Pennsylvania Republicans on Tuesday nominated Donald Trump’s choice for governor, an election denier who was outside the Capitol on 6 January, but were divided over his candidate for Senate in a consequential round of primary contests that also saw the ousting of Madison Cawthorn, the scandal-plagued first-term congressman, in North Carolina.

From Oregon to North Carolina, Idaho to Kentucky and the perennial swing state of Pennsylvania, the array of nominating contests tested both Trump’s grip on the Republican party and Joe Biden’s leadership of the Democratic party.

In North Carolina, Cawthorn failed to win re-election amid multiple scandals, losing his seat to Chuck Edwards, a three-term state senator and business owner.

It was a stunning fall for the 26-year-old congressman, once seen as a rising star in the Republican party.

On the opposite coast, in North Carolina, the Trump-backed congressman Ted Budd bested ex-governor Pat McCrory and a dozen other candidates to clinch the Republican nomination for Senate.

Budd, who was one of the 139 House Republicans who objected to certifying the election, will face Democrat Cheri Beasley, a former chief justice for the North Carolina state supreme court, who easily won her party’s 10-way primary to replace retiring Republican senator Richard Burr.If victorious, the trailblazing former public defender would make history as the southern state’s first Black senator.

State senator Valerie Foushee defeated Nida Allam, the first Muslim woman ever elected to public office in North Carolina, in the hotly contested primary to replace retiring congressman David Price in North Carolina’s 4th congressional District, a safe Democratic seat.

And in an expensive fight for Oregon’s newly created sixth congressional district, Democratic state representative Andrea Salinas was leading a sprawling primary that included a political novice backed by a cryptocurrency billionaire.

In Kentucky, the state’s highest ranking Democrat, Morgan McGarvey, won the party primary for an open congressional seat to replace the retiring congressman John Yarmuth, who endorsed him.

Charles Booker, a Black former state lawmaker who emerged as a powerful voice against racial injustice in the aftermath of the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor in 2020, won the Democratic Senate primary in the state.