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Morning Digest: Nancy Mace may get a new district and an old primary foe

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● SC-01: Former state Rep. Katie Arrington tells The Hill that she's considering seeking a GOP primary rematch against South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, who shocked her colleagues last week when she voted to terminate Kevin McCarthy's speakership. Things could become still more volatile in the Palmetto State, though, because the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Wednesday for a lawsuit that seeks to strike down Mace's 1st District as a racial gerrymander.

We'll start with Arrington, who told reporter Caroline Vakil that "all options are on the table" for another campaign against an incumbent who is no stranger to making enemies within her own party. Mace, who unseated Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham in 2020, broke with Donald Trump in the days after she was forced to barricade in her office during the Jan. 6 attack, saying, "I hold him accountable for the events that transpired." Although the congresswoman, who was an early 2016 Trump supporter, never backed impeachment and soon stopped trying to pick fights with him, her party's master endorsed Arrington as part of an effort to purge critics.

But while Arrington did all she could to try to frame the primary as a battle between pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces, Mace used her superior financial resources to advance a different narrative. The congresswoman reminded voters that Arrington had denied renomination in 2018 to another Trump critic, then-Rep. Mark Sanford, only to suffer an upset loss against Cunningham. The GOP legislature had already done what it could to make sure that no Republican could lose this coastal South Carolina seat by passing a map that extended Trump's 2020 margin from 52-46 to 54-45, but Mace still argued that Arrington could once again cost the party the general election.

The incumbent prevailed 53-45 before easily winning the general election, but Mace wasn't done refashioning her public image. This summer she became a prominent Trump defender on cable news, and Politico reported he passed on his compliments to the congresswoman he'd previously castigated as a "grandstanding loser." But Mace's biggest moment in the spotlight came last week when she joined Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, whom she'd called "a fraud" earlier this year, and six other Republicans to oust McCarthy.

Observers, including Arrington, were quick to highlight how McCarthy's allies had deployed millions to help Mace in 2020, and the former speaker's backers were also quick to blast the congresswoman's perceived disloyalty. Mace, for her part, argued McCarthy had broken his word to her by refusing to advance her priorities, including a balanced budget amendment and a bill to test more rape kits, and she predicted his backers would seek revenge. "I do need help, because they are coming after me," she said last week to Steve Bannon, the former Trump strategist whom she'd voted to hold in contempt of Congress in 2021.

However, not everyone agrees that Mace will need much help to win renomination in 2024. "When you look at the voting base there, they're not your typical party-line Republican," longtime GOP strategist Dave Wilson told Vakil of the local GOP primary electorate. "They're a little bit more independent in the way that they think." Arrington, though, dismissed Mace's actions as a "political stunt" and predicted that if she doesn't run, "[T]here will be many others." South Carolina requires a primary runoff if no one secures a majority in the first round.

Complicating things further is that no one knows yet just what Mace's district will even look like next year. In January, a federal court ruled that Republican lawmakers intentionally discriminated against Black voters when they redrew Mace's 1st District by packing too many African Americans into the neighboring 6th District. However, it's up to the nation's highest court to decide if the legislature needs to rework the 1st or if the current boundaries will stand.

Even if the Supreme Court strikes down the current map, though, Republicans may still be able to keep their hold on six of the state's seven congressional districts. As we explained in January, the lower court's ruling hinged on the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause rather than the Voting Rights Act; while the latter can require states to draw districts that empower Black voters to elect their chosen candidates, the former has been interpreted to mandate only that map-makers don't let race predominate over other factors without a compelling justification when crafting lines.

For now at least, Mace is behaving like she has more to worry about on her right flank than from Democrats. The congresswoman announced Sunday that she was joining Trump in endorsing Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, an election conspiracy theorist, for speaker. CBS' Margaret Brennan followed up by asking Mace about the accusations from several former Ohio State University wrestlers alleging that Jordan, who was an assistant coach in the 1980s and 90s, knew their team doctor was sexually assaulting them but didn't intervene. "I'm not familiar or aware with that," said Mace. "He's not indicted on anything that I'm aware of. I don't know anything and can't speak to that."

Redistricting

● WI Redistricting: On Friday, the new progressive majority on Wisconsin's Supreme Court ruled 4-3 along ideological lines to hear a lawsuit that's challenging the GOP's legislative gerrymanders, setting oral arguments for Nov. 21.

The court's ruling limited its review to only the claims over non-contiguous districts and whether map' adoption by the court's previous conservative majority violated the separation of powers, setting aside the plaintiffs' partisan gerrymandering claim for now because resolving it would require extensive fact-finding. A trial to conduct that fact-finding could have delayed new maps until after the 2024 elections, and the court noted it would become unnecessary if it strikes down the maps over contiguity or the separation of powers anyway.

Earlier on Friday, progressive Justice Janet Protasiewicz rejected the GOP's calls for her to recuse herself because of how she had called the maps "rigged" during her election campaign earlier this year and received campaign funding from the state Democratic Party. Protasiewicz's recusal decision cited a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling where that court's conservative majority overturned a Minnesota law that had barred judicial candidates from declaring their views on legal and political issues, and she noted that the Wisconsin Democratic Party was not involved with the redistricting case.

Nonetheless, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos responded on Monday by claiming precedent by the federal high court "compels her recusal, and the United States Supreme Court will have the last word here," implying the GOP could appeal her recusal decision to the federal court. Vos and his party have repeatedly threatened to impeach Protasiewicz if she didn't recuse in this case, though he notably did not mention that in Monday's statement.

3Q Fundraising

Governors

● WA-Gov, WA-03, WA Public Lands Commissioner: The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner reports that former GOP Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler told the conservative group Future 42 on Monday that she'll run for state public lands commissioner rather than for governor or for her old 3rd District. This post, which oversees the Washington Department of Natural Resources, is currently held by Democrat Hilary Franz, who is campaigning for governor next year.

The former congresswoman, who was one of the 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump after Jan. 6, lost her seat last year after she came in third against far-right foe Joe Kent in the top-two primary; Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez went on to flip the seat that November. While Politico reported the next month that Herrera Beutler was interested in another House bid, she announced in late January that she'd signed on to become a strategic advisor for the Children's Hospital Association―a decision that some observers believed meant she wouldn't be running for any office in 2024.

Those assumptions were premature, and The Dispatch reported just a month later that Herrera Beutler was thinking about running for governor. However, while she didn't rule out the idea shortly after Democratic incumbent Jay Inslee announced his retirement in May, she never again showed any obvious sign of interest after her former House colleague, Dave Reichert, became the GOP frontrunner in July. We hadn't previously heard Herrera Beutler mentioned for a different statewide office until Brunner reported Monday that she would campaign for public lands commission.

Five Democrats are currently running to replace Franz: state Sens. Rebecca Saldaña and Kevin Van De Wege; former state Sen. Mona Das; King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove; and DNR manager Patrick DePoe. The only Republican who declared before Herrera Beutler was Sue Kuehl Pederson, who lost to Franz 57-43 in 2020.

House

● CO-04: Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams on Wednesday told conservative radio host Dan Caplis that he was interested in waging a primary bid against Rep. Ken Buck in an interview that took place the day after Buck became one of the eight Republicans to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Another local GOP elected official, state Rep. Richard Holtorf, formed an exploratory committee last month after the congressman trashed his party's drive to impeach Joe Biden. Buck, for his part, has not committed to running again.

● NY-03: Former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi announced Tuesday morning that he was entering the race to retake the seat still held by indicted GOP Rep. George Santos, and the new contender dispelled any talk that he'd only run if there were a special election by declaring he was filing "to run for Congress in November of 2024." We'll have more on this kickoff in our next Digest.

Judges

● PA Supreme Court: The Associated Press writes that Republican Carolyn Carluccio outspent Democrat Dan McCaffery $2.8 million to $900,000 through Sept. 18, though outside groups have also been aiding him in this statewide race. However, it's not quite clear how much other organizations have been spending on the Democrat's behalf: The AP says that Planned Parenthood and Pennsylvanians for Judicial Fairness have deployed "hundreds of thousands more, with more spending coming," while the ACLU and Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee have promised to deploy resources here.

McCaffery ended Sept. 18 with a $1.2 million to $600,000 edge in cash on hand, though Carluccio likely has access to far more money. The story says that she received a total of $2.1 million through that date in donations from Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a group funded by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass. McCaffery, for his part, has benefited from large contributions from unions and trial lawyer organizations.

Mayors and County Leaders

● Allegheny County, PA Executive: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that Republican Joe Rockey continues to enjoy a huge advertising edge over Democrat Sara Innamorato as he tries to score an upset win next month in this 59-39 Biden county. Rockey has deployed $700,000 on TV ads through Friday promoting him as a moderate and pledging to oppose county tax reassessments. His allies at Save Allegheny County, meanwhile, have thrown down another $480,000; the group has gotten about a quarter of its budget from Commonwealth Leaders Fund, which is largely funded by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass.

Innamorato herself spent $140,000 on the general election, while super PACs have not aired their own ads to aid her. Her opening commercial debuted Oct. 1 and begins by touting her as a candidate who "shares our values" on public safety and reproductive rights. The narrator then goes after Rockey as someone who "bankrolled Trump, supporting extremists, backed Republicans repealing reproductive rights, and said he won't stand up for the right to choose."

Obituaries

● Ted Schwinden: Former Montana Gov. Ted Schwinden, a Democrat who served from 1981 to 1989, died Saturday at the age of 98. Schwinden famously kept his number listed in a public phonebook even after he became the state's chief executive and answered callers himself; radio hosts throughout the country also would call him at home without warning and speak to the governor on the air. Schwinden's openness and directness won him many fans: A Republican rancher supposedly said, "I don't agree with Ted, but I trust the son of a bitch!"

Schwinden was elected lieutenant governor on a 1976 ticket led by Tom Judge, which marked the first time that both posts were elected together rather than separately. Schwinden decided to challenge Judge for renomination four years later, though, arguing the two-term governor had "run out of steam." (Montana voters wouldn't approve term limits until 1992.) The challenger won 51-42 and went on to defeat Jack Ramírez, the GOP's leader in the state House, 55-45 even as Ronald Reagan was carrying the state 57-32.

Schwinden, who famously turned down a chance to watch the Super Bowl with Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie because it would have conflicted with his planned talk to a Montana high school class, proved to be popular in office and won reelection 70-26 during Reagan's 1984 landslide. Schwinden kept his two-term pledge and retired in 1988, and Republican Stan Stephens' victory over Judge that year ended 20 years of Democratic governors.

Schwinden never again sought office and later moved to Arizona, though he remained a useful sounding board for at least one prominent Montana Democrat. Brian Schweitzer recounted that he spoke to the former governor ahead of his ultimately successful 2004 bid to become the state's first Democratic leader since Schwinden himself left office: "The best advice he gave me was be good with money," Schweitzer told the Billings Gazette. "A Dem that is good with money is unassailable, so that's where I always was."

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Morning Digest: Alabama poised to have two Black Congress members for first time thanks to new map

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● AL Redistricting: A federal court on Thursday chose a new congressional map to impose in Alabama for the 2024 elections, finally creating a second district where Black voters can elect their preferred candidate. You can see the new map here, and click here for an interactive version.

The court had previously found that the map Republicans enacted in 2021 violated the Voting Rights Act, though the map was still used in last year's elections while the GOP appealed. Consequently, a Black Democrat will likely replace a white Republican after 2024, which would give Alabama two Black House members (out of seven total) for the first time in its history, roughly matching the 27% of its population that is Black.

Compared with the previous map, the new map significantly reconfigures the 1st and 2nd districts in southern Alabama to turn the latter district from a majority-white, safely Republican constituency into one that is 49% Black and just 44% white. To do so, the new map gives the 2nd the rest of Montgomery and most of Mobile—two cities that both have large Black populations—while the 2nd sheds the heavily white rural areas along the Florida border and exurbs north of Montgomery. (Changes to the other five districts were relatively limited.)

Consequently, the redesigned 2nd District would have favored Joe Biden 56-43 in 2020, making it a likely Democratic flip in 2024. Current 2nd District Rep. Barry Moore, a Republican who is a member of the far-right Freedom Caucus, is now at significant risk of losing his seat, though Moore recently indicated he could bail on the 2nd District and instead run against fellow GOP Rep. Jerry Carl in the primary for the 1st. However, Moore would likely be starting at a disadvantage there since our calculations indicate Carl currently represents 59% of the new district compared to Moore's 41%.

The new map is the culmination of multiyear litigation that saw the lower court strike down the GOP's 2021 map last year because it packed Black voters into the heavily Democratic 7th District while dispersing them elsewhere to ensure that the other six districts would remain heavily white and safely Republican. The Supreme Court put that ruling on hold for the 2022 elections while Republicans appealed, but it subsequently upheld the lower court's ruling in a landmark decision this past June, preserving a key protection of the Voting Rights Act.

Following the Supreme Court's ruling, the lower court gave the Republican-controlled legislature a second chance to draw a compliant map, instructing them to draw two districts that were either majority-Black or "something quite close to it." But in July, Republicans brazenly defied the courts, enacting a new map with just one majority-Black district and another that was only 39.9% Black—well short of a majority and therefore safely Republican.

Last month, the lower court blocked this new Republican map, and the Supreme Court also rejected the GOP's last-ditch attempt to keep it in place. Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen subsequently dropped the state's appeal to the high court earlier this week. This ensures the new map adopted by the lower court will be used in 2024, though state Republicans could still sue to invalidate the court-imposed map later this decade.

election recaps

● Memphis, TN Mayor: Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young defeated Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner 28-23 Thursday to succeed their fellow Democrat, termed-out Mayor Jim Strickland, in a 17-way contest where it took only a simple plurality to win. Young, who outspent each of his opponents, was long involved in city government but had never before run for office, and he argued he'd be the most prepared mayor in history while also representing change.

The winning candidate, who is the son of two well-known pastors, also focused on turning out younger voters. Young, when questioned why he'd voted in two GOP primaries since 2016, argued this was "strategic crossover voting to ensure that we have good people on both sides of the ledger." "I'm a Democrat," he said at one debate, "but I'm gonna get the job done."

3Q Fundraising

  • AZ-Sen: Ruben Gallego (D): $3 million raised, $5 million cash on hand
  • NV-Sen: Jacky Rosen (D-inc): $2.7 million raised, $8.8 million cash on hand
  • PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc): $3.2 million raised, $7.3 million cash on hand
  • WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): $3.1 million raised, $7 million cash on hand
  • CA-27: George Whitesides (D): $400,000 raised, additional $300,000 self-funded, $1.7 million cash on hand
  • CA-41: Will Rollins (D): $830,000 raised
  • CO-03: Adam Frisch (D): $3.4 million raised, $4.3 million cash on hand
  • NY-17: Mondaire Jones (D): $1.15 million raised, $840,000 cash on hand
  • WI-03: Rebecca Cooke (D): $400,000 raised

Senate

● CA-Sen: Politico relays that Reps. Barbara Lee, Katie Porter, and Adam Schiff have all made it clear they'd continue to run for the Senate even if their fellow Democrat, appointed incumbent Laphonza Butler, sought a full term.

● NJ-Sen: Rep. Andy Kim's allies at End Citizens United are out with an internal from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that shows the congressman beating First Lady Tammy Murphy 42-19 in a hypothetical Democratic primary, with indicted Sen. Bob Menendez taking all of 5%. The firm also finds Kim, who remains the only major declared candidate, defeating the incumbent 63-10 in a one-on-one fight. This is the only primary poll we've seen other than a Data for Progress survey that showed Kim beating fellow Rep. Mikie Sherrill 27-20 in a crowded contest, but that survey was largely conducted after Sherrill said she wouldn't run.

Another Democratic House member, Rep. Frank Pallone, sounds unlikely to seek a promotion, though he didn't quite rule it out to Politico. Pallone, who has served in the lower chamber since 1988, instead says he wants to regain the top post on the Energy and Commerce panel under a new Democratic majority. He said of the Senate chatter, "I’m flattered by the suggestions."

The story also adds that Rep. Josh Gottheimer is continuing to prepare his likely 2025 gubernatorial bid and isn't "planning to change course and run for Senate," though he hasn't said this publicly. (See our NJ-11, NJ-Gov item below for more on both Gottheimer and Sherrill's 2025 deliberations.)

● WV-Sen: The Tarrance Group's late-September poll for the Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC tied to Mitch McConnell, shows GOP Gov. Jim Justice leading Sen. Joe Manchin 49-43 in a hypothetical general election scenario where the senator runs as an independent rather than as a Democrat. The memo did not mention Rep. Alex Mooney, who is waging an uphill primary battle against Justice.

Governors

● MS-Gov: The conservative Magnolia Tribune has released a survey from Mason-Dixon that shows GOP Gov. Tate Reeves leading Democrat Brandon Presley 51-43, which is only a little smaller than the 52-41 advantage that Siena College found in late August. Mason-Dixon does not appear to have asked respondents about independent Gwendolyn Gray, whose presence on the ballot could conceivably prevent anyone from taking the majority needed to avert a Nov. 28 runoff; Siena, though, found just 1% opting for "someone else."

House

● AZ-01: Former TV news anchor Marlene Galán-Woods has publicized an endorsement from former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who served from 2003 to 2009, in the Democratic primary to face GOP incumbent David Schweikert.

● MI-08: Saginaw police officer Martin Blank, who served as an Army trauma surgeon in Afghanistan, on Thursday became the first notable Republican to launch a bid against Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee. Joe Biden would have carried this seat, which is based in the Flint and Tri-Cities areas, 50-48, but Kildee won an expensive race 53-43 two years later.

Blank has twice run for the state legislature, but he came nowhere close to securing the nomination either time. He lost his 2020 bid for the state House 50-31 against Timothy Beson, who went on to win the seat. Black campaigned for the upper chamber last year in a four-way primary, but he finished dead last with 18%. (Annette Glenn won that nomination contest with 41% only to lose to Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet in the fall.)

● MN-03: DNC member Ron Harris tells Punchbowl News he's considering running for the seat currently held by Rep. Dean Phillips, and he didn't rule out challenging the would-be Biden primary foe. Harris sounds more interested in running for an open seat, however, even though Minnesota's June filing deadline means that Phillips wouldn't need to choose between humoring his longshot presidential dreams and seeking reelection. "As Dean considers a run for President, I'm exploring a run for Congress to ensure this district stays in Democratic hands," Harris tweeted Thursday.

Harris, who is currently the DNC's Midwestern Caucus chair, previously served as Minneapolis' chief resilience officer from 2019 until last year. (Minnesota's largest city is located entirely in Rep. Ilhan Omar's 5th District.) Harris would be the first Black person to represent the 3rd, a seat in the western Minneapolis suburbs that favored Biden 60-39.

● NJ-11, NJ-Gov: Politico relays chatter that New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill could retire this cycle to prepare for a potential 2025 bid to succeed her fellow Democrat, termed-out Gov. Phil Murphy, though there's no word from the congresswoman about her thinking. The current version of Sherrill's 11th District, which includes New York City's western suburbs and exurbs, would have backed Joe Biden 58-41, and Democrats would be favored to keep it no matter what.

The congresswoman would be free to seek a fourth term in the House in 2024 and even remain in Congress should she lose a bid for governor, but Sherrill could decide instead that she'd prefer to focus on a statewide campaign. Indeed, Politico previously reported in July that another Democrat who flipped a seat during the 2018 blue wave, Virginia Rep. Abigail Spanberger, has decided against running for reelection so she can commit all of her time towards her own 2025 gubernatorial bid: Spanberger herself says she'll reveal her plans after the Nov. 7 legislative elections. (New Jersey also holds its state House and Senate contests that day.)

If Sherrill were to run for governor, she'd be in for an expensive primary battle. Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop launched his campaign all the way back in April, and he announced Thursday that he'd raised enough money to receive all $7.3 million from the state's matching funds program, which provides $2 in state funds for every dollar raised. Anyone participating in the program can only spend $7.3 million during the primary, though super PACs like the pro-Fulop Coalition for Progress, which had $6.5 million available at the end of June, can deploy as much as they want.

Sherrill also isn't the only Democratic House member who might try to be the next inhabit of Drumthwacket, the governor's delightfully named official residence. An advisor for Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a prominent centrist who represents a neighboring seat to the north, confirmed the congressman's interest back in July to the New Jersey Globe. However, Politico relays that unnamed "Democrats close to Gottheimer" anticipate he'll also seek reelection next year to the 5th District, which favored Biden 56-43.

Plenty of other Democrats have also been talked about as potential candidates to replace Murphy in this blue state, and we'll take a closer look at the many potential contenders after the Nov. 7 elections. On the GOP side, former Assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli announced he was in days after he lost the 2021 general election to Murphy by a surprisingly narrow 51-48 spread.

● VA-10: Axios' Hans Nichols reports that former National Security Council advisor Eugene Vindman, the whistleblower who attracted national attention in the leadup to Donald Trump's first impeachment, is considering running to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton. Vindman didn't deny anything to Nichols when asked at an event for the Democratic group VoteVets, saying instead, "I'm focused on Ukraine funding. I'm focused on war crimes now. That's all I'm focused on."

Nick Minock of the local ABC affiliate 7News, meanwhile, writes that Loudoun County Supervisor Juli Briskman discussed campaigning for the Democratic nod after Wexton announced that she wouldn't run following her diagnosis with Progressive Supra-nuclear Palsy. Briskman, who was photographed flipping off Donald Trump's motorcade while biking in 2017, divulged last week that she was being treated for breast cancer, and she said doctors are optimistic about her prospects. The supervisor, who is up for reelection on Nov. 7, did not respond to 7News' inquiry about her 2024 plans.

Minock also mentions state Sen. Jennifer Boysko, Del. Elizabeth Guzman, and former Attorney General Mark Herring as possible Democratic candidates. Nichols additionally names Jessica Post, who announced last week that she would step down as president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee after this year's races; like the aforementioned trio, Post does not appear to have said anything publicly about participating in this contest. But Del. Danica Roem, who is seeking a promotion to the state Senate, told 7News she wouldn't run herself; Roem previously ruled out a bid for the neighboring 7th District.

On the GOP side, attorney Mike Clancy on Thursday became the first declared candidate for this 58-40 Biden seat. Clancy, whom Minock describes as a "business executive with a global technology company," ran here last year and self-funded the majority of his campaign's $400,000 budget, but he didn't come close to winning the party-run "firehouse primary."

Minock also supplies a few names of possible GOP contenders:

  • 2020 nominee Aliscia Andrews
  • Loudoun County Supervisor Caleb Kershner
  • 2022 candidate Caleb Max
  • state Sen. Jill Vogel

Kershner is up for reelection next month, while Vogel is retiring from the legislature.

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Morning Digest: Kevin McCarthy has two months to decide if he’ll seek reelection to the House

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● CA-20: Kevin McCarthy's colleagues ousted him as speaker of the House on Tuesday, and if you're like us you have just one question: What's next for California's 20th District?

Ok, even the most hardcore among us may have a few other things on our minds right now, but California's early filing deadline means that McCarthy will have only a little more than two months to decide if he wants to seek a 10th term to the chamber where he was just humiliated. The congressman himself did nothing to dispel speculation that he might retire or resign when he responded to a question about whether he’d stay in office by answering, “I’ll look at that.” 

Candidates have until Dec. 8 to turn in paperwork if they want to compete in the Golden State's March 5 top-two primary, and, because hopefuls can pay a fee rather than submit signatures, major contenders can decide whether they'll run on the final day of qualifying. The state automatically extends the deadline to five days in contests where the incumbent chooses not to file for reelection, so the field might only take shape late if McCarthy doesn't end up running.

The current version of the 20th District, which includes parts of the Bakersfield and Fresno areas, supported Donald Trump 61-36, which makes this the most conservative of any of California's 52 congressional districts. The GOP likewise has a large bench of prospective candidates, and, because this area is so red, it's possible that two Republicans could advance to the general election. McCarthy has always easily prevailed in this area going back to his initial election in 2006, and it remains to be seen if any strong opponents would take him on even in his diminished state.

3Q Fundraising

  • OH-Sen: Bernie Moreno (R): $1 million raised, additional $3 million self-funded, $5 million cash on hand
  • CA-49: Margarita Wilkinson (R): $1 million raised (campaign did not respond to inquiry if this includes self-funding)
  • TX-18: Isaiah Martin (D): $307,000 raised (in 25 days)
  • TX-32: Julie Johnson (D): $300,000 raised

Senate

● CA-Sen: Democratic Sen. Laphonza Butler was sworn in Tuesday to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, but she says she's unsure if she wants to enter the top-two primary for a full six-year term. "I have no idea. I genuinely don't know," she told the Los Angeles Times the previous day.

California's filing deadline is Dec. 8, but Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin notes that another important date will pass next week. Democratic candidates have until Oct. 13 to say that they want to compete for the party endorsement at the November convention, and no major candidate will want to pass up the opportunity to be listed by name in a special section of the voter guide that each county sends to all voters. As we've written before, this is a bit like having someone else pay for a mailer to every voter in the state, a real boon in an expensive contest like this one.

Meanwhile, Data Viewpoint finished a poll just before Butler's appointment was announced Sunday that did not include her as an option. It found Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter both advancing past the top-two primary with 19% each as Democratic Rep. Barbara Lee and Republican Eric Early took 6% apiece.

● FL-Sen: The Messenger's Marc Caputo reports that businessman Stanley Campbell is interested in seeking the Democratic nomination to take on GOP incumbent Rick Scott even though former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel Powell has emerged as the party's frontrunner. Campbell, who is the brother of 2 Live Crew's Luther Campbell, has not said anything publicly, though he quietly filed FEC paperwork last week.

Caputo writes that Campbell served in the Navy and went on to form multiple companies, including an artificial intelligence firm whose work helped lead to the 2005 apprehension of serial killer Dennis Rader. Campbell went on to become one of the few African Americans to own a golf course in 2021 when he purchased Martin Downs Golf Club in southeastern Florida's Treasure Coast region.

● MI-Sen: Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig confirmed Tuesday that he would seek the Republican nomination to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a declaration that comes the year after he was ejected from the 2022 primary ballot for governor of Michigan over fraudulent signatures. "I'm not doing it for ego," said Craig, whose last campaign experience would have humbled almost anyone else.

Protestors disrupted his 2021 kickoff rally for his quest to take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and that was just the start of his troubles. Craig's campaign would experience several major shakeups, including the departure of two different campaign managers in less than four months, and it would also draw unfavorable press coverage for heavy spending.

The former chief also lost a high-profile endorsement from Rep. Jack Bergman, a northern Michigan Republican who griped that his former choice ignored his region "in favor of a self proclaimed Detroit-centric approach." Still, polls showed Craig well ahead in the primary as he sought to become the Wolverine State's first Black governor.

Everything changed in May, though, when election authorities disqualified Craig and four other contenders from the ballot after they fell victim to a huge fraudulent signature scandal and failed to turn in enough valid petitions. The former frontrunner decided to forge ahead with a write-in campaign to win the GOP nod, blustering, "I'm going to win." However, Craig instead became an afterthought even before far-right radio commentator Tudor Dixon emerged as the new frontrunner, and he ended up taking all of 2% of the vote.

Craig went on to endorse U.S. Taxpayers Party nominee Donna Brandenburg, who had also been ejected from the Republican primary, saying that Dixon's extreme opposition to abortion rights went too far even for him. (James himself was recorded the previous year responding in the affirmative when asked if he'd stop Democrats "from undoing the law that makes abortion illegal in Michigan.") Whitmer soon won 54-44, with Brandenburg in fourth with just 0.4%.

The former chief launched his new effort weeks after former Rep. Mike Rogers joined the nomination fight, and Craig has already worked to position himself as the Trumpiest candidate. The new contender published a pro-Trump op-ed last month in the far-right Daily Caller, and the GOP's supreme master responded by sharing it on social media.

Rogers, by contrast, has had a bumpier relationship with Trump. While the former congressman briefly served on Trump's 2016 transition team, he told the Washington Post last year that "Trump's time has passed." Rogers, who considered waging his own presidential bid, also said of the Jan. 6 riot, "There is never a time in American democracy when violence accomplishes what you want … It is giving up on our Constitution when you storm the Capitol to try to change an election."

But Rogers, whom multiple outlets say the NRSC recruited to run for the Senate, now seems to have realized that Trump's time very much has not passed for the primary voters who will be determining his fate next year. The former congressman echoed the far-right voices in his party last week in a video proclaiming, "[W]hat we are seeing right now is a politically motivated DOJ waging war against the leading Republican presidential candidate on behalf of President [Joe] Biden." "This is not the mike Rogers i knew," tweeted former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was one of the 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment after Jan. 6. "How did you fall so far mike?"

The GOP field also includes state Board of Education member Nikki Snyder, who struggled to raise money during the first half of the year, and it may swell still further. Former Rep. Peter Meijer, who lost renomination last year after voting for impeachment, formed an exploratory committee just before Labor Day. Wealthy businessman Perry Johnson, who got thrown off the 2022 gubernatorial ballot along with James, also said last week he was considering abandoning his doomed presidential bid to run for the Senate; the Detroit News also reported in August that another rich guy, 2018 primary loser Sandy Pensler, is thinking about another try, and the paper wrote Tuesday that he was still mulling it over.

On the Democratic side, Rep. Elissa Slotkin is the frontrunner in a field that includes actor Hill Harper, who launched his campaign in early July. Observers are waiting to learn if Harper or any of the other contenders raised a credible amount of money during the third quarter of the year or if Slotkin ended September as the only Democrat with enough money to run a serious operation.

● UT-Sen: Republican Rep. John Curtis declared that he'd remain in the House rather than run for the Senate in a Deseret News op-ed that was published days after the congressman sounded very likely to seek a promotion. KSL NewsRadio asked him Thursday to rate his likelihood on a scale of one to 10, to which Curtis responded, "It's up there in the nine-plus region."

House

● AL-02: Democratic state Rep. Juandalynn Givan told CBS 42 on Monday that she'd decide within the next two weeks if she'd run for the new 2nd District.

● IL-04: Chicago Alderman Raymond Lopez, who the Chicago Sun-Times calls "one of the police union's staunchest City Council supporters," announced Tuesday that he'd challenge Rep. Chuy Garcia in the March Democratic primary for this safely blue constituency. Lopez, who the paper adds has a history of "anemic fundraising," previously entered the 2018 race for a previous version of this seat and this year's contest for mayor of Chicago, but he dropped out well before each primary.

Lopez ended up backing wealthy perennial candidate Willie Wilson for mayor over Garcia, incumbent Lori Lightfoot, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, and several other contenders. Neither Garcia nor Lightfoot ended up advancing past the nonpartisan primary, though, and Lopez supported former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas in the general election against Johnson. Garcia, for his part, endorsed fellow progressive Johnson, who went on to pull off a tight win.

● PA-08: Businessman Rob Bresnahan, a Republican who Politico says is capable of self-funding, has filed FEC paperwork for a bid against Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright.

● WI-03: State Rep. Katrina Shankland declared Tuesday that she was joining the Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who made national news in July when he reportedly screamed at teenage Senate pages.

Shankland, who was first elected to the legislature in 2012, won reelection in 2020 56-44 as Joe Biden was taking her seat by a smaller 53-45, and she touted herself as a candidate with "a proven track record of not only winning elections but outperforming the top of the ticket in those elections." Van Orden's southwestern Wisconsin constituency is significantly redder turf, though, as Donald Trump took it 51-47.

Shankland joins a nomination contest that includes businesswoman Rebecca Cooke and former La Crosse County Board chair Tara Johnson. Cooke, who took second in last year's primary, announced Tuesday that she'd raised $400,000 during the opening quarter of her new effort.

Legislatures

● NH State House: State Rep. Maria Perez announced Monday she was leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent, a move that once again changes the math ahead of a series of upcoming special elections for this closely divided chamber.

Republicans currently hold a 198-196 edge in a 400-member body that includes Perez and two other nonaligned members. The final three seats are vacant, but while Joe Biden carried two of them by double digits, the final one favored Donald Trump 53-45: Voters go to the polls Nov. 7 to fill the bluest of these three constituencies, while the other two specials have not yet been scheduled. However, given how much volatility we've seen in the state House this year, it's anyone's guess what the membership rolls will look like by the time all three of these seats are occupied.

Mayors and County Leaders

● Baltimore, MD Mayor: Goucher College's new poll with The Baltimore Banner shows former Mayor Sheila Dixon beating incumbent Brandon Scott 39-27 in the first survey we've seen of the May Democratic primary, with another 23% opting for "some other candidate." That latter group said they preferred Scott over his rival 36-33, though that would be far from enough to make up the deficit. The school also finds Dixon, who resigned in 2010 after she was convicted of stealing gift cards that were supposed to help needy families, with a narrow 47-45 favorable rating, which is far better than the 37-53 score that respondents give Scott.

Prosecutors and Sheriffs

● Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff: Democratic Sheriff Paul Penzone announced Monday that, not only would he not run again in 2024, he would resign in January as the top lawman in America's fourth-largest county. Penzone implied he was quitting because another opportunity had presented itself, saying he wanted to avoid "distractions" during what would have been his final year in office.

State law requires the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to select another Democrat to succeed Penzone even though Republicans enjoy a 4-1 majority on the body. Supervisor Steve Gallardo, who is the only Democrat, tells the Arizona Republic he wants the new sheriff to be an "effective candidate" for next year's race.

Penzone first ran for this post in 2012 against Republican incumbent Joe Arpaio, who had spent decades as one of America's most venal and abusive law enforcement officials, but he lost 51-45. Their rematch four years later went very differently, though, and the department's racial profiling policies against Latinos finally caught up to the sheriff.

That October, just a month before his re-election campaign, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would charge Arpaio with criminal contempt of court for violating a judge's orders to curtail his department's unconstitutional profiling practices. Penzone ended up winning by a lopsided 56-44 even as Donald Trump, who would pardon Arpaio soon after the election, carried the county 48-45.

Penzone went on to secure reelection by that same 56-44 spread against Jerry Sheridan, a former Arpaio chief deputy who had just beaten his old boss in the primary, but the department still has a long way to go to excise Arpaio's legacy. Raul Piña, who serves on the court-appointed Community Advisory Board, told the Republic on Monday that "institutional racism in the Sheriff's Office" persists. Piña, while acknowledging that Penzone had made much-needed changes, said of the incumbent's legacy, "[T]here will always be an asterisk … because the racial profiling continued, and you can't run away from that."

Democratic elected officials were more complimentary, with Secretary of State Adrian Fontes saying, "Even on the hardest days when there were very serious threats being hurled at me and my staff, I always felt safe knowing Paul and his team were always watching out for us."

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Morning Digest: GOP gerrymanders Ohio’s legislature again, but reform could be on the way

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Leading Off

● OH Redistricting: In a dismaying turn of events on Tuesday, both Democratic members of Ohio's bipartisan redistricting commission sided with their five Republican counterparts to approve new legislative gerrymanders that would likely lock in the GOP's three-fifths supermajorities just like the maps they were replacing. Despite winning just 53-45 statewide in 2020, Donald Trump would have carried a 24-9 majority of state Senate districts and a 63-36 majority of state House districts according to Dave's Redistricting App.

New maps were required for 2024 because the state Supreme Court had struck down the GOP's five prior sets of maps in 2022 for violating an Ohio constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering. However, that flawed amendment didn't let the court draw its own maps after striking down illegal districts, so the GOP successfully ran out the clock for 2022 and was able to use a set of the unconstitutional maps last year thanks to a ruling by federal judges appointed by Donald Trump.

The state Supreme Court had held that the proportion of districts favoring each party must reflect the 54-46 advantage that Republicans had in statewide elections over the previous decade, but it's unlikely that the court will reject this sixth set of maps for benefiting Republicans well beyond that range. That's because those 2022 rulings saw Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor side with the court's three Democrats to reject the gerrymanders, but age limits required O'Connor to retire last year, enabling hard-line Republicans to solidify a 4-3 GOP majority in November's elections.

Due to the state court's rightward lurch, new Republican gerrymanders for 2024 were practically guaranteed. State Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio and state House Minority Leader Allison Russo, who are the commission's two Democratic members, defended their "yes" votes by claiming the GOP would have passed even worse gerrymanders if they hadn't compromised, and that they still viewed the end results as unfair.

However, the GOP's draft proposals from last week were not drastically worse for Democrats than the maps Antonio and Russo approved, and it appeared that the compromise maps sacrificed partisan fairness for protecting Democratic incumbents. By providing them with bipartisan support, the Democratic commissioners likely ensured that the maps would remain valid for the rest of this decade, since maps passed on a party-line basis would only be valid for four years. Furthermore, this bogus bipartisanship could undermine the support for passing real redistricting reform in the future.

Ohio found itself in this situation because of two amendments that the Republican-dominated legislature put on the ballot and were subsequently approved by voters last decade. While these amendments purported to ban partisan gerrymandering and marginally improved upon the status quo, we noted at the time that they were fundamentally flawed and appeared designed to thwart efforts to pass truly fair reforms at the ballot box, like those passed by Michigan voters in 2018. The repeated rounds of unconstitutional maps following the 2020 census made these flaws readily apparent.

While Ohio will again be stuck with GOP gerrymanders in 2024, there is a potential way forward for voters. O'Connor, the former chief justice, is leading an effort with other good-government advocates to use a ballot initiative for November 2024 that would establish an independent redistricting commission to draw new legislative and congressional maps beginning with the 2026 elections, an initiative we previously explored in detail here.

Unlike previous flawed reforms, this proposal would strip elected officials of their control over the process, handing it to a citizens' commission, and set clearer standards for partisan fairness. Supporters are in the process of getting GOP officials to sign off on their ballot summary and the validity of their proposal before they can begin gathering voter signatures to get onto the November 2024 ballot.

The Downballot

● The Virginia House flipped to Democrats in 2019 and back to Republicans in 2021. Can Democrats win the three seats they need to regain control of the chamber? Blue Virginia's Lowell Feld joins us to run through the key races in both the Virginia Senate and House and how Democrats can win both chambers this November. We also look to 2024 and discuss some key announcements in competitive Virginia Congressional races.

Host David Beard and guest host Joe Sudbay also cover the huge news out of New Jersey, where Sen. Bob Menendez has been indicted (again) and this time most state and national Democrats are not standing by him. We also discuss the long-awaited entrance of hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick into the Pennsylvania Senate race for Republicans; the Supreme Court rejecting Alabama's long shot attempt to prevent a new Congressional map; and the gerrymandered state legislative maps Ohioans will be using for at least one cycle.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show—new episodes every Thursday! You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by noon Eastern time.

Senate

● CA-Sen: The Public Policy Institute of California's new survey shows Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter advancing out of the March top-two primary, which is the same outcome that UC Berkeley found in its most recent poll. PPIC shows Schiff in first with 20% as Porter edges out a third Democratic representative, Barbara Lee, 15-8.

● MI-Sen: Businessman Perry Johnson, who has failed to qualify for either GOP presidential debate despite spending millions of his own money, tells NBC he may run for the Senate after all. Johnson, whose primary bid for governor ended last year after he fell victim to a fraudulent petition signature scandal, insists, "I've only had, what, somewhere between 100 to 150 calls [to be] running for Senate."

● NJ-Sen: Rep. Donald Norcross didn't rule out a Democratic primary challenge to indicted incumbent Bob Menendez on Tuesday, telling the New Jersey Globe, "There are a number of things that are taking place right now in the state of New Jersey that are of great concern to everyone. We'll take it one day at a time." Norcross is the brother of George Norcross, a longtime party power player who has watched his influence diminish in recent years.

The Star-Ledger's Tom Moran also writes that former Rep. Tom Malinowski is considering, though there's no word from him. Malinowski lost a tight 2022 reelection contest against Republican Tom Kean Jr., and the Democrat announced earlier this year that he wouldn't try to regain his old seat.

● UT-Sen: Utah state House Speaker Brad Wilson on Wednesday launched his long-anticipated campaign for the Senate seat held by his fellow Republican, retiring incumbent Mitt Romney, and he entered the primary as the frontrunner. However, he got a reminder that the nomination battle remains unsettled hours before his kickoff when Rep. John Curtis told the Deseret News he was “very seriously” considering joining the race.

Wilson's exploratory committee finished June with $2.1 million in the bank thanks to a combination of fundraising and self-funding, and it remains to be seen if any of his intra-party foes will have the resources to put up a serious fight. However, as we've noted before, Wilson may not be quite right-wing enough to satisfy his party's base who would prefer someone in the mold of the Beehive State's other senator, Mike Lee. Political scientist Damon Cann told the Associated Press, "I think most people are expecting Brad Wilson would govern somewhat more conservatively. I think he would be toward the political center from where Mike Lee’s at but I think he would be more conservative than Mitt Romney has been."

Wilson made sure to emphasize his hardline credentials ahead of his launch: His campaign rolled out endorsements in August from fellow legislators that featured testimonials calling him a "conservative champion" and someone who worked to "advance pro-life legislation." (Altogether, three-quarters of House Republicans and two-thirds of the Senate caucus backed him.) However, while Wilson has indeed helped pass anti-abortion legislation, the AP also noted that he helped stop the legislature from formally rebuking none other than Romney in 2020 for his vote to convict Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial.

Wilson joins a contest that includes two mayors, Riverton's Trent Staggs and Roosevelt's Rod Bird. Staggs launched his campaign in late May but raised little during his first month, while Bird pledged to self-fund $1 million when he entered the race last week. Conservative activist Carolyn Phippen is also talking about running, and Curtis and other Republicans could end up campaigning to represent this dark red state.

House

● AL-02: John Sharp of AL.com takes a look at the many Democrats who could run for the 2nd District now that the U.S. Supreme Court has paved the way for a lower court to adopt a new map that creates a second district where Black voters could elect their preferred candidate. The exact boundaries of the new 2nd are not yet known, though judges next month will consider three different maps that each link Montgomery and Mobile.

The four state legislators who tell Sharp they're thinking about getting in are state Sens. Vivian Figures and Merika Coleman and state Reps. Napoleon Bracy and Juandalynn Givan. Figures, who was the 2008 nominee against then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, hails from Mobile, while Bracy is from the nearby suburb of Prichard. Coleman and Givan both represent Birmingham, which would not be located in the 2nd under any of the trio of maps advanced by the court-appointed expert.

Sharp also mentions two Montgomery-based politicians, state Sen. Kirk Hatcher and Mayor Steven Reed, as possibilities, though neither of them commented for his article. Reed, though, didn't rule out a House bid in July during his reelection campaign, saying instead, "I don't know what I'm going to do. For one, I've got to win first." He did indeed win by a convincing 57-39 the next month.

Most Republicans are treating this seat like an automatic Democratic flip, but former state Sen. Dick Brewbaker argues that he could run and win it for his party. Brewbaker, who unlike all the aforementioned Democrats is white, predicts to Sharp that if the general election comes down to "straight-up racial polarization ... the Republicans can potentially hang onto the seat."

● AL-07: Bobby Singleton, who serves as minority leader in the Alabama state Senate, announced Tuesday that he was forming an exploratory committee for a potential Democratic primary bid against Rep. Terri Sewell in the safely blue 7th District. A federal court will choose a new congressional map next month after blocking two consecutive maps enacted by GOP lawmakers for violating the Voting Rights Act, but there's little question that this will remain a majority-Black and heavily Democratic district covering parts of both the Black Belt and the Birmingham region.

Singleton, who was first elected in 2002 to represent part of the Black Belt in the legislature, argued to AL.com that Sewell hasn't done a good job serving his area. He instead argued that he could effectively represent the entire district, including Birmingham's Jefferson County. The congresswoman, who grew up in Selma in the Black Belt and resides in Birmingham, has not faced any serious primary opposition since she first won an open seat in 2010.

As one of multiple sets of plaintiffs in the litigation against the GOP's 2021 gerrymander, Singleton had tried to redraw the 7th District in a way that plenty of his fellow Democrats were unhappy with. The minority leader proposed a new map that split relatively few counties but didn't contain a single majority-Black seat: Instead African American residents would form a tiny 46.8-46.6 plurality in his 7th, while the other six seats would remain majority white.

Singleton's side would argue that the state was wrong to continue to divide Jefferson County's predominantly Black and white areas, claiming that the best solution was to unite the county in one district. After the courts blocked the GOP's 2023 map earlier this month, Singleton proposed another plan where all of Jefferson County and a small part of neighboring Shelby County would be based in the 6th, which is currently represented by GOP Rep. Gary Palmer, while Sewell's 7th would contain most of the Black Belt by adding all of the Montgomery area.

According to Dave's Redistricting App, Joe Biden would have carried both the 6th and the 7th under Singleton's latest plan. However, because several downballot Republicans over the past decade won or only narrowly lost the 6th, the GOP would have had a good chance to maintain control of six of the seven seats.

A different set of litigants known as the Milligan plaintiffs proposed a new map where Black voters would be a majority in two districts, but Singleton's side continued to promote their boundaries as the best solution. Several fellow Democrats were unconvinced, with state House Minority Leader Chris England reposting a thread from journalist Kareem Crayton declaring, "There are more problems with this case than I can discuss here." Sewell's team also filed a brief excoriating the proposed map.

A court-appointed expert tasked with assisting the judges proposed three maps on Monday for their consideration that largely mirrored the Milligan plaintiffs' proposal. The lower court will likely adopt one of them or something similar early next month.

While Singleton isn't getting the map he wants, he expressed interest Tuesday in taking on Sewell anyway. "I'm not running in the new district," he told Alabama Daily News Tuesday, "I'm running in Congresswoman Sewell's, that's what I want, I want the big fish." In a separate interview that day with AL.com, though, he acknowledged he hadn't actually decided, saying, "If the exploratory committee comes back with something positive, we'll be in it. If not, we wish [Sewell] good luck."

The state's filing deadline is set for Nov. 10 and, because Alabama's legislative seats are only up in midterm years, Singleton would not have to risk his current post if he sought a promotion.

● MT-01: EMILY's List on Wednesday endorsed 2022 Democratic nominee Monica Tranel, who faces no serious intra-party opposition as she seeks a rematch against GOP Rep. Ryan Zinke.

● NH-01: Hollie Noveletsky, who runs a steel fabricator business, has filed FEC paperwork for a potential bid against Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas. Noveletsky would join a GOP nomination contest that includes former Executive Councilor Russell Prescott, who took fourth place in the 2022 primary.

● NJ-07: Former state Sen. Ray Lesniak said this week that he would not enter the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. The New Jersey Globe also reports that physician Tina Shah, who served in the Obama and Biden administrations, has decided not to run despite talking to party leaders about a potential bid; David Wildstein writes that one unnamed "party bigwig said at one point Shah said she was in, only to move back to the maybe list a week later."

● TX-28: Jose Sanz, who previously served as district director for Democratic incumbent Henry Cuellar, announced Wednesday that he'd challenge his old boss as a Republican. Sanz is the first notable Republican to launch a bid against Cuellar, who has long been one of the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus, but it remains to be seen if the GOP will seriously target him. Joe Biden won this constituency, which includes Laredo and the eastern San Antonio suburbs, 53-46 two years before Cuellar turned back a well-funded Republican foe 57-43.

It's also unclear if the congressman will be in for another competitive primary challenge. Attorney Jessica Cisneros hasn't ruled out taking him on again after narrowly losing in 2020 and 2022, and there's still a while to go before the Dec. 11 filing deadline.

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Morning Digest: A right-wing darling wants a CNN gig. His enemies want his seat

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● CO-04: Colorado state Rep. Richard Holtorf announced Tuesday that he was forming an exploratory committee for a potential primary bid against Republican Rep. Ken Buck, a Freedom Caucus member who has improbably morphed into a vocal critic of extremists in his own party. Holtorf may not get his chance to take on Buck, though, as the congressman revealed that same day that he was interested in leaving the House to take an on-air cable news job.

Holtorf, who is the first notable Republican to publicly express interest in campaigning against the incumbent in the 4th District, told Colorado Public Radio he'd make up his mind in December. The state representative took Buck to task for condemning a letter from local Republicans accusing the federal government of violating the rights of Jan. 6 defendants, as well as Buck's opposition to his party's fervor to impeach Joe Biden. "Why is he on CNN and MSNBC?" asked Holtorf, "I don't think the message he is explaining represents the sentiment of the district."

But voters may soon see a whole lot more of their congressman on one of those networks than in eastern Colorado. The New York Post published a story shortly after the CPR interview went live in which Buck said, "I am interested in talking to folks at CNN and other news organizations—on the, I don't want to call them left, but sort of center-left—and having an opportunity to do that full-time or do that as a contributor would be great also."

Buck went on to inform the paper he was also eyeing similar roles at hard-right outlets like Fox News and Newsmax, though he added that he hasn't decided if he wants to leave the House just yet. And despite publishing a Washington Post piece titled, "My fellow Republicans: One disgraceful impeachment doesn't deserve another," Buck also said he hadn't actually ruled out voting to impeach Biden. "I am not opposed to impeachment, I'm opposed to the impeachment inquiry because I don't think it gives us any broader authority to investigate this," the congressman argued.

Until recently, it would have been tough to imagine Buck speaking out against his party's far-right elements. Buck, who previously served as Weld County district attorney, first emerged on the national scene as a prominent tea partier in the 2010 cycle when he challenged Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet. His hardline rhetoric, however, helped cost his party a pickup during what was otherwise a massive GOP wave.

Late in the campaign, Buck appeared on "Meet the Press" and said he stood by his 2005 declaration that he had refused to prosecute an alleged rape because "a jury could very well conclude that this is a case of buyer's remorse." He also argued that being gay was a choice. "I think birth has an influence over it," he said, "like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you have a choice." Republicans quickly responded to Buck's narrow loss by citing him, along with Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and Nevada's Sharron Angle, as a cautionary example of what happens when the party chooses extremist nominees in crucial Senate races.

Unlike his fellow travelers, though, Buck actually had a future in elected office. For a time in 2014, he waged another Senate bid, but then switched places with Rep. Cory Gardner when the latter decided to wage a late campaign against Democratic Sen. Mark Udall.

Buck decisively won the primary for Gardner's seat by a 44-24 margin, and he's never had trouble holding his reliably red constituency. He went on to chair the state GOP ahead of a dispiriting 2020 cycle and has spent most of his tenure as an ardent conservative, though he broke from Freedom Caucus doctrine in 2021 when he became part of the minority of Republicans to vote to recognize Biden's win.

Holtorf, by contrast, likely has far more in common with most of Buck's colleagues on the extreme right. The state representative made national news in 2021 when he called a Latino colleague "Buckwheat," claiming later that he didn't know of the racist origins of the word. Holtorf again attracted unwanted attention again the next year when he accidentally dropped his gun in the state capitol while rushing to a vote, an episode that one observer called "reckless and scary."

The Downballot

● We did it! And it's all thanks to Molech! We're devoting this week's episode of "The Downballot" to giving praise to the dark god himself after New Hampshire Democrat Hal Rafter won a critical special election over Republican Jim Guzofski, the loony toons pastor who once ranted that liberals make "blood sacrifices to their god Molech." Democrats are now just one seat away from erasing the GOP's majority in the state House and should feel good about their chances in the Granite State next year. Republicans, meanwhile, can only stew bitterly that they lack the grassroots fundraising energy provided by Daily Kos, which endorsed Rafter and raised the bulk of his campaign funds via small donations.

We're also joined by Daily Kos Elections' own Stephen Wolf to update us on the ongoing litigation over Alabama's congressional map. In an unusual move, the court's appointed expert invited the public to submit their own proposals as he prepares replacement maps, so Wolf took him up on the offer and drew two plans of his own. Wolf describes those plans in detail and sings the praises of Dave's Redistricting App, the invaluable free tool that has allowed ordinary citizens to participate in the redistricting process in ways never before possible.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show—new episodes every Thursday! You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by noon Eastern time.

Senate

● AZ-Sen: Politico reported Wednesday that Republican Kari Lake, who continues to challenge her defeat in last year's race for governor, will "almost certainly" announce in October that she'll run for the Senate, which is the same timeline Axios laid out last month. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb has been campaigning for the GOP nod since April, but it remains to be seen if any other notable names will join in. While multiple publications said just before Labor Day that 2022 Senate nominee Blake Masters had decided to get in, a separate Politico story from Wednesday says his entry is "now on hold as Kari Lake preps her entry."

● IN-Sen: Wealthy businessman John Rust has filed a lawsuit to challenge the state law that would keep him off the GOP primary ballot, though he'd be the underdog against Rep. Jim Banks even if he succeeded in court.

The state only allows candidates to run with the party they belong to, and the easiest way for Hoosiers to establish party affiliation is to cast their two most recent primary votes in that side's nomination contests. (There is no party registration in Indiana.) But while Rust most recently participated in the 2016 GOP primary, his prior vote was in the 2012 Democratic race. Candidates can get an exemption if their local party chair certifies that they belong to the party, but Jackson County party head Amanda Lowery said last month she wouldn't do this.

Governors

● KY-Gov: Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear has launched his most hard-hitting ad of the race, a spot where a rape survivor condemns Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron's ardent opposition to abortion rights.  "I was raped by my stepfather after years of sexual abuse," says a woman identified as Hadley. "I was 12."

Hadley continues, "Anyone who believes there should be no exceptions for rape and incest could never understand what it's like to stand in my shoes. This is to you, Daniel Cameron: to tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather, who raped her, is unthinkable."

Beshear last month became probably the first statewide candidate to ever air a general election ad attacking the GOP's opposition to abortion rights, and Planned Parenthood has also launched digital ads on the topic. Cameron has defended the state's near-total ban, which has no exemptions for rape or incest, in court and on the campaign trail, telling LEX 18 News in April, "I'm not going to waiver in my position on this and we're going to continue to defend the law as is."

The attorney general seems to have finally recognized that that stance is toxic even in this conservative state, and he declared Monday, "If our legislature was to bring legislation before me that provided exceptions for rape and incest, I would sign that legislation."

Beshear's side quickly made it clear they wouldn't stop attacking his record in office, though. The state Democratic Party posted 2022 footage Tuesday where Cameron celebrated the end of Roe v. Wade by proclaiming, "Abortion is, for all intents and purposes, over here in the commonwealth, with the exemption of life [of the mother]. There is no rape and incest exemption." The governor's campaign debuted this new ad the following day.

● LA-Gov: State Rep. Richard Nelson, who raised little money and barely registered in the polls, announced Wednesday that he was exiting the Oct. 14 all-party primary and endorsing his fellow Republican, far-right Attorney General Jeff Landry. Nelson said last month that he was interested in replacing another now-former GOP rival, Stephen Waguespack, as head of the state's Chamber of Commerce affiliate, but he also acknowledged Wednesday that the group had passed him over.

● UT-Gov, UT-Sen: While former Rep. Jason Chaffetz still hasn't ruled out running for governor or Senate this cycle, the Republican acknowledged to KSL he's likely to remain a Fox News talking head instead. "That's not something I'm planning to do, challenging Gov. [Spencer] Cox is not in my plans," said Chaffetz, adding he's more interested in seeking the governorship in 2028. He also said of a campaign to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Mitt Romney, "I haven't fully closed the door on it, but it's not something I'm actively pursuing."

House

● CA-40: EMILY's List has endorsed Tustin Unified School District trustee Allyson Muñiz Damikolas in the top-two primary to face GOP Rep. Young Kim in an eastern Orange County seat that Joe Biden carried 50-48. Damikolas' only notable intra-party foe is retired Orange County Fire Capt. Joe Kerr, who previously earned endorsements from four Southern California House Democrats: Senate candidates Katie Porter and Adam Schiff, plus Reps. Lou Correa and Mike Levin.

Ballot Measures

● AZ Ballot: A campaign has launched in Arizona to place an amendment on next year's general election ballot to do away with the state's partisan primaries starting in 2026, an effort that comes months after Republican legislators placed their own amendment on the ballot to protect the status quo and ban instant-runoff voting. The Arizona Mirror says that if both amendments won next year, only the one with the most support would take effect.

However, even if voters opted to change how elections are conducted, it still wouldn't be up to voters what system they'd get to use. Axios' Jeremy Duda explains that, while all the candidates would run on one all-party primary ballot, it would be up to the legislature if anywhere between two and five contenders would advance to the general election for races where only one candidate can win.

Instant-runoff voting would be used for the second round of voting if more than two contenders are allowed to move forward, but the GOP's hatred of ranked-choice voting means that this almost certainly wouldn't happen as long as the party maintains its narrow majorities in both chambers. Should the legislature fail to reach an agreement, though, it would be up to the secretary of state―a post currently held by Democrat Adrian Fontes―to make this call.

In order to qualify for the ballot, the campaign must secure about 384,000 valid signatures by July 3. Republican leaders very much hope it fails to hit this target, with state party chair Jeff DeWit ardently condemning the effort.

● OH Ballot: Ohio's Republican-led Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld most of the summary that the conservative Ohio Ballot Board crafted for the Nov. 7 proposed abortion rights amendment to replace the one drawn up by the amendment's backers, including text that substitutes the words "unborn child" in place of "fetus." The actual text of the amendment that would go into the state constitution remains unchanged.

One Republican on the seven-member body, Justice Pat Fischer, sided with the three Democrats to order the Ballot Board to swap the words "state of Ohio" out for "citizens of the state of Ohio" in a passage describing who had the power to limit access to the procedure. However, the summary that will go before voters will still declare that the amendment would "[a]lways allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician's determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman's life and health."

Mayors & County Leaders

● Manchester, NH Mayor: Republican Jay Ruais and Democrat Kevin Cavanaugh advanced out of Tuesday's nonpartisan primary to the Nov. 7 general election to succeed retiring incumbent Joyce Craig, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, for a two-year term as leader of New Hampshire's largest city. Ruais secured 42% while Cavanaugh, a former state senator who went into the first round with endorsements from Craig and Sen. Maggie Hassan, beat out fellow Democratic Alderman Will Stewart 25-19 for second; a third Democratic alderman, June Trisciani, took the remaining 14% and quickly backed Cavanaugh.

While supporters of Ruais, who is a former congressional staffer, celebrated his first-place finish, at least one prominent Republican strategist noted that the three Democrats outpaced him 58-42. Michael Biundo tweeted that Ruais "will celebrate tonight and he should," but continued, "as someone that has spent a lot of time around Manchester politics, the fact the Democrats got a combined majority is a cautionary tale for the GOP. Lots of work ahead if Manchester is going to move in a better direction."

While Manchester, with a population of just over 110,000, isn't a particularly large city by American standards, its status as one of the few places with a sizable concentration of voters and activists in New Hampshire makes it an enticing place for presidential hopefuls to burnish their profiles—not to mention fill their favor banks. The mayor's office also is an attractive springboard to bigger things, particularly given the dearth of statewide elected positions in New Hampshire (only the governor and its two U.S. senators are elected by the entire state).

Republicans had held the mayor's office for more than a decade prior, but Craig broke their streak in 2017 by unseating incumbent Ted Gatsas. The GOP is now hoping to win this key city back even though Biden carried it by a 56-42 margin, which was the best performance by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1996.

● San Mateo County, CA Board of Supervisors: Former Rep. Jackie Speier unexpectedly announced Tuesday that she would run for an open seat on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, the five-member body the Democrat previously served on four decades ago. Speier first won that post in 1980, two years after she survived the 1978 Jonestown cult shooting that murdered her boss, Rep. Leo Ryan, by unseating a 20-year incumbent. She left after she was elected to the state Assembly in 1986, and she'd eventually serve close to 15 years in Congress.

Speier, who retired from the House last cycle, launched her new effort this week by declaring, "The people of District 1 know me, and I know them. I will use the skills I've honed, the relationships I've built, and the experiences I've earned to fix problems our community confronts." She should have a far easier time winning the officially nonpartisan race south of San Francisco than she did in 1980, as the two major contenders, Millbrae Councilmember Gina Papan and Burlingame Councilmember Emily Beach, both dropped out and endorsed her. The nonpartisan primary will be in March, with a November general if no one wins a majority.

P.S. Three of Speier's former House colleagues currently serve on the board of supervisors for other counties in California. Democrat Janice Hahn gave up her seat in 2012 to wage a successful bid in Los Angeles County, while Republican Paul Cook did the same thing in 2020 in San Bernardino County to the east. Another Democrat, Hilda Solis, left the House in 2009 to become U.S. secretary of labor, and she later won the 2014 race to join Hahn on the governing body for America's most populous county, whose five supervisors each represent nearly three times as many constituents as House members do.

This sort of career switch hasn't worked out for every House member, though. In 2014 freshman Democratic Rep. Gloria Negrete McLeod left her safely blue seat to run for the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors only to lose a tight race to Republican Assemblyman Curt Hagman, and their 2018 rematch went the same way.

Other Races

● Los Angeles, CA City Council: City Councilmember Kevin de León announced Wednesday that he'd seek reelection, a development that comes almost a year after audio surfaced where he and two of his then-colleagues made racist comments about other councilmembers and Los Angeles residents. De León, who defied calls for his resignation from President Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats, told Politico, "I understood in a deeper way the relationship that I had with my community and how that motivates and drives me. That's why I'm still here."

De León, who is a former leader of the state Senate, rose to national prominence in the 2018 cycle when he waged an unsuccessful challenge from the left against Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, but he returned to elected office in 2020 when he won a seat on the 15-member City Council in America's second-largest city.

De León went on to take a distant third place in the 2022 nonpartisan primary for mayor, but he had much bigger concerns a few months later when audio leaked of his 2021 conversation with City Council President Nury Martinez, City Councilman Gil Cedillo, and labor leader Ron Herrera. The quartet discussed how to use City Council redistricting to strengthen Latino representation and weaken their opponents, and Martinez also made bigoted remarks about Jews, Armenian Americans, African Americans, and Oaxacans.

At one point De León was recorded agreeing when Martinez described the Black adopted child of a white colleague, Mike Bonin, as "an accessory," with De León saying Bonin's decision to bring his son to political events was like "when Nury brings her Goyard bag or the Louis Vuitton bag." De León also described Bonin as the council's "fourth Black member," adding, "Mike Bonin won't fucking ever say peep about Latinos. He'll never say a fucking word about us."

The release of the recording turned into a national scandal, and both Martinez and Herrera ended up resigning; Cedillo, who had lost reelection months before, ended up staying until his term ended that December. But De León, who would call his insult about the younger Bonin as "a flippant remark," remained put. He argued to Politico this week that, while he should have called out Martinez and the others during their talk, "The context of our conversation was about redistricting and ensuring equal representation." He continued, "You have to look no further than the maps that were drawn. Are they fully reflective of the demographics of the city? Not really."

De León's many foes, though, aren't accepting any of his apologies or explanations. Two Democratic members of the California Assembly, Miguel Santiago and Wendy Carrillo, said that, while they didn't diverge with the incumbent on policy, he couldn't remain in office. Another contender, tenants rights attorney Ysabel Jurado, meanwhile argued she'd represent a change from the unacceptable status quo in city politics.

All of the candidates will face off on one nonpartisan ballot in March, which is the same day that California holds its federal and state primary, and a November runoff would take place unless someone secures a majority. However, several labor leaders argue to Politico that the incumbent is anything but doomed. "He's out in the community," said one unnamed source, while another said the crowded field could make it tougher to present a united front.

● Where Are They Now?: Heading to the pokey. Former Rep. Steve Buyer, an Indiana Republican who served from 1993 until his 2011 retirement, was sentenced to 22 months in prison Tuesday for insider trading, and the judge ordered him to report to jail in late November.

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Morning Digest: Want to know which House seats are the most vulnerable? Our new tool tells you

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● House: Which House districts are the most likely to change hands heading into next year's pivotal elections? The 2024 elections might be more than a year away, but we can tell you right now thanks to the new edition of our House Vulnerability Index.

Our index, which we've been using for more than a decade relies on just two data points: how red or blue every district is (based on an average of its presidential results over the last two elections) and how well each incumbent performed in the 2022 midterms. We rank each criterion (with open seats given a zero for the second factor), combine the ranks, and then re-rank the entire House, separated by party. This gives us an excellent view of the congressional battleground—something we can confirm by analyzing how it's performed in the past (the answer: very well).

So which are the most vulnerable seats? For Republicans, the top five are all freshmen who were lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on how things pan out) to win races last year in blue districts in California or New York—two states where poor Democratic turnout allowed the GOP to win on turf that's normally out of reach. Democrats' toughest defense, meanwhile, will be in Michigan's 7th District, a very swingy seat that's open next year because Elissa Slotkin, a strong campaigner and impressive fundraiser, is running for the Senate.

As more incumbents retire, or as maps get altered in redistricting, we'll keep updating the index from now through Election Day, so it's an eminently bookmarkable tool for activists and analysts alike.

Find David Jarman's full explanation for how the HVI works—as well as links to the complete index, including all the underlying data—in our detailed introductory post.

Redistricting

● WA Redistricting: Democratic legislative leaders have announced that they won't reconvene Washington's bipartisan redistricting commission after a federal court ruled last month that one of the legislative districts that commissioners adopted after 2020 violated the Voting Rights Act by diluting Latino voting power. However, the Republicans who were allowed to intervene as co-defendants in the case have announced they will appeal the district judge's ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Because Washington's redistricting commission has two voting members from both parties and no tie-breaking vote, the GOP likely would have blocked a suitable remedy had it been reconvened.

Last month, a district judge struck down the 15th District, which is located in the Yakima Valley in south-central Washington, finding that despite its nominal 51% Latino majority among eligible voters, turnout disparities and white voters' hostility to Latino-preferred candidates meant that Latino voters could not effectively elect their chosen candidates there. If the court's ruling survives on appeal and it redraws the 15th to strengthen Latino voting power, it could eventually result in Latino-backed Democrats gaining one seat in the state Senate and two in the state House (Washington uses the same map for both legislative chambers, with each district electing one senator and two representatives.)

Senate

● IN-Sen: Republican Sen. Mike Braun, who's running for governor next year, has finally endorsed Rep. Jim Banks to succeed him in the Senate. The far-right Banks had along ago consolidated support from all levels of the Indiana GOP establishment and more or less lacks any primary opposition. His one nominal opponent, wealthy egg farmer John Rust, is still acting like a candidate (and Banks is still treating him like one), but he seems unlikely to make the primary ballot because his Republican bona fides are insufficient under state law.

● PA-Sen: The conservative site The Dispatch reporters that wealthy former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick will launch a second bid for the Senate on Thursday. At the moment, there are no notable Republicans running to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, who is seeking a fourth term.

● UT-Sen: The Republican field to replace Sen. Mitt Romney following his recent announcement that he won't seek reelection next year continues to take shape, and Bloomberg relays a quote from conservative activist Carolyn Phippen saying she's "exploring" a run, something that state party chair Robert Axson had previously suggested was likely. Meanwhile, KUTV reports that a spokeswoman for Gov. Spencer Cox said her boss was not planning to run, though there's no direct quote. Cox had previously announced in March that he would seek reelection next year instead, though that of course was before Romney had called it quits.

The Salt Lake Tribune mentioned several Republicans who could run, including Reps. John Curtis, Blake Moore, and Burgess Owens; Lt. Gov. Diedre Henderson; real estate executive and former state party chair Thomas Wright; JR Bird, who is the mayor of the small town of Roosevelt; and businessman Brad Bonham, who serves on the Republican National Committee. None of that bunch appears to have said anything about their interest yet except for Curtis and Moore, who both had already refused to rule out the prospect.

Lastly, Politico reports that multiple congressional Republicans are encouraging Donald Trump's former national security adviser Robert O'Brien to run. O'Brien, who had worked on both of Romney's presidential campaigns, just last month said he didn't want to run for office next year, but it's unclear yet if his interest has changed with Romney out of the picture.

So far the only notable candidate officially running is Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs, who had been primarying Romney from the right. However, state House Speaker Brad Wilson had also been raising money for a potential bid against Romney for months and had hinted right after the senator's announcement that he could formally jump into the race soon.

House

● DE-AL: A new poll for the Human Rights Campaign, which previously endorsed state Sen. Sarah McBride, finds her leading in the Democratic primary for Delaware's open House seat. The survey, conducted by Democratic pollster Change Research, puts McBride in front with 44% of the vote while 23% say they support Delaware State Housing Authority director Eugene Young and 13% back state Treasurer Colleen Davis. Somewhat surprisingly for a poll conducted a full year before the primary—and long before campaigns will begin spending in earnest—only 18% of respondents say they are undecided.

● GA-06: Cobb County Commissioner Jerica Richardson, who recently kicked off a bid for Georgia's 6th Congressional District, says she'll see her campaign through to the end regardless of whether the state's map gets redrawn.

In 2021, Republicans gerrymandered the Atlanta-area 6th District to an extreme degree: Under its prior boundaries, the district had backed Joe Biden by a 55-44 margin, but after the GOP got done with it, the new version would have supported Donald Trump 57-42. That makes it inhospitable turf for Democrats like Richardson—so much so that the district's former representative, Lucy McBath, decided to seek reelection last year in the neighboring (and safely blue) 7th instead.

But the Atlanta area could get rejiggered yet again, depending on a lawsuit that says Republicans are obligated by the Voting Rights Act to create an additional district where Black voters can elect their preferred candidates. (The suit relies on the same provision of the VRA at issue in Alabama, where Black voters successfully made a similar argument.) A trial in the case just ended on Thursday, and the judge presiding over the dispute says he plans to rule by Thanksgiving, which this year is Nov. 23.

● IL-07: Chicago city Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin was set to launch her long-anticipated primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Danny Davis last week, but the would-be candidate ended up postponing her kickoff event as the fallout from recently disclosed allegations that she abused her power continued to unfold. Conyears-Ervin's campaign said the postponement was "due to a scheduling conflict," but the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a source on her campaign said the real reason was that the city's Board of Ethics held a hearing on the allegations last Monday.

The allegations against Conyears-Ervin surfaced earlier this month when the city released a 2020 letter where two of her former top aides—Ashley Evans and Tiffany Harper—accused the treasurer of misusing government money and personnel. The pair claimed Conyears-Ervin hired an unqualified employee "for personal services;" used official resources for electoral matters, including sending money to religious organizations that supported her; and threatened to retaliate against any subordinates who wouldn't help her. Evans and Harper later received a total of $100,000 in a 2021 settlement after arguing they were fired in just such an act of illegal retaliation.

While that settlement was public knowledge, then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who was a Conyears-Ervin ally, spent years trying to keep this letter from becoming public. However, new Mayor Brandon Johnson, a fellow Democrat who defeated Lightfoot and other challengers in elections earlier this year, released the letter earlier this month.

In response to questions during last week's meeting about why the board had apparently failed to act on the letter for nearly three years, chairman William Conlon defended his board's actions by claiming that members lacked investigatory powers of their own. Conlon contended that the board had properly referred the case to the city's inspector general, whose office never referred the matter back to the board.

The Chicago Tribune reported that it was "unclear" whether the inspector general had ever opened an investigation but noted that there have long been concerns about the office taking multiple years to resolve investigations. Current Inspector General Deborah Witzburg, who was appointed last year by Lightfoot and confirmed by the City Council, declined to comment. However, the Tribune added that the city has "tight restrictions" on the inspector general commenting on investigations, meaning it's unclear when we'll get more clarity on the situation from city officials.

● MN-05: State Sen. Bobby Joe Champion, who briefly ran for Minnesota's safely blue 5th Congressional District when it was an open seat in 2018, won't rule out a challenge to Rep. Ilhan Omar in next year's Democratic primary. In new remarks to MinnPost's Ana Radelat, Champion said he "hasn't thought about" a bid before adding, "I never, ever make a decision based on people asking me to do something." Omar already has two opponents in former National Guard recruiter Tim Peterson and attorney Sarah Gad, but several other bigger names are reportedly weighing the race.

Attorneys General

● TX-AG: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was facing a trial in the state Senate after getting impeached by the House on charges of corruption, was acquitted on all 16 counts on Saturday. Just two of Paxton’s fellow Republicans in the GOP-controlled Senate voted to convict him on any counts even though the vast majority of Republicans in the House had voted to impeach him in May. Axios reported that Paxton allies had threatened primary challenges against any Republicans who voted against the attorney general.

Judges

● OH Supreme Court: State Supreme Court Justice Joe Deters, a Republican appointed to the court by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine in January to fill a vacant Republican seat, has indicated he will instead challenge one of the two Democratic incumbents who will be up for reelection next year rather than run for his current seat. Because Deters filled a vacancy to replace GOP Justice Sharon Kennedy after she was elected to the chief justice's position last year, the 2024 election for Deters' seat is only for the final two years of Kennedy's term. By contrast, both Democratic Justices Melody Stewart and Michael Donnelly are running for what would be their second six-year terms.

Deters has yet to indicate which Democrat he will challenge, but Democrats are already facing another tough election cycle after Republican lawmakers made court races partisan contests ahead of last year's elections in order to help their party in this red-leaning state, and Republicans hold a 4-3 majority after winning all three races last year. Democrats theoretically could gain a 4-3 edge of their own if both Stewart and Donnelly won reelection and the party flipped Deters' open seat in 2024, but that will be a challenging task in a state that has shifted rightward during the Trump era.

Mayors and County Leaders

● Nashville, TN Mayor: Progressives had a strong night in Nashville on Thursday when Metro Council member Freddie O'Connell won a 64-36 blowout in the runoff for mayor against Republican strategist Alice Rolli. Despite the election being an off-cycle, nonpartisan contest, O'Connell's landslide nearly matched Joe Biden's 64-32 victory over Donald Trump here in 2020, which itself was the largest margin since 1948 for a Democratic presidential candidate. Progressives also had a strong performance in races for the Metro Council itself, which will see women holding a majority of seats for the first time in its history.

O'Connell's victory marks a shift from outgoing Mayor John Cooper, a more moderate Democrat who unexpectedly retired after just a single term. O'Connell had campaigned on the slogan "More 'Ville, less Vegas" as part of his argument that the city needed to prioritize the needs of residents over tourists, and he emphasized his opposition to Cooper's successful drive this year for taxpayers to fund a new stadium for the Tennessee Titans. The mayor-elect had drawn well-funded opposition from parts of the local business community, but it wasn't enough to stop him from advancing to the runoff in a crowded field and winning.

Morning Digest: Mitt Romney, facing a difficult path to reelection, won’t run for second term

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● UT-Sen: Republican Sen. Mitt Romney announced on Wednesday that he would not run for reelection next year, bringing to an end a three-decade political career that featured several bids for office but only two victories years apart. Romney's decision creates a wide-open race to succeed him in a deeply conservative state dominated by Republicans but one where critics of Donald Trump, including Romney himself, retain a measure of support.

Romney was born in Detroit in the years immediately after World War II and, as a 15-year-old in 1962, watched his father win election as governor of Michigan. While George Romney would serve three two-year terms and wage an ill-fated bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, Mitt, his youngest son, did not get involved in politics until the early 1990s—and did so in a different state.

The younger Romney had moved to Massachusetts in 1972 to pursue a joint JD/MBA program at Harvard and went on to make his name in the business world, co-founding the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1984. A decade later, he sought to challenge veteran Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, hoping that a favorable political climate for Republicans would help him oust the "liberal lion" of the Senate. But despite polls that showed a tight race, Kennedy prevailed by a comfortable 58-41 margin, though it would be the closest contest of his long career.

Romney immediately returned to Bain and was later credited with turning around the financially trouble committee responsible for running the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Just weeks after the closing ceremonies, though, Romney announced a campaign for governor after acting Gov. Jane Swift, a fellow Republican, dropped her bid for a full term.

While Massachusetts had for many decades seldom sent Republicans to Congress, it had a long tradition of electing them to the governorship; when Romney sought the post, the last time a Democrat had won it was in 1986, when Michael Dukakis secured his third and final term. As he had in his race against Kennedy, Romney campaigned as a moderate and claimed to support abortion rights. (Kennedy had jeered that Romney was not pro-choice but "multiple-choice.") Thanks in part to a large financial advantage—the wealthy Romney self-funded $6 million, a record at the time—he defeated his Democratic opponent, state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien.

The victory was Romney's first, and it also marked the fourth straight gubernatorial win for Massachusetts Republicans. But the streak wouldn't last long for Romney: With more than a year left in his term, he announced he would not seek reelection. The move came ahead of a widely expected campaign for president, which he'd telegraphed by shifting to the right on key issues like abortion.

Romney's metamorphosis left many conservatives unconvinced, however, and he lost the nomination to John McCain, who in turn was beaten by Barack Obama. Four years later, though, true believers failed to rally around a strong alternative and Romney captured the GOP nod, but he, too, lost to Obama. (Romney was reportedly "shellshocked" by the loss despite the incumbent's consistent polling leads.)

Romney later relocated to Utah, where he'd earned his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young and had long maintained a vacation home. But despite declaring he'd been branded a "loser for life" in a documentary about his attempts to win the presidency, he made one last foray into the political arena. Following Sen. Orrin Hatch's retirement, Romney easily won both the GOP primary and general election to succeed him in 2018, making him the first person in 150 years—and just the second ever, after the legendary Sam Houston—to serve as governor and senator in two different states.

While Romney remained a traditional conservative, his Senate tenure was marked by his criticism of Trump. (Hard as it may be to believe now, Trump actually endorsed Romney's initial campaign for Senate.) He made history in 2020 when he became the first senator to vote in favor of convicting a president from his own party at an impeachment trial during Trump's first impeachment, then voted (along with a handful of other Republicans) to convict him again at his second impeachment the next year.

The hatred his apostasies engendered from the MAGA brigades all but ensured he'd face a difficult fight to win renomination had he sought another term. An August poll showed him taking just 44% in a hypothetical primary matchup, a soft showing for an incumbent. It turned out that his 2018 victory would not only be just his second ever but also his last.

In remarks on Wednesday announcing his departure, Romney noted that he'd be in his mid-80s at the end of a second Senate term and said that "it's time for a new generation of leaders." That new generation likely won't look much like the outgoing senator, though it's possible that a split among extremists could see the GOP nominate a relative pragmatist: In the recent special election primary for Utah's 2nd Congressional District, former state Rep. Becky Edwards took a third of the vote despite saying she'd voted for Joe Biden and opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

At the moment, though, the only Republican in the race is Trent Staggs, mayor of the small community of Riverton. Other candidates, however, are already hovering in the wings, so we're likely to see a crowded primary in 2024.

The Downballot

● What do you do if you're associated with one of the biggest election fraud scandals in recent memory? If you're Republican Mark Harris, you try running for office again! On this week's episode of "The Downballot," we revisit the absolutely wild story of Harris' 2018 campaign for Congress, when one of his consultants orchestrated a conspiracy to illegally collect blank absentee ballots from voters and then had his team fill them out before "casting" them. Bipartisan officials wound up tossing the results of this almost-stolen election, but now Harris is back with a new bid for the House—and he won't shut up about his last race, even blaming Democrats for the debacle.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also discuss a late entrant into the race for North Carolina governor; why Republicans are struggling to recruit in Ohio now that they can't gerrymander their congressional map again; how a Freedom Caucus member has bizarrely emerged as a voice of sanity within the GOP—and why it'll likely doom him; Mitt Romney's retirement in Utah; and proposed maps that our Daily Kos Elections colleague Stephen Wolf submitted to the federal court in Alabama that's about to impose new congressional districts.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show—new episodes every Thursday! You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by noon Eastern time.

Senate

● MI-Sen: Wealthy businessman John Tuttle, who's the vice chair of the New York Stock Exchange, has declared that he won't run for the GOP nomination next year. Tuttle's announcement leaves former Rep. Mike Rogers as the only major candidate in the primary so far, though some other big GOP names are still considering the open seat contest.

● WI-Sen: Trempealeau County Board Supervisor Stacey Klein has filed paperwork to run as a Republican and said she would officially kick off her campaign on Saturday. Klein, who first won her board seat in April 2022, hails from a county that is home to less than 1% of Wisconsin's population, but her entry nonetheless makes her the most prominent GOP candidate so far in a longtime swing state where Republicans have struggled to land a major candidate to take on Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

Governors

● DE-Gov: Term-limited Gov. John Carney has endorsed Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long just one day after his fellow Democrat announced she was running to succeed him next year. Both Democrats are currently serving their second terms (governors and lieutenant governors are elected separately in Delaware), and Hall-Long faces a primary against New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, whose county contains 58% of the state's population.

● IN-Gov: The far-right Club for Growth has endorsed Republican Sen. Mike Braun in his primary to succeed term-limited Gov. Eric Holcomb. Braun, who previously won the Club's endorsement during his competitive initial primary for Senate in 2018, faces a crowded GOP field for governor that includes Lt. Gov. Susanne Crouch, former state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers, former Indiana Economic Development Corporation president Eric Doden, and former state Attorney General Curtis Hill.

House

● AR-03: Republican Rep. Steve Womack announced that he'll seek another term representing his safely red seat in northwestern Arkansas, which he first won in 2010. Although Womack himself is solidly conservative, he had nonetheless recognized Joe Biden's 2020 victory and had previously told the Washington Post that he had been considering retirement due to dissatisfaction with GOP leadership caving to far-right hardliners, though he's never had any trouble winning renomination before.

● OH-13: Former state GOP chairwoman Jane Timken, who unsuccessfully competed in her party's 2022 primary for Senate, announced Wednesday that she wouldn't run for the 13th District next year. Timken's decision comes just a week after the state Supreme Court granted a request by plaintiffs to dismiss their legal challenges against the GOP's current gerrymander, which ensured that Republicans won't get a chance to draw an even more extreme map for 2024 that could have targeted freshman Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes in this 51-48 Biden seat in Akron.

Ballot Measures

● OH Ballot: Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, which is supporting November's ballot initiative that would enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution, has launched their first TV ad buy for $687,000 over the next week. The new spot argues that the government shouldn't be making difficult reproductive healthcare choices for Ohioans and that voting yes on Issue 1 would "end Ohio's extreme abortion ban," which has "no exceptions for rape or incest." It also emphasizes that the amendment would protect access to birth control and emergency care for miscarriages.

Legislatures

● NY State Assembly: Democrat Sam Berger won Tuesday's special election to fill a Democratic-held seat in Queens by a 55-45 spread against Republican David Hirsch. This district contains large Asian American and Orthodox Jewish populations, two demographics that Democrats have lost some ground with in recent years in New York City, and some had feared that Republican Lee Zeldin's 56-44 win over Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul here last year was a warning sign of things to come.

However, Berger enjoyed a large fundraising advantage and nearly matched Joe Biden's 56-43 victory in the district. Assembly Democrats will retain a 102-48 supermajority once he's sworn in, which will make the 25-year-older Berger the chamber's youngest member.

Morning Digest: Republican linked to massive election fraud scandal mounts comeback

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● NC-08: Republican Mark Harris, whose 2018 House campaign was responsible for one the most ignominious election fraud scandals in recent memory, announced on Tuesday that he's waging a comeback bid for North Carolina's open 8th Congressional District.

Harris, an ultra-conservative pastor, managed to oust Rep. Robert Pittenger in the primary for the old 9th District, but despite the area's conservative lean, he faced a strong challenge in the general election from Marine veteran Dan McCready. It appeared that Harris managed to survive that year's blue wave by fewer than a thousand votes, but in a shocking development, the state's bipartisan Board of Elections unanimously refused to certify the results amid allegations of fraud.

In the following weeks, it emerged that McCrae Dowless, a consultant for Pittenger, had run a scheme to illegally collect blank or incomplete absentee ballots in rural Black counties (North Carolina prohibits third-party ballot collection), then filled them out and returned them to election offices with forged signatures. With the number of potentially tainted ballots far larger than Harris' ostensible margin of victory, the elections board eventually threw out the results of the race and ordered a do-over election. Dowless, along with half a dozen co-conspirators, was later indicted on a variety of felony counts but died last year while awaiting trial.

Harris, by contrast, was never charged with wrongdoing, but his fellow Republicans knew he was toxic. The GOP-run legislature quickly passed a bill changing state law to allow for a new primary rather than require the same candidates for both parties to run again. That allowed Republicans to replace Harris with state Sen. Dan Bishop, the author of North Carolina's notorious "bathroom bill," who defeated McCready by a tight 51-49 margin in a special election held 10 months after the original contest. Republicans, in other words, paid no electoral price for the fraudulent scheme designed to benefit their party.

And now that Bishop is running for state attorney general, Harris has the chance for a do-over of his own. But he doesn't seem to want to let the past remain there: In a statement accompanying his kickoff, he claimed to be a victim of a "manufactured scandal" perpetrated by Democrats and even re-hired the same campaign manager from his 2018 effort. He also seems aware that some Republicans may not be so happy to see him again, saying he "fully expects a flurry of lies and rumors from both Democrats and some from my own party."

As of now, though, he's the only candidate in the race. And with Republicans slated to re-gerrymander North Carolina's map, if he wins next year's primary, he's exceedingly likely to finally make it to Congress after all.

Senate

● MT-Sen: Republican Tim Sheehy is the target of an early attack ad from a new super PAC that Politico reports "has apparent ties to Democrats." The spot slams Sheehy for not paying back a $770,000 loan from the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program that was designed to support businesses during the pandemic (the loans were forgivable in many cases). The ad may be aimed at softening up Sheehy ahead of a potential against far-right Rep. Matt Rosendale, who lost to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in 2018 and is likely Tester's preferred opponent. AdImpact says the group behind the campaign, called Last Best Place PAC, has booked $141,000 in TV time so far.

● NV-Sen: Politico reports that Duty First Nevada, a super PAC backing Republican Senate candidate Sam Brown, has reserved $512,000 for a seven-week TV ad buy that will start at the beginning of next month. Nevada's primaries are not until June.

● WI-Sen: Wealthy businessman Scott Mayer tells Politico he'll "need some more time" to decide on whether to challenge Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, saying "it's a little bit more complicated," though he declined to elaborate. Mayer previously said a Senate bid was "not something I ever had a desire to do," calling it "more of an obligation." Republicans still have yet to land a notable candidate.

Governors

● DE-Gov: Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long joined the Democratic primary to succeed term-limited Gov. John Carney, making her the second major candidate in the contest after New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer. After spending more than a decade in the legislature, Hall-Long won a crowded primary for lieutenant governor in 2016. She then prevailed comfortably in the general election to serve alongside Carney, who also won his first term that same year. (Governors and lieutenant governors are elected separately in Delaware.) She earned a second term four years later. Unlike Meyer, she hails from Sussex County in the southern part of the state.

● MO-Gov: The Missouri Chamber of Commerce, which the Kansas City Star's Kacen Bayless describes as "one of the state's most influential and prominent pro-business groups," endorsed Republican Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe in the race to succeed term-limited Gov. Mike Parson. Kehoe faces far-right state Sen. Bill Eigel and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a vocal abortion opponent, in the GOP primary.

● NC-Gov: Former Supreme Court Justice Mike Morgan, who'd previously hinted at a run for governor, kicked off his campaign to succeed term-limited Gov. Roy Cooper on Tuesday. If he's successful, he'd be the first Black governor in North Carolina history.

First, though, he'll have to get through a difficult primary. Until now, the only other Democrat running had been Attorney General Josh Stein, who launched his own bid way back in January and was endorsed by Cooper late last month. Morgan sounded resentful about that endorsement and those of other party leaders in comments to the News & Observer, insisting that "the responsible thing to do" would have been (in the paper's phrasing) to "wait to see who filed" before getting involved.

He also shrugged off Stein's fundraising advantage—the attorney general raised almost $6 million in the first half of the year—saying his opponent "may have the superior treasury, but I have the superior candidacy." Morgan argued he's more electable than Stein by pointing out that he earned a higher percentage of the vote in his lone statewide race than Stein did in either of his two campaigns (54.5%, vs. a shade over 50% both times for Stein). But Morgan's 9-point victory in 2016 came at a time when state Supreme Court races were nonpartisan (Republicans soon after made them partisan contests), while Stein has always had a "D" after his name on the ballot.

Thanks to his late start, Morgan, who resigned from the Supreme Court earlier this month, now has just six months to make his case to voters before the primary. Candidate filing ends in mid-December, but it's unlikely any other notable names will get in. Republicans have a multi-way primary of their own, but limited polling has shown far-right Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who would also be the state's first Black chief executive, with a giant advantage.

House

● CA-03: National security strategist Jessica Morse, who unsuccessfully sought California's 4th District in 2018, announced on Tuesday that she'd challenge freshmen Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley in the 3rd District. In her prior race, Morse sought to unseat GOP Rep. Tom McClintock but lost 54-46, a result roughly in line with Donald Trump's 54-44 margin two years later. The new 3rd, by contrast, is considerably bluer: Trump would have carried it just 50-48. Kiley, however, turned back Democrat Kermit Jones 54-46. More than half of the 3rd District is made up of the old 4th, according to calculations from Daily Kos Elections.

● CA-31: Former Democratic Rep. Gil Cisneros, who'd been mentioned as a possible candidate for California's open 31st Congressional District, has filed paperwork with the FEC ahead of a potential campaign. Cisneros previously represented the old 39th District, but it has virtually no overlap with the 31st.

● CO-04: Though he's a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, Rep. Ken Buck has recently emerged as a vocal critic of extremists in his own party who want to impeach Joe Biden, which naturally has his fellow Republicans talking about a primary challenge. CNN reports that two possible names are already circulating, Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg and state Rep. Richard Holtorf, though neither has spoken publicly yet.

Sonnenberg declined a bid for Colorado's safely red 4th District once before, when it became an open seat under unusual circumstances in 2014. That year, Buck had been running against Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, but D.C. Republicans managed to coax Rep. Cory Gardner, whom they saw as more palatable, into making a late bid for the Senate. Buck simultaneously dropped down to run for Gardner's seat and earned the congressman's endorsement, all while denying the fix was in. The switcheroo worked out better for Buck, though, since Gardner lost his campaign for reelection in 2020 while Buck is still in Congress—for now, at least.

● MD-06: Commerce Department official April McClain-Delaney will join the Democratic primary for Maryland's open 6th Congressional District next month, according to an unnamed source who spoke with MoCo360. McClain-Delaney is the wife of former Rep. John Delaney, who represented the 6th District for three terms before leaving office in 2019 for an ill-fated bid for president best remembered by a meme-worthy photo showing the grim-faced candidate descending a slide at the Iowa State Fair. MoCo360 adds that "it is widely expected" that McClain-Delaney will self-fund to some degree, much as her husband did for his own campaigns. A large number of candidates from both parties are seeking this left-leaning seat in western Maryland.

● OH-13: Former state Sen. Kevin Coughlin tells Cleveland.com's Jeremy Pelzer that he isn't ruling out a bid against Democratic Rep. Emilia Sykes in Ohio's 13th District, but he doesn't sound enthused. According to Pelzer, Coughlin had hoped his fellow Republicans in state government would make the district redder, but a recent decision by voting rights activists to drop a challenge to the state's congressional map almost certainly means it will retain its current form for 2024. Under those lines, Joe Biden would have carried the district 51-48, and Sykes won it as an open seat last year by a 53-47 margin.

Pelzer also reports that another possible GOP candidate, state Sen. Kristina Roegner, has taken her name out of contention. The only Republican currently in the race is attorney Greg Wheeler, who unsuccessfully sought his party's nomination in 2022, though Hudson City Councilman Chris Banweg has filed paperwork with the FEC to set up a campaign committee.

● VA-02: Virginia Reps. Abigail Spanberger and Jennifer Wexton have both endorsed Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal, who is seeking to unseat freshman Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans in the state's 2nd Congressional District. So far, Cotter Smasal is the only Democrat running in this swingy district in the southeastern part of the state.

Morning Digest: After a Democrat won in Alaska, Republicans want to kill ranked-choice voting

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The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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Leading Off

● AK Ballot: Alaska voters made history in 2020 when they made their state the first in the nation to adopt a top-four primary with a ranked-choice general election, but conservatives tell the Alaska Beacon's James Brooks that they're close to qualifying a measure to repeal the system that would go before voters next year.

The campaign has until the start of the January legislative session to turn in about 27,000 valid signatures, a figure that represents 10% of the total number of votes that were cast in the most recent general election, and it must also hit certain targets in three-quarters of Alaska's 40 state House districts. One leader says that organizers have already gathered 30,000 petitions so far but will analyze them later to see if more are needed.

Under the current top-four system, all the candidates run on one primary ballot, and the four contenders with the most votes—regardless of party—advance to an instant-runoff general election. This method was first used last year in the special election to succeed the late GOP Rep. Don Young as Alaska's lone House member, a contest that ultimately saw Democrat Mary Peltola defeat former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin 51-49.

Conservatives both in Alaska and across the country were furious because Palin and another Republican, Nick Begich, outpaced Peltola by a combined 59-40 in the first round of tabulations. They blamed their surprise loss on instant-runoff voting rather than Palin's many failings or the Democrat's strengths.

"60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican," griped Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, "but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion—which disenfranchises voters—a Democrat 'won.'" But even without ranked-choice voting, Peltola still would have come in first, as she beat Palin 40-31. And since Begich took third with 28%, he may well still have lost a traditional primary to Palin had one been used.

Furthermore, a poll conducted right after the special by supporters of ranked-choice voting showed that Alaskans saw their new voting system as anything but "convoluted." Instead, 85% of respondents found it to be "simple," while 62% said they supported the new method.

Hard-right groups, though, soon had even more reasons to hate the new status quo. Thanks to the top-four system, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a rare Republican who's crossed party lines on high-profile votes, would no longer face what would almost certainly have been a tough GOP primary against Donald Trump's preferred candidate, former state cabinet official Kelly Tshibaka. (Murkowski famously lost her 2010 primary to a far-right foe but won the general through a write-in effort.)

Instead, Murkowski and Tshibaka easily advanced to the general election with Democrat Pat Chesbro and a little-known third Republican. Murkowski led Tshibaka 43.4-42.6 in the first round of general election tabulations, but the 10% of voters who supported Chesbro overwhelmingly broke for the incumbent and helped lift her to a 54-46 victory. Peltola also won her rematch with Palin 55-45 after initially leading her 49-26; unsurprisingly, both Palin and Tshibaka ardently back the effort to end the top-four system.

Redistricting

● OH Redistricting: Ohio's congressional districts will remain unchanged in 2024 after the state Supreme Court granted a request by plaintiffs to dismiss two legal challenges to the map, which the court ruled violated the state constitution as an impermissible partisan gerrymander last year.

Despite that ruling, however, challengers faced steep odds of a favorable outcome after hard-right Republicans won a majority on the court in November. But by abandoning their cases, voting rights advocates will ensure that Republicans cannot draw an even more aggressive gerrymander for 2024, since Ohio's constitution requires that the current map remain in place through next year's elections.

Republicans would still get a chance to draw a new map after 2024 under the current law, though, which is why reformers are instead focusing their efforts on qualifying an amendment for next year's ballot that would establish an independent redistricting commission to draw new maps.

This week, organizers submitted new ballot summary language after Republican Attorney General Dave Yost rejected their first attempt, mostly making technical changes in response to his complaints. Once they get the green light, activists will be able to start collecting the 413,000 signatures they need to put their measure before voters in 2024.

Senate

● CA-Sen: UC Berkeley has released two versions of its survey of the March top-two primary: One that includes a scenario where former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey campaigns as a Republican, and one where he doesn't run. First is the Garvey version:

  • Rep. Adam Schiff (D): 20
  • Rep. Katie Porter (D): 17
  • Rep. Barbara Lee (D): 7
  • former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey (R): 7
  • perennial candidate James Bradley (R): 7
  • 2022 attorney general candidate Eric Early (R): 5
  • tech executive Lexi Reese (D): 1
  • Others: 4
  • Undecided: 32

Next up is the one without Garvey, though the two leading candidates don't see their numbers budge at all:

  • Schiff (D): 20
  • Porter (D): 17
  • Bradley (R): 10
  • Lee (D): 7
  • Early (R): 7
  • Reese (D): 1
  • Others: 4
  • Undecided: 34

This is the first poll we've seen that includes Reese, who announced in late June, though UC Berkeley's release misspells her first name as "Lexie." A strategist for Garvey, meanwhile, told Politico in early June that "[w]e should have a decision made here in the next few weeks," but we're still waiting on him three months later.

● FL-Sen: EMILY's List has endorsed former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who is the Democratic frontrunner in the primary to face GOP incumbent Rick Scott.

Governors

● IN-Gov: Former state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers has made it clear he'll be doing a substantial amount of self-funding in his quest for the GOP nod by throwing down $5 million of his own money. Chambers also began airing TV ads this week far ahead of the May primary: His opening spot, which Politico says has seven figures behind it, goes biographical by touting the candidate's local roots and his supposed status as a political "outsider." Eric Doden, another wealthy former state cabinet official, began running his own spots a month ago.

Former state education superintendent Jennifer McCormick, meanwhile, has publicized a mid-August internal Public Policy Polling that tests the Democrat against the other three notable Republican contenders:

  • 36-36 vs. former Attorney General Curtis Hill
  • 35-39 vs. Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch
  • 35-46 vs. Sen. Mike Braun

The release argues that, while McCormick trails two of her would-be GOP foes, opposition to Indiana's near-total abortion ban and unhappiness with the direction of the state could give her an opening.

● WA-Gov: The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner says that Attorney General Bob Ferguson will announce Saturday that he's running for governor, a move that comes four months after he said he was forming an exploratory committee to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring incumbent Jay Inslee. As Brunner has noted before, Evergreen State law doesn't actually distinguish between exploratory committees and full-fledged campaigns.

House

● CA-49: Margarita Wilkinson, who works as an executive at the TV broadcaster Entravision, on Thursday became the latest Republican to join the top-two primary to go up against Democratic Rep. Mike Levin. The GOP field already consisted of businesswoman Sheryl Adams, 2022 state Senate candidate Matt Gunderson, and Marine veteran Kate Monroe. Joe Biden carried this seat, which includes coastal communities north of San Diego, 55-43.

● IN-03: Construction project manager Grant Bucher, who the Indiana Capitol Chronicle says is running the $26 million project to build a new Steuben County judicial center, said this week that he was joining the GOP primary for this safely red seat. Reporter Casey Smith adds that the new candidate grew up in this northeast Indiana seat, which Republican Jim Banks is giving up to run for the Senate, but that Bucher only recently returned from Michigan.

● MI-03: Republican Paul Hudson, an attorney who took fourth place last year for the state Supreme Court (where the top-two finishers were elected), declared Thursday that he'd challenge freshman Democratic Rep. Hillary Scholten. Joe Biden carried this constituency 53-45 two years before Scholten beat far-right Republican John Gibbs 55-42, a win that made her the first Democrat to represent a Grand Rapids-based seat in the House since the mid-1970s.

Hudson, however, did not have such a great 2022 even though the state GOP picked him and incumbent Brian Zahra to be its candidates in the officially nonpartisan statewide contest for two seats on Michigan's highest court. Democratic Justice Richard Bernstein and Zahra won those two seats respectively with 34% and 24%, while Democrat Kyra Harris Bolden was just behind with 22%. (Gov. Gretchen Whitmer weeks later appointed Bolden to the body after fellow Democrat Bridget Mary McCormack stepped down.) Hudson, for his part, languished in fourth place with just 13%.

● MI-10: Former Macomb County Judge Carl Marlinga announced Thursday that he would seek the Democratic nomination for a rematch against freshman Republican Rep. John James, who beat him by a surprisingly narrow 49-48 last year. Marlinga launched his campaign by publicizing a primary internal from Public Policy Polling that showed him leading Tiffany Tilley, a state Board of Education member whom we hadn't previously heard mentioned as a possible candidate, 31-5.

Two people who are running, gun safety activist Emily Busch and financial advisor Diane Young, take 3% each, as does physician Anil Kumar. The Detroit News says that Kumar, who unsuccessfully ran for the House twice before winning his 2018 statewide race for the Wayne State University Board of Governors, has formed an exploratory committee, and his team says he'll decide by early next month. The paper also identifies former Macomb County Health Department head Rhonda Powell, who lost last year's primary to Marlinga 48-17 and secures 2% in his poll, as a possible contender.

Marlinga has had a long career in Macomb County politics going back to 1984, when he was elected to the first of what would be five terms as county prosecutor, but he's experienced some major setbacks over the decades. Marlinga competed in the 1994 primary for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat and took last place in the six-way primary with just 8% of the vote, though he convincingly won re-election two years later. He was still serving as prosecutor in 2002 when he challenged Republican Rep. Candice Miller in an earlier and more conservative version of the 10th District, a campaign the Democrat lost 63-36.

Marlinga was indicted two years later for allegedly helping a convicted rapist earn a new trial in exchange for contributions for that congressional campaign, and he stepped down as county prosecutor afterward. A jury, though, acquitted him in 2006, and Marlinga sought to return to public office soon after. After narrowly losing a 2010 primary for the state Senate, Marlinga was decisively elected to a local judgeship in 2012; it was during that campaign that he filled out a questionnaire saying the two U.S. Supreme Court justices he most identified with were anti-abortion hardliners Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, a response that surfaced again a decade later.

Marlinga decided to run for the House again last year after Michigan's independent redistricting commission last cycle created a suburban Detroit seat that would have favored Donald Trump just 50-49, and Democratic Rep. Andy Levin's ill-fated decision to run against colleague Haley Stevens in the 11th District meant that there would be no incumbent here. Marlinga, who argued he'd selected the two conservative justices because he's "always been a strict constitutionalist" but backed abortion rights, decisively won the primary but was in for a difficult general election.

James, who had waged competitive Senate races during the previous two cycles, massively outspent Marlinga $6.1 million to $1 million, and conservative outside groups deployed another $2.4 million as the other side directed their resources elsewhere. Michigan Democrats, though, enjoyed a strong year, and Marlinga came close to pulling off what would have been a truly shocking upset. The former judge, who went on to lead Attorney General Dana Nessel's Elder Abuse Task Force, emphasized James' opposition to abortion rights in his kickoff and argued that this time he'd have the resources to win.

● NJ-07: Greg Vartan, who serves as city council president for the community of Summit (pop. 22,000), tells the New Jersey Globe he's considering joining the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr. It may be a few months before he decides, though, as Vartan said he was currently focused on "electing great leaders" in the Nov. 7 local elections.

● TX-18: Isaiah Martin, who is a consultant in the aerospace industry, announced Wednesday that he was seeking the safely blue seat currently held by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a fellow Democrat who is competing in this year's race for mayor of Houston. The incumbent has not said if she'd seek reelection should she lose her current race.

Martin, a 25-year-old who says he wants to be Congress' "next Gen-Z member," is a former Jackson Lee intern, and the Houston Chronicle says he's been aiding her current campaign. The field to succeed the incumbent already includes former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, who has said she'll run no matter what Jackson Lee does; Martin, for his part, does not appear to have directly addressed what he'd do should the congresswoman seek reelection.

Mayors and County Leaders

● Baltimore, MD Mayor: Former Mayor Sheila Dixon announced Thursday that she would seek a Democratic primary rematch next May against incumbent Brandon Scott, who beat her 30-27 in the 2020 nomination contest to lead this dark blue city. Dixon, as we recently wrote, resigned in 2010 after she was convicted of stealing gift cards that were supposed to help needy families, but she's still enjoyed a loyal base of support from voters who remember her tenure as a time when the city's high murder rate dropped.

Dixon, who also came close to winning in 2016, kicked off her third comeback effort with an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun touting her accomplishments more than a decade ago and addressing the scandal that ended her career. "I let matters of the heart lead me astray once before," she wrote, "and for that, and the pain that it caused to my beloved Baltimore, I am truly sorry. I hope the people realize that my love for the future of Baltimore outweighs the mistakes of my past."

● Miami-Dade County, FL Mayor: Democratic incumbent Daniella Levine Cava has publicized an internal from MDW arguing that she's favored in next year's nonpartisan race even if her Republican predecessor, Rep. Carlos Giménez, tries to retake his old job. The firm finds Levine Cava leading Giménez 55-19 in the nonpartisan primary, with another 8% going to conservative YouTuber Alex Otaola. (Candidates can avoid a second round by winning a majority in the summer primary.) The sample favored Joe Biden 51-39 over Donald Trump; Biden carried the county 53-46 in 2020.

Morning Digest: Check out our preview of special elections in Utah and Rhode Island

Posted on by Daily Kos Elections

The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.

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The Daily Kos Elections team will be taking Friday off for the Labor Day weekend. The Live Digest will be back on Tuesday, and the Morning Digest will return on Wednesday. Have a great holiday!

Leading Off

● Primary Night: Tuesday is primary night for two vacant House seats on opposite ends of the country: Rhode Island's 1st District, which Democrat David Cicilline departed at the end of May, and Utah's 2nd District, where Republican Chris Stewart remains in office but triggered a special election by notifying Gov. Spencer Cox in June that he would "irrevocably resign" effective the evening of Sept. 15.

Given the respective lean of each district—Joe Biden took Rhode Island's 1st 64-35, while Donald Trump carried Utah's 2nd 57-40—the primaries will likely be dispositive in both cases. It'll still be a little while, though, before either state sends a new member to Congress: The general election in Rhode Island will take place on Nov. 7, while Utah's is set for Nov. 21. Below, we preview both contests.

● RI-01: A total of 12 Democrats are on the ballot to replace Cicilline, though one of them, businessman Don Carlson, dropped out over the weekend amid a scandal.

The main contenders for this dark blue constituency are former Biden administration official Gabe Amo, state Sen. Sandra Cano, Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, and former state Rep. Aaron Regunberg. Also running are Navy veteran Walter Berbrick, state Rep. Stephen Casey, Providence City Councilman John Goncalves, and state Sen. Ana Quezada.

Amo, Cano, Goncalves, Matos, and Quezada would each have the chance to make history as the first person of color to represent the Ocean State in Congress.

The only poll we've seen in the last month was a mid-August internal for Amo that showed Regunberg leading him 28-19 as Matos and Cano took 11% each. The survey, which found Carlson taking 8%, did not ask about the rest of the field by name and instead found 8% opting for "another candidate not mentioned here." However, there are further indications that Regunberg, who touts endorsements from prominent national progressives like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is the frontrunner going into Tuesday.

Regunberg, who is the nephew of Illinois Rep. Brad Schneider, was on the receiving end of more attacks than any of his opponents at Tuesday's debate. A group called Committee for a Better Rhode Island followed up days later by making Regunberg its target in the first negative TV ad of the entire race, though WPRI says it's only putting $81,000 behind its offensive. The spot attacks the candidate over his May declaration that he would have voted against Biden's debt ceiling deal with Speaker Kevin McCarthy; Regunberg said at Tuesday's debate that he'd have supported the agreement if he'd been the decisive vote.

Amo, for his part, picked up an endorsement Thursday from former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who represented prior versions of this seat from 1995 to 2011 but has since moved out of the state. Kennedy, who is the son of the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, also appeared in a commercial for Amo and touted his work in the Biden administration.

Matos, meanwhile, looked like the frontrunner until July, when multiple local election boards asked the police to probe allegations that her campaign had turned in forged signatures in order to get on the ballot. State election authorities have reaffirmed that the lieutenant governor submitted a sufficient number of valid petitions, but the state attorney general's office is continuing to investigate the matter. Matos' allies at EMILY's List and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus remain in her corner, however, as she's benefited from more outside spending than any of her rivals.

Cano has trailed her opponents in fundraising and hasn't received any third-party help, but she has several influential labor groups on her side. The rest of the field has raised little money and hasn't picked up many notable endorsements.

● UT-02: The GOP contest to succeed Stewart is a three-way battle between Celeste Maloy, the congressman's former legal counsel; former state Rep. Becky Edwards; and former RNC member Bruce Hough. The winner will face Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe, who has no intra-party opposition, for a seat located in central and western Salt Lake City and southwestern Utah.

Maloy, who has Stewart's support, earned her spot on the primary ballot by winning the support of delegates at the GOP's convention in June. Just days later, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that she'd last voted in Utah in 2018 before taking a job in D.C. to work for Stewart, which led election officials to move her voter registration to inactive status. Maloy's detractors unsuccessfully argued in court that she'd violated state law because she only became an active voter again after she filed to run for Congress, but they've continued working to portray her as an interloper.

Edwards, meanwhile, infuriated conservatives in 2020 when she endorsed Joe Biden (she has since expressed "regret"), a move she followed by waging a failed primary challenge to far-right Sen. Mike Lee in which she portrayed herself as a more pragmatic option. However, the one poll anyone has released finds voters may not be holding it against her: A mid-August survey from Dan Jones & Associates showed Edwards beating Hough 32-11, with Maloy at 9%. However, half of respondents were undecided, so if this survey is accurate, the race remains up for grabs.

Unlike in Rhode Island, there has been little outside activity in this contest. Hough and Edwards had each spent about $450,000 as of mid-August, while Maloy had spent about half that.

Senate

● AZ-Sen: Multiple media outlets reported Wednesday that Blake Masters, who was one of the GOP's very worst Senate nominees last cycle, has decided to try again this year, and Politico says his declaration could come as soon as next week. Masters would join Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the primary for the seat held by Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent who still hasn't revealed her 2024 plans.

The Republican that everyone's waiting on, though, is election denier Kari Lake, who Axios previously reported plans to launch in October. She and Masters campaigned together last year by urging voters to back "Lake and Blake," but their relationship is anything but friendly these days. Lake on Sunday responded to the news that Masters would be talking to a local conservative activist by tweeting, "I hope you bring up election fraud, and Election crime. You've been quite silent."

● MI-Sen: Following a new report on Thursday from the Detroit News that former Republican Rep. Peter Meijer had formed an exploratory committee ahead of a possible bid for Michigan's open Senate seat next year, the ex-congressman released a statement once again confirming that he's "considering running." The development comes as another former member of Congress, Mike Rogers, is also reportedly preparing to join the GOP primary. Democrats have a multi-way primary of their own, but Rep. Elissa Slotkin has raised far more money and earned more high-profile endorsements than the rest of the field.

● MT-Sen: Republican pollster J.L. Partners has shared a recent poll with Semafor that tests next year's primary and general election, though there's no indication about who, if anyone, was their client. The GOP primary portion finds far-right Rep. Matt Rosendale with a wide 52-21 edge over wealthy businessman Tim Sheehy, who is the favorite of establishment Republicans and the NRSC. That result is only modestly better for Sheehy than a June survey from Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that had found Rosendale up 64-10 right before Sheehy kicked off his campaign.

While Rosendale has yet to formally announce his own campaign, he's recently been acting like he's going to run, and Democrats likely would prefer to face him given that he already lost to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester when this seat was last up in 2018. However, J.L. Partners' poll finds little difference between the two Republicans in a hypothetical 2024 general election: Rosendale leads Tester 46-43 while Sheehy beats the incumbent 46-42. Polling has been very limited here so far, but those numbers are very similar to Rosendale’s 46-41 edge over Tester that GOP pollster OnMessage Inc. found in February.

Governors

● KY-Gov: Pluribus News reports that Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear and his allies have reserved $17.3 million in TV time for the remainder of the campaign, compared to $5 million from Republican Daniel Cameron and his backers.

● LA-Gov: Conservative independent Hunter Lundy has self-funded more than $1 million to air his first TV ad, which is a minute-long spot that highlights his working-class upbringing and emphasizes his Christian faith. Lundy also calls for raising the minimum wage, investing in education, and holding responsible the "people who wreck our air and water."

Ballot Measures

● MO Ballot: Missouri voters could see dueling ballot measures on abortion rights next year after a new group submitted six petitions that would create several exceptions to the state's near-total ban on the procedure, including in cases of rape or fatal fetal abnormalities. One version of the petition would also allow abortion through 12 weeks of pregnancy, while two others would permit it until fetal viability, which is generally viewed as beginning at around 23 to 24 weeks.

However, the proposals, which were put forward by a former Republican political operative and artist named Jamie Corley, have earned the ire of the state's Planned Parenthood affiliate, particularly for their focus on exceptions to Missouri's ban. Yamelsie Rodríguez, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri, said in a statement that Corley's approach "will continue to harm Missourians" and warned that "exceptions have never provided meaningful access."

Reproductive rights activists have been working to qualify their own measure for the 2024 ballot after filing 11 different petitions earlier this year, all of which are more expansive than Corley's proposals. (Proponents will ultimately settle on a single plan.) However, the local Planned Parenthood has taken exception to this push, too: Politico reported in April that the organization had pulled out of the coalition behind the effort, called Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, because most of its petitions also impose a fetal viability limit.

Corley is arguing that her more restrictive petitions have a better chance of becoming law. "I have respect for other organizations that are working in this realm," she told KCUR. But, she added, "I would say I think we have a much different view and assessment about what is ultimately passable in Missouri."

Missourians for Constitutional Freedom is also in the midst of a lawsuit against Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft over the summary language he drafted for six of the group's petitions.

Ashcroft, who is running for governor, wrote that the measures would "allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth, without requiring a medical license or potentially being subject to medical malpractice." The ACLU of Missouri, which is leading the challenge, charged that the descriptions are "misleading" and prejudicial." A state court will hold a trial on the dispute on Sept. 11, with the judge promising to deliver a ruling "pretty quick."

Grab Bag

● Where Are They Now?: Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was one of the most powerful Republicans in Arizona just seven years ago, announced Wednesday that he'll run again in 2024 for mayor of the Phoenix suburb of Fountain Hills, the 24,000-person community where incumbent Ginny Dickey beat him 51-49 last year. Arpaio, who is 91, previously lost his 2016 reelection campaign for sheriff, his 2018 primary for U.S. Senate, and the 2020 primary to regain the sheriff's office.