In the Republican primary for Mississippi’s fourth Congressional district earlier this week, Rep. Steven Palazzo survived a close race that nearly required a runoff. Palazzo, chairman of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, ended up with 50.5% of the vote in the GOP primary, just above the threshold to avoid a runoff election. He faced a strong challenge from Gene Taylor, the former representative from that district who lost to Palazzo in the 2010 general election, when Taylor was a Democrat. Taylor switched parties to challenge Palazzo in the Republican primary.
In California’s 25th Congressional district open primary, state senator Steve Knight finished a close second to fellow Republican Tony Strickland, and thus will advance to the general election in November. (Under California’s primary system, the top two candidates, regardless of party affiliation, go on to the general election.) Knight has been an advocate for space issues in the California Legislature, sponsoring bills to provide tax incentives and liability protections for space companies in the state. Knight has already earned the endorsement from the top Democratic finisher in the primary, Lee Rogers. The seat is open as the district’s current representative, Republican Buck McKeon, is retiring.
I feel obliged to leave at least one comment on this thread before it disappears.
Palazzo has been a thoroughly forgettable chair of the Space & Aeronautics subcommittee. His hallmark phrase is that NASA is lost and we don’t know what we’re doing in space. But his actions haven’t helped us to solve the problem. His Authorization bill for NASA offered little, if any, illumination and creativity about NASA’s predicament, aside from mandating some busy-work reportage by the agency, and pretty much just follows the beaten path. In fact, Lamar Smith, now Science Committee Chair, has done some heavy lifting on behalf of NASA policy (for better or worse) perhaps because his Subcommittee chair can’t pull it off. Some of the best NASA hearings in the House have, in fact, been full Committee hearings.
Am I missing anything?