Time now to recap last night's primary election with our friend Rylan Barton, who is a senior editor with NPR.

Good to see you, Rayland.

Good to see you, too, Renee.

So let's start with kind of the top of the ticket, not necessarily president, because we all have talked about that a lot or what needs to be said has been said.

But one of the interesting congressional races that voters in the fourth Congressional District got a chance to weigh in on was the Thomas Massie, and that was Eric Dieter's and another gentleman in that race.

And Thomas Massie took away that race last night.

And many were surprised that Eric Peters, who had run for governor in the May primary mayoral primary, didn't do better than he did.

He had a third place showing.

Yeah, he had a very noisy campaign for governor last year, and I think that some expected him to perform a little bit better in this northern Kentucky area.

Congressional seat.

But incumbent Thomas Massie came back with 76% of the vote.

It was a Derek Peters out of finishing third place in that race.

This was kind of the most interesting congressional race in Kentucky during this primary election.

Just too hard to say when, you know, when Representative Massie, one has such a wide margin there.

But, you know, several of Kentucky's congressmen were running unopposed and there or there were just minor candidates running against him.

But in in Massey's case, it was also the fact that the the political action group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent almost $330,000 in negative television ads against Massey criticizing him for voting against aid for Israel.

He was able to overcome this.

I saw something, a statement over the last night showing that that the group is really just try and saying that they were just trying to highlight this issue going forward.

And some people are speculating this is all sort of potentially ding him from, you know, trying to run for the U.S. Senate on down the road.

So there is there is a still is a few things to talk about there.

But he easily got a vote and need he said it just showed the voters in the district of you value his independence from his own party that sometimes he but he is voting against what other Republicans are voting for and and what presidents of both parties have done.

And so is is continuing to kind of have this libertarian and independent streak and be rewarded for it by voters in northern Kentucky.

And when he was asked, I do believe on Monday of this week about did he believe there would be any blowback from his kind of coup with Marjorie Taylor GREENE to oust Speaker Mike Johnson?

He's like, you know, and and they had a game of people aren't really paying close attention.

Right.

And he didn't feel like there would be any repercussions.

And he was right about that in terms of how this race turned out.

Yeah, he was right about that.

And really some that one moment was an opportunity for him to get a lot more national headlines, too, and to be part of, you know, something a lot of folks were talking about, at least for a moment, even though that was just resoundingly defeated by folks in both parties.

Yeah.

So it could have worked for him, right, because of all the extra press he got.

Right.

So now let's talk about a couple of key state House races, some real nail biters and a couple.

We're still waiting for them to be officially called by the Associated Press.

I'll let you start with what you think is something Give us the takeaways from those Tuesday primaries on the state House level.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of what I was watching, which is a lot of it's informed by the the folks at Kentucky Public Radio were covering Joe Sock and Sylvia Goodman and Justin Books focusing on who was out, which two groups were supporting different candidates, especially the the State Chamber of Commerce and then groups aligned with so-called Liberty wing of the Republican Party.

More conservative, especially on social issues.

And there were a couple of big races.

And, you know, in some ways, we didn't really learn a lot of overarching lessons from this.

But it certainly did play out a really interesting racist feeling.

Symone, a Lexington area state representative who was backed by the State Chamber of Commerce, He's somebody who's more of a moderate candidate and some more conservative Republicans were criticizing him for his votes, say, against the the state's anti-trans ban.

He he ended up losing that seat to a to a newcomer candidate named Thomas Jefferson.

I think another interesting part of this is that, you know, this is potentially an area, an area that Democrats could pick up in the suburbs of Lexington and also Justin County.

And I think we saw some some other examples like that as well.

So another example of one of the the kind of chamber backed candidates not being victorious, former state Representative C Ed Massey in northern Kentucky, area district in being county lost that attempt to get his seat back, too, to T.J. Roberts, who's a somebody who's really trying to make his name pushing for so-called school choice initiatives in the state legislature, whichever have had a really hard time making it out of especially the House of Representatives in the state.

This is something going forward.

I think we're going to be watching a lot of kind of the Republican Party continues to push and pull over this kind of moderate to to some more conservative part of the Republican Party on issues like like school choice or on issues like some of these social conservative lines of bills, like the anti-trans bill, like a II bill which failed to get out of the legislature this year.

And it's something that more moderate Republicans and I would say aligned to those who are being supported by the State Chamber of Commerce are, you know, starting to starting to have to deal with a growing number of state legislators that are being elected from the more conservative wing in the party.

So we will see how this shapes out in the general election really.

I'm going to be interested to see if Democrats win any of these races, but also going into, you know, whatever the outcome of that is, how it works out in next year's legislative session.

Well, and you make a good point.

And we talked about it last night on our election coverage that that seat that you were talking about with Tammany House district number 45, Adam Moore, who was the Democratic nominee, he was uncontested.

Democrats feel really strongly about him.

He's got some pretty good business credentials.

And they think that in that district, which is not the old Stan Lee district, that was a lot more conservative.

Right.

That that could be a pickup for them.

So we'll have to see.

But for Republicans to hold on to, they've been, you know, 80% of seats in both chambers of the legislature, That's a really steep majority.

And once you get that at high, it's hard to hold on to that great of a margin.

Right.

And we should remind our viewers and voters that come November won't just be the names on the ballot, but a question on the ballot and you alluded to this, the school choice amendment, as we often shorthanded refer to it, that would make the way perhaps paved the way for school choice options in Kentucky that will be on the ballot.

And we'll see how much of an issue that really drives voter motivation and even maybe some of these candidates who are running on that platform.

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

That that's going to be a real tagline for some of these candidates.

Get their name out there and to add an issue for them to campaign on and knocked doors over.

Yeah.

Well, Roland Barton, always good to see you.

Thanks so much.

Good to see you, Renee.