Former Tucson city council member Rodney Glassman is holding a small lead over his challengers in the Democratic Party senate primary as the early ballots come in.

Rodney Glassman - 34.89%
Cathy Eden - 28.17%
John Dougherty - 23.54%
Randy Parraz - 12%
Write ins - 1.4%

179,749 total votes have been counted thus far.

Find more results here.

Republican Jesse Kelly reacts to the news that he is 10 points ahead of Jonathan Paton: "We're feeling excellent. This is a win for the volunteers. … This is about the people who have worked so hard. This is not about me. This is about the people taking our country back. The people are tired of big-spending politicians like Gabrielle Giffords and we're going to beat her in November as well."

Early results in Pima County show Republican Jesse Kelly with 49 percent of the vote to Jonathan Paton's 40 percent. Check them out here.

Kelly says he's "very pleased" with the initial release.

There's a lot of energy in the room at the Viscount Suites, where Republican Jesse Kelly's team has set up an alternative party to the official GOP celebration at Mr. An's.

We spoke to Kelly a few minutes ago and he said he expected a "big win tonight."

Also in the crowd: Radio show hosts Emil Franzi and Joe Higgins, and Randy Graf, the Republican who lost to Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in 2006.

Former state senator Jonathan Paton just arrived to Mr. An's Teppan Steak and Seafood Sushi Bar, where the Republicans are holding their primary party tonight. While he made the rounds shaking hands and hugging old ladies, he told us he's feeling pretty good tonight.

His spokesman, Daniel Scarpinato, took some time to elaborate, saying their not scared about the Conservatives for Congress poll which showed Paton roughly 20 points behind insurgent Republican Jesse Kelly.

"That was weeks ago and it was totally bogus," he said. "If we win tonight we will call them and thank them personally because it told us we need to keep working and we need to work hard."

Just in time for Election Day: ASU's Morrison Institute releases a report showing that a majority of Arizonans want non-partisan and open primaries. Here's the press release:

Arizonans go to the polls Tuesday to cast ballots in the primary election, but an overwhelming percentage of state voters believe the time has come for both open and nonpartisan primaries, according to a new poll.

A recent survey conducted on behalf of Morrison Institute for Public Policy by Knowledge Networks measured how voters felt about a number of issues, including Arizona’s primary system. Results showed that three-quarters of Arizona voters favor a primary election in which the two candidates — regardless of party affiliation — who receive the largest number of votes face off in the general election. This change is favored across party lines and among all age groups.

“This survey shows there is significant dissatisfaction with at least some parts of Arizona’s current primary election process,” said David Daugherty, director of research at Morrison Institute.

More than six in 10 Arizona voters prefer open primaries with all candidates listed on the ballot but without party designation. Independents were most likely to prefer such a primary (71%), with Democrats the least favorable to the change (54%).

Presently, Arizona holds semi-open/closed party primaries. Republican voters are restricted to the Republican ballot, and Democrats are limited to the Democratic ballot. Candidates are divided by political affiliation, with the candidates receiving the most votes from their respective party facing off in the November general election.

Independents (those not aligned with or identified as a member of a major political party) can vote in Arizona primaries, however, only on

A look at John McCain's primary run from The Daily Beast:

The decent thing for McCain to have done after Obama’s election would have been to say that he was calling it quits, giving way in the Senate to a politician less spent. But he didn’t. Politicians without a guiding ideology are, frequently, the ones who stay in the game longest. Manic redefinition, constant reorientation, tracking the latest directions on the ideological GPS, places them on an unending trajectory of reelection, a journey that ends only with death. The late Senator Robert Byrd was one such man; McCain, without Byrd’s godawful stains, is shaping to be another. I don’t have reliable data on the topic, so consider this an anecdotal observation, but this is how vainglorious politicians often end their careers—hanging on a little too long, at great cost to their public image. Think of McCain as the Liza Minnelli of American politics.

It's Election Day! If you haven't voted yet, polls are open until 7 p.m.

Tonight, we'll be bringing you up-to-the-minute primary election results, reactions from candidates and more from both the Democrats' party (at Hotel Congress, 311 E. Congress St.) and the Republicans' party (at Mr. An's Teppan Steak and Seafood Sushi Bar, 6091 N. Oracle Road), so check back in regularly.

And your Skinny scribe, Jim Nintzel, is scheduled to drop in on John C. Scott's primary election coverage on KJLL AM 1330, which begins at 7 p.m. He'll also be joining Arizona Public Media's Christopher Conover on KUAZ FM 89.1 to discuss election results at 10 p.m. tonight.

And if you're wondering whom we'd vote for, our list of endorsements is here.

Team Giffords is bracing for for a few slaps in the days to come.

Anne Hilby, spokeswoman for Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords' reelection effort, notes that Americans for Prosperity has announced plans to spend $4.1 million to run attack ads in 11 states and recently added three congressional districts in Arizona to the list of targets, according to the Associated Press.

"This group has been putting millions of dollars into an agenda to privatize Social Security and promote tax cuts for millionaires and tax cuts for companies that send jobs overseas," Hilby told The Range this afternoon. "It appears, based on our information, that they have identified (Jonathan) Paton or (Jesse) Kelly as allies in that effort and they're going to be running ads, essentially on their behalf. You have a choice between an agenda to protect special interests, and then you have the congresswoman, who has been standing up for Southern Arizona, fighting for border security, fighting to protect our military families and
fighting to create solar-energy jobs here."

Americans for Prosperity is one of many political operations run by the Koch brothers. If you want to know more about their political leanings, you can read this New Yorker piece. A taste:

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

In a statement, Koch Industries said that the Greenpeace report “distorts the environmental record of our companies.” And David Koch, in a recent, admiring article about him in New York, protested that the “radical press” had turned his family into “whipping boys,” and had exaggerated its influence on

Keiran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity tours the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. More details here, but the press release follows:

Today marks the end of the fourth month since BP’s negligence and lack of government oversight caused the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig to explode, sending more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. To assess how much damage was done and is continuing, the Center for Biological Diversity sent a team to the Gulf to assess the state of its beaches, marshes, waters and wildlife.

What the Center’s team saw was horrific. “Touring the Gulf of Mexico this week I’ve seen firsthand how oil is still killing wildlife and fouling beaches and marshes,” said Kierán Suckling, the Center’s executive director. “This crisis is far from over.”

On Grand Island, the team found beaches covered in oil. Pools of liquid oil lie on the surface, and oil mixed with sand is hardened in mats along the water’s edge. Some beaches appear fine from a distance but are actually sitting atop massive amounts of oil, which bubbled to the surface when the team walked across the sand. Digging into the sand with rubber gloves, the Center’s team struck oil just six inches below the clean-looking surface.

Crabs and birds continue to be covered in oil as they cross the beaches or land in the marshes. Fish and sea turtles are forced to swim through oil on the surface and below the surface as they look for food.

In short, a full four months post-explosion, the Gulf of Mexico is still an oily mess despite