is required to reprimand or censure a member of Congress, while a two-thirds majority is required for an expulsion.

The House has expelled only five members of Congress. A number of members, however, have resigned before the House took formal action, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Rangel has served 20 consecutive terms in the House. He’s facing a September 14 Democratic contest with Adam Clayton Powell IV, the son of the late scandal-plagued congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was ousted by Rangel 40 years ago.

Rangel’s other primary challengers include banker Vince Morgan, liberal activist Jonathan Tasini and Joyce Johnson, a field director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Rangel said last week that he hoped the matter could be concluded in time for the September contest.

CNN’s Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

How Rangel’s ethics hearing could play out

(CNN) — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich won’t yet say if he’s running for president in 2012, but he picked up an unlikely endorsement Sunday.

Gingrich, a leading conservative Republican, has “a ton of ideas to move the country forward,” former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a past chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“There are no ideas in the Republican Party right now in the Congress,” Dean said. “They’re the party of ‘no.’ They desperately need some intellectual leadership. And whatever you think of Newt Gingrich, he can supply intellectual leadership. So I hope he does run. “

Gingrich, who also appeared on the show, joked that Dean’s backing could doom his candidacy if he runs.

“Here’s my opponent’s clip in the primaries,” Gingrich said of the Dean comment.

Dean endorses a Gingrich candidacy

Washington (CNN) — The Justice Department weighed in on one of the most explosive issues in American politics Tuesday, filing a lawsuit to overturn a tough new Arizona immigration law that has sharply divided people along partisan, ideological and ethnic lines.

It also asked the federal courts to grant an injunction to stop enforcement of the measure before it takes effect late this month.

Arizona’s law requires immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times and allows police to question the residency status of people in the course of enforcing another law. It also targets businesses that hire illegal immigrant laborers or knowingly transport them.

Justice Department lawyers argued in its brief that the state statute should be declared invalid because it has improperly preempted federal law.

“A state may not establish its own immigration policy or enforce state laws in a manner that interferes with the federal immigration laws,” the brief states. “The Constitution and the federal immigration laws do not permit the development of a patchwork of state and local immigration policies throughout the country.”

The Arizona law “disrupts federal enforcement priorities and resources that focus on aliens who pose a threat to national security or public safety. … If allowed to go into effect, [the law's] mandatory enforcement scheme will conflict with and undermine the federal government’s careful balance of immigration enforcement priorities and objectives.”

Arizona is interested only in “attrition” in order to end illegal entries and has not addressed several other federal obligations to deal with immigrants, including removal proceedings, humanitarian concerns and foreign relations, the brief contends.

President Barack Obama said in a speech July 1 that the measure has “fanned the flames of an already contentious debate.” Among other things, it puts pressure on police officers to enforce rules that are “unenforceable” while making communities less safe — in part, by making people more reluctant to report crimes, he said.

It also has “the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”

Before the government’s filing, Arizona’s two senators, both Republicans, called the Obama administration move “far too premature.”

“Moreover, the American people must wonder whether the Obama administration is really committed to securing the border when it sues a state that is simply trying to protect its people by enforcing immigration law,” Sens. Jon Kyl and John McCain said in a statement.

Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick called the lawsuit a “sideshow” in a statement released before it was officially filed.

“A court battle between the federal government and Arizona will not move us closer to securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” she said.

Arizona’s Republican governor, Jan Brewer, has accused the Obama administration of failing to secure the border with Mexico, thereby forcing her state to act on its own.

“Do your job. Secure the border,” Brewer said of the president in a July 1 speech to a Republican group. She pledged to “defend this law against every assault, including attacks by the Obama administration.”

Obama renewed his push for comprehensive immigration reform last week, calling for bipartisan cooperation on an issue reflecting deep social and political divisions.

Seeking an elusive middle ground on the subject, the president highlighted the importance of immigrants to American history and progress while acknowledging the fear and frustration many feel with a system that he said seems “fundamentally broken.”

He asserted that the majority of Americans are ready to embrace reform legislation that would help resolve the status of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

In his July 1 speech, Obama warned that rounding up everyone in the country who has entered illegally would be both “logistically impossible” and “tear at the fabric of the nation.” At the same time, the president indicated it would be wrong to offer blanket amnesty for people who came into the United States unlawfully.

Despite Obama’s call for bipartisan immigration reform, several senior Democratic sources said Thursday that they see virtually no chance of Congress taking up such a measure before November’s midterm elections.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted in late May indicated that public support for beefing up security along the U.S. border with Mexico had grown significantly. According to the survey, nearly nine out of 10 Americans want to increase U.S. law enforcement along the border with Mexico.

Eight in 10 questioned also supported a program that would allow illegal immigrants already in the United States to stay here and apply for legal residency, provided they had a job and paid back taxes.

But only 38 percent say that program should be a higher priority than border security and other get-tough proposals. Six in 10 said border security was the higher priority.

CNN’s Terry Frieden, Bill Mears and Alan Silverleib contributed to this report

Feds challenge Arizona immigration law

By

Linda Feldmann,

Charleston, West Virginia (CNN) — He was raised an orphan of the West Virginia coal mines years before the Great Depression.

On Friday — as his body made a final return to the state he loved — Sen. Robert C. Byrd was remembered as a political titan, champion of the poor, and defender of the Constitution.

Political leaders from both parties and every corner of the country came together at the start of the Independence Day weekend to pay homage to America’s longest serving member of Congress, who died Monday at the age of 92.

President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were among the mourners who gathered at a memorial service in Charleston for the veteran legislator.

Byrd was “somebody who knew how to keep the faith with his state, with his family, with his country and his Constitution,” Obama said, standing before a packed, sun-splashed state capitol. “His life bent towards justice … (and) immeasurably improved the lives of West Virginians.”

Video: Pres. Obama: Byrd a ‘Senate icon’

Video: Sen. Robert Byrd remembered

He “possessed that quintessential American quality,” Obama said. “And that is a capacity to change, a capacity to learn … and a capacity to be made more perfect.”

Victoria Kennedy, the widow of Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, said her husband considered him “a modern incarnation of ancient virtues. A Roman of West Virginia.”

“Someone will take Robert Byrd’s seat,” she said. “But no one will ever take his place.”

Byrd, who first entered Congress at the end of the Truman administration, was known as a master of the Senate’s arcane rules and a staunch defender of congressional power.

His speeches often were laced with poetry and references to the Greek and Roman classics. He typically punctuated his remarks by the brandishing of a well-worn pocket copy of the Constitution.

Over the course of his long public career, Byrd came to be “seen as the very embodiment of the Senate,” Obama said. But “his passion for the Senate’s past … was not an obsession with the trivial or the obscure.” It was born of a recognition of the fact that “we are not a nation of men. We are a nation of laws.”

Byrd also was known as the “King of Pork,” using powerful positions in Congress to steer federal spending to his home state — one of the nation’s poorest. Much of that funding famously went toward infrastructure improvements, most notably road and bridge construction.

Clinton recalled an occasion when, soon after he became president, he told Byrd that “if you pave every single inch of West Virginia, it’s going to be much harder to mine coal.” Byrd, in response, said that “the Constitution does not prohibit humble servants from delivering whatever they can to their constituents.”

Byrd’s remains lay in repose in the Senate chamber on Thursday — a rare honor accorded to only two other senators since World War II. His casket was displayed on the same catafalque used for Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Thurgood Marshall, among others.

“The Senate was Robert C. Byrd’s cathedral (and) West Virginia was his heaven,” Biden said Friday. “There’s not a lot of hyperbole in that.”

Obama has ordered flags on federal buildings to fly at half-staff through Tuesday, except on Independence Day. A proclamation issued by the president said the order was given “as a mark of respect for (Byrd’s) memory and long-standing service.”

Byrd will be buried Tuesday after a funeral service in Arlington, Virginia.

CNN’s Alan Silverleib contributed to this report.

Political leaders bid farewell to West Virginia’s favorite son

Washington (CNN) — President Obama renewed his push for comprehensive immigration reform Thursday, calling for bipartisan cooperation on an issue that has repeatedly led to deep social and political division.

The president tried to find what has often proven to be an elusive middle ground on the subject, highlighting the importance of immigrants to American history and progress while also acknowledging the fear and frustration many people now feel with a system that he said seems “fundamentally broken.”

He asserted the majority of Americans are ready to embrace reform legislation that would help resolve the status of an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

“I believe we can put politics aside and finally have an immigration system that’s accountable,” Obama told an audience at Washington’s American University. “I believe we can appeal not to people’s fears, but to their hopes, to their highest ideals. Because that’s who we are as Americans.”

The president targeted Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, which requires immigrants to carry alien registration documents at all times and requires police to question people if there’s reason to suspect they’re in the United States illegally. It also targets businesses that hire illegal immigrant laborers or knowingly transport them.

Video: White House: Republicans needed

Video: Marine’s mom fears deportation

Video: Obama pushes on immigration issue

The measure — under review by the Justice Department — has “fanned the flames of an already contentious debate,” Obama said. It puts pressure on police officers to enforce rules that are “unenforceable” while making communities less safe — in part, by making people more reluctant to report crimes. It also has “the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound.”

Rounding up everyone in the country who has entered illegally would be both “logistically impossible” and “tear at the fabric of the nation,” the president warned.

But at the same time, Obama suggested, it would be wrong to offer blanket amnesty for people who came into the United States unlawfully.

To do so “would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. … It would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally.”

Ultimately, he said, “our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.”

Obama said those who entered the country illegally must admit they broke the law, register with the appropriate authorities, pay taxes, pay a fine and learn English. They must “get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship.”

The president urged Congress to tackle immigration reform legislation but stressed that it would require support from both Democrats and Republicans.

“That is the political and mathematical reality,” he said.

Obama’s remarks, however, immediately received a cold reception from one top Senate Republican.

Obama and congressional Democrats “made a strategic decision to put immigration on the back burner, and they now claim they can’t even propose immigration legislation without a Republican,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “It’s time for the president and congressional Democrats to stop the charade. Op-eds, outlines and speeches won’t cut it anymore.”

In turn, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, lashed out at the GOP, arguing that “instead of matching the leadership of Democrats to solve this problem and engaging in good-faith negotiations, Republicans continue to engage in political grandstanding and polarizing rhetoric that encourages intolerance of our vibrant immigration population.”

Reid, who is facing a tough re-election fight this year, is counting on a strong turnout among Latino voters in November.

Despite Obama’s call for bipartisan immigration reform, several senior Democratic sources said Thursday that they see virtually no chance of Congress taking up such a measure before November’s midterm elections.

Though some hold out hope for potential movement during a lame-duck session of Congress after the election, most sources said next year is the more realistic earliest target. But even that, according to one source, may be “happy talk.”

Still, these sources said that, politically, it was crucial for the president to give a speech like he did Thursday to put pressure on Republicans and, more importantly, to reassure angry Latino voters that Democrats haven’t forgotten about the issue.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. national poll conducted in late May indicated that public support for beefing up security along the U.S. border with Mexico had grown significantly. According to the survey, nearly nine out of 10 Americans want to beef up U.S. law enforcement along the border with Mexico.

Eight in 10 questioned also supported a program that would allow illegal immigrants already in the United States to stay here and apply for legal residency if they had a job and paid back taxes. Thirty-eight percent said that program should be a higher priority than border security and other get-tough proposals. Six in 10 said border security was the higher priority.

The president’s speech followed a highly anticipated meeting this week in which he discussed immigration reform with grass-roots reform advocates.

“From our meeting, it is clear that the president is committed to comprehensive immigration reform and understands that congressional action is needed urgently,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum and a meeting attendee.

Other topics discussed at the meeting included concerns that grass-roots leaders had about reforms to current detention and deportation procedures, Noorani said.

CNN’s Dana Bash contributed to this report.

Obama calls for immigration reform

By

Mark Clayton,

Washington (CNN) — Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as top commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday should be looked at as a learning lesson, a former general said.

“We will all learn from it, and it will be a learning moment for the military as well as for people in Washington,” said retired Army Gen. Russel Honore, a CNN contributor. “It will remind all of those in uniform that we live by a code of conduct, and we live by a uniformed code of military justice. … It will remind us of that pledge and that oath that we will obey those [civilian] officers appointed over us.”

President Obama accepted McChrystal’s resignation “with considerable regret” and nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, to take his place.

The moves come in the wake of politically explosive remarks about about key administration officials — including Vice President Joe Biden — made by McChrystal and his aides in a Rolling Stone magazine profile of the general to be published Friday.

The consequences of McChrystal’s resignation is a positive thing, a foreign policy expert said.

“I think the consequences frankly are more positive than negative,” said Steve Clemons, the director for the American Strategy Program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation.

He noted Obama’s decision sends a clear signal that the mission will continue.

“Obama is indicating that he doesn’t want to shift at all, at least in the time being, the military strategy,” Clemons said. “It’s a very strong signal that this was not about strategy.”

Clemons added that to some degree, replacing McChrystal with Petraeus showed the president is doubling down on the counterinsurgency approach.

Video: Gen. McChrystal arrives at White House

Video: McChrystal article author speaks out

Video: Obama ‘did the right thing’

“Petraeus really knows at a granular level the entire operation, and he’s familiar with not only the entire operation; he’s been meeting with these people regularly in both Pakistan and Afghanistan sides. So he’s wedged into this,” he said.

CNN Chief National Correspondent John King said Petraeus was tapped to lead the mission because he knows the strategy and can go tomorrow and pick it up.

“And because he has the credibility of the United States Congress and around the world,” King added.

But how are service members in Afghanistan taking McChrystal’s resignation?

“While some blow off speculation that the general may be replaced as ‘back-home talk,’ the fact remains that they are fighting in this hostile swath of Afghan desert by the general’s design, waging a brand of counterinsurgency campaign that bears his [McChrystal] signature,” Time magazine’s Jason Motlagh reported Wednesday from Marjah, Afghanistan.

Marine Lt. Colonel Brian Christmas, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment, told Motlagh that news of McChrystal’s predicament is, for now, “outside [the] box.”

“However, if changes up the chain of command start to undermine the counterinsurgency strategy that he’s following, he adds, ‘then that becomes a real concern,’ Motlagh wrote.

“Another officer agreed that given the slow progress, ‘any [potential] loss of momentum’ arising from the general’s departure would be “bad for the mission.”

McChrystal incident a ‘learning moment’

(CNN) — Voters in four states headed to the polls Tuesday, and in one of those states history was made:

South Carolina

South Carolina Republicans made state Rep. Nikki Haley their first female gubernatorial nominee, handing her an easy victory in her primary runoff race against U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett.

Haley just missed out on winning the nomination outright in the June 8 primary, capturing 49 percent of the vote in a four-candidate field. She was short of the 50 percent-plus-one needed to take the nomination.

Once facing long odds for the GOP nomination, Haley rose in the polls thanks in part to endorsements by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

And unsubstantiated allegations by two other Republicans that they had affairs with Haley, who is married with children, most likely helped rather than hurt her campaign. So did a racial slur by a Republican state lawmaker at Haley, who is Indian-American and was raised Sikh, but became a Methodist at age 24.

“The unproven allegations and attacks against Haley actually played right into her message as a new kind of conservative,” said CNN political producer Peter Hamby, who is in South Carolina reporting on the campaign. “In fighting back, she was able to argue that establishment figures in the GOP were playing politics as usual and trying to stop a real reformer from taking charge in Columbia.”

Video: Nasty fight for GOP’s Nikki Haley

Haley will be considered the favorite in the general election against state Sen. Vincent Sheheen, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee. Haley would become the Palmetto state’s first woman governor if elected in November.

There were also runoffs in South Carolina in contests for the House of Representatives and for the state Legislature. State Rep. Tim Scott hopes to become the first black Republican to win election to Congress from South Carolina in a century. He faced off against Paul Thurmond, the son of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, in a GOP House primary runoff.

Republican Rep. Bob Inglis is hoping he won’t become the third House incumbent to lose a bid for re-election so far this primary season. He grabbed 27 percent of the vote in the primary and faced a runoff against Spartanburg prosecutor Trey Gowdy. Inglis faced criticism for his vote in favor of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, better known as the Wall Street bailout.

North Carolina

In neighboring North Carolina, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall handily won a Democratic Senate primary runoff against former state Sen. Cal Cunningham, who was recruited by national Democrats. Marshall will challenge Republican Sen. Richard Burr in November’s general election.

“Richard Burr doesn’t have the strongest poll numbers, but that may not matter,” said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher and editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. Rothenberg said neither of the Democratic candidates “seems likely to put together the kind of campaign that would defeat Burr.”

Voters in three congressional districts and one state Senate district also cast ballots in runoff contests.

Mississippi

Two Republicans are in a runoff to decide who will face eight-term incumbent Rep. Bennie Thompson in November in Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District.

Richard Cook, a Jackson-area teacher, finished a single vote ahead of Bill Marcy, a former Chicago, Illinois, police officer, in the state’s June 1 primary, with each getting 35 percent of the vote in a three-candidate field. Cook lost in his 2008 bid to unseat Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, with Thompson getting 69 percent of the vote.

Utah

The fight for the GOP Senate nomination is capturing the spotlight in Utah, and the contest will be another test of the political strength of the Tea Party Express.

The national Tea Party group, which is based in California, is backing and assisting lawyer Mike Lee in the battle to succeed fellow Republican Bob Bennett, who is supporting the other candidate on the ballot, businessman Tim Bridgewater.

Bridgewater and Lee finished first and second, respectively last month at the Utah Republican Party convention, advancing to Tuesday’s primary. Bridgewater and Lee touted themselves as more reliable conservatives than Bennett, who finished third in the voting by delegates, eliminating him from advancing to the primary and ending his chances of re-election for a fourth term. Bennett became the first sitting senator to go down to defeat in a primary season marked by strong anti-incumbent sentiment.

The Tea Party Express, best known for its three national bus tours, is running radio ads supporting Lee. The group recently pumped more than $500,000 into the recent fight for the Republican Senate nomination in Nevada, helping transform ex-state lawmaker Sharron Angle, once considered a long shot, into an easy winner in this month’s primary election.

FreedomWorks also has endorsed Lee, and its volunteers are assisting in get-out-the-vote efforts in Utah. FreedomWorks is a nonprofit conservative organization that helps train volunteer activists and has provided much of the organizational heft behind the Tea Party movement.

Bennett upset many conservatives with his 2007 vote for President Bush’s plan for a pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants and his 2008 vote for the federal bailout of banks and financial institutions. The fiscally conservative Club for Growth actively worked to defeat Bennett, as did local Tea Party organizations and Tea Party Express.

The GOP dominates statewide elections in Utah, and the winner of the Republican primary will be considered the overwhelming favorite to win the general election in November.

Haley makes history in South Carolina