State Treasurer Doug Ducey cruised to an easy win Tuesday night for the Republican nomination for Arizona governor and will take on Democrat Fred DuVal in November.
The results were not so good for another pair of Republicans in state government -- scandal-plagued Attorney General Tom Horne lost his primary to former Arizona Department of Gaming director Mark Brnovich. John Huppenthal, the state's Superintendent of Public Instruction who was caught up in a scandal of his own this year, lost big to primary challenger Diane Douglas.
See also: -New Times' Complete Election Coverage
Although 100 percent of the votes still haven't been counted by this morning, 1,519 of the state's 1,566 have been counted, making the results for these primary races in state government clear.
As for Ducey's win, early polls certainly showed Ducey with a lead, but there was never an indication that he had such a commanding lead. Ducey took in more than 37 percent of the votes with second-place finisher Scott Smith, the former mayor of Mesa, who racked up 22 percent of the vote. Former GoDaddy executive Christine Jones lagged behind at less than 17 percent.
Ducey's opponent come November, Democrat Fred DuVal, ran unopposed in his primary race.
"I want to congratulate Fred on his big win," Ducey said in his victory speech. "We know this guy is simply unstoppable, as long as he doesn't have an opponent."
In the AG's race, Brnovich jumped out to a big enough lead early Tuesday night that he was able to claim victory before the night's end. Horne, however, refused to concede to Brnovich.
Horne apparently believes he can still make up a 24,000-vote gap with just 47 voting precincts left to county. Though that's incredibly unlikely, if not mathematically impossible.
Brnovich will face Democrat Felecia Rotellini, who was unopposed in her primary race, and narrowly lost the general election race for AG to Horne in 2010.
The other big loser last night was Superintendent Huppenthal, who lost big-time to Republican challenger Diane Douglas.
The race for superintendent isn't often a race that commands a lot of public attention, but it did this time, in the wake of people discovering Huppenthal's bizarre anonymous blog comments.
However, Huppenthal told New Times Tuesday night he didn't think the blog posts were the reason for his loss.
Huppenthal's challenger, Diane Douglas, is up by about 15 percentage points.
Douglas will face Democrat David Garcia, who won the only contested Democratic primary for a statewide elected office. Garcia defeated Sharon Thomas by what's currently a margin of about 17,000 votes.
The other three statewide offices (well, there's always state mine inspector, but the current one's running completely unopposed) are the Treasurer's office, being vacated by Ducey; the Secretary of State's Office, being vacated by Ken Bennett, who ran for governor; and the Corporation Commission.
Jeff DeWit won a three-way Republican primary for Treasurer, beating out former Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman and former Arizona Republican Party chairman Randy Pullen. The Democrats didn't field a candidate for Treasurer.
Michele Reagan won the Republican nomination for Secretary of State, beating out Justin Pierce and Wil Cardon. Reagan will face former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard, who was unopposed in his primary.
Doug Little and Tom Forese won the four-way Republican primary for spots on the Corporation Commission, and the Dems' two candidates, Jim Holway and Sandra Kennedy, were unopposed.
Ray Stern, Stephen Lemons, Ashley Cusick, and Monica Alonzo contributed to this post.
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