Republican Vince Fong wins race to replace Kevin McCarthy, padding House GOP’s slim majority

California Republican Assemblyman Vince Fong has won the special election to fill former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s seat, NBC News projects, a victory that will pad a narrow House majority that has given GOP leaders in Washington heartburn.

Fong, who was endorsed by McCarthy and former President Donald Trump, won the race in California’s 20th District over a fellow Republican, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux. Fong, a onetime aide to McCarthy, will now serve out the rest of his former boss' term. McCarthy resigned in December two months after became the first House speaker in history to be ousted.

Unlike most states, California uses a top-two primary system in which all candidates, regardless of party, appear on the same ballot. And in a special election, if no candidate wins a majority of the vote — as Fong and Boudreaux failed to do in the March primary — the two leading vote-getters advance to a one-on-one contest.

Once Fong is sworn in, the GOP will have 218 House seats to the Democrats’ 213, with four vacancies. That will give Speaker Mike Johnson, a bit more cushion, as some conservative members of the party have threatened to sink key rules and pieces of legislation in recent months.

Fong and Boudreaux will face off again in November in the regularly scheduled general election.

Voters also headed to the polls Tuesday for primary elections in four other states — Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho and Oregon — setting up matchups in key battlegrounds and settling intraparty feuds.

Top figures in Trump's Georgia election case win their elections

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is overseeing Trump’s election inference case in Georgia, easily defeated a Democratic primary challenger Tuesday, The Associated Press projected.

And the judge overseeing the case, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, won his nonpartisan election for a four-year term, according to the AP.

Elsewhere in Georgia, NBC News projects conservative state Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson defeated Democratic former Rep. John Barrow, who focused his campaign on his support for abortion rights.

Pinson, whom Republican Gov. Brian Kemp appointed in 2022, will serve a six-year term on the nonpartisan court.

The GOP primary in Georgia’s 2nd District has drawn some attention, even though Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop is heavily favored to win in November. That’s because Chuck Hand, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor related to his conduct during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is among the GOP challengers.

With no candidate hitting 50%, Hand is projected to advance to a June 18 runoff against the top vote-getter in the Republican primary, Wayne Johnson, who served in Trump’s Education Department.

Trump’s pick for Georgia’s 3rd District, former White House political director Brian Jack, fell short of winning a majority in his GOP primary. NBC News has projected he will proceed to a runoff against state Sen. Mike Dugan. The winner will be favored in the general election to replace retiring Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson in the conservative district.

Key races in Oregon, Kentucky and Idaho

National Democrats got their preferred candidate in Oregon’s 5th District, a top target in their effort to flip control of the House, with state Rep. Janelle Bynum winning the party's primary. She’ll take on GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer in November in a district that Joe Biden carried in 2020.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took sides in the primary, a rare step for the group, boosting Bynum in the race over attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who lost to Chavez-DeRemer by 2 points in 2022.

There will be a rematch this fall in Oregon’s 6th District, where businessman Mike Erickson won the GOP primary to take on Democratic Rep. Andrea Salinas. Erickson lost to Salinas by nearly 3 percentage points in 2022. The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates the race as lean Democrat.

Oregon state Rep. Maxine Dexter is most likely heading to Congress next year after she won the Democratic primary in the deep-blue 3rd District.

Dexter, a physician, had support from 314 Action, which backs candidates with backgrounds in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). She defeated former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, whose sister, Pramila Jayapal, represents Washington’s 7th District and chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Across the country in Kentucky’s 4th District, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie cruised to a primary victory over two challengers.

While Massie was the heavy favorite, he has found himself locking horns with powerful Republicans in recent years. He joined the recent unsuccessful effort to oust Johnson as speaker, endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis against Trump in the GOP presidential primaries and drew blowback from Trump in 2020 when he opposed the emergency pandemic relief bill while Trump was president. A pro-Israel group also ran ads attacking him ahead of the primary.

And in Idaho, Rep. Mike Simpson fended off a pair of Republican primary challengers in the deep-red 2nd District, the AP projected. While his opponents were not particularly well-funded, Simpson did spend money on ads ahead of primary to shore up support.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com