President Biden and Donald Trump won several of their parties' primaries on Tuesday, securing more delegates as they continue their march toward a rematch in November's presidential election.
Biden, a Democrat, and Trump, a Republican, easily won Tuesday's primaries in Kansas, Ohio and Illinois. Trump also won the Republican primary in Florida. There was no contest for Biden's victory in Florida, as Democrats there canceled their primaries and chose to award all of their 224 delegates to him, a move that takes precedence for a sitting president. Trump and Biden are also expected to easily win Tuesday's primary in Arizona, where they will receive more support after becoming the presumptive nominees of their parties last week.
Other races outside the presidency could provide insight into the national political mood. In Ohio's Republican Senate primary, Trump-backed businessman Bernie Moreno defeated two challengers, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Matt Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team.
Chicago voters will decide whether to establish a one-time property tax to pay for new services for the homeless. California voters will move toward selecting a replacement for former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who resigned his seat after being ousted from the Republican Party leadership.
Trump and Biden have focused for weeks on the general election, and more recently have targeted their campaigns at states that could be competitive in November rather than just those holding primaries.
Trump, a Florida voter, cast his ballot at a Palm Beach entertainment center on Tuesday, telling reporters: “I voted for Donald Trump.”
On Saturday, he rallied in Ohio, which for several years has remained reliably Republican after once being a national leader in presidential elections. Trump won the state by about 8 percentage points in 2016 and 2020. But there are signs that the state may be more competitive in 2024. Last year, Ohio voted overwhelmingly to protect abortion rights in its constitution and voted to legalize marijuana.
Biden was visiting Nevada and Arizona on Tuesday, two states that were among the closest in 2020 and remain top priorities for both campaigns.
Trump and Biden are running on their records in office and portraying the other as a threat to America. Trump, 77, portrays 81-year-old Biden as mentally unfit. The president described his Republican rival as a threat to democracy after trying to overturn the 2020 election results and praising foreign strongmen.
These issues were clear on Tuesday in some polling stations.
“President Biden, I don’t think he knows how to tie his shoes anymore,” said Trump supporter Linda Bennett, who lives in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, near the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Even as she echoed Trump's arguments about Biden, she criticized Trump's rhetoric and “the way he frames himself” as “not presidential at all.” But she said the former president is “a man of his word,” and said the country, especially the economy, has become stronger for her under Trump's leadership.
In Columbus, Ohio, Democrat Brenda Woodfolk voted for Biden and helped draft the president's choice this fall.
“It's scary,” she said of the prospect of Trump returning to the Oval Office again. “Trump wants to be a dictator, and talks about making America white again and all that kind of nonsense. “There's a lot of hate going on.”
Bennett and Woodfolk agreed that immigration is one of their top concerns, although they offered different views on why.
“This border thing is out of control,” Bennett said. “I think it's the government's conspiracy or plan to bring in these people to change the whole dynamic in their favor, so I'm very upset.”
Woodfolk said she doesn't mind immigrants “sharing” opportunities in the United States, but she worries it comes at the expense of “people who have been here their whole lives.”
Trump and Republicans have criticized Biden over the influx of migrants crossing the border between the United States and Mexico in recent years, seeking to capitalize on this issue outside the border states. Biden has stepped up a counterattack in recent weeks after Senate Republicans rejected the immigration settlement they negotiated with the White House, withholding their support only after Trump said he opposed the deal. Biden used the circumstances to argue that Trump and Republicans have no interest in resolving the issue but instead want to inflame voters in an election year.
Over the past year, Trump has dogged his campaign with his own legal challenges, including dozens of criminal charges and civil cases in which he faces more than $500 million in fines.
His first criminal trial was scheduled to begin Monday in New York on charges of falsifying business records to cover up secret payments. But a judge postponed the trial for 30 days after new evidence was recently uncovered that Trump's lawyers said they needed time to review.
Associated Press writer Orsagos reported from Columbus, Jackson from Palm Beach Gardens, Price from New York and Barrow from Atlanta. AP writer Jill Colvin in New York contributed to this report.
