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

Posted on September 18, 2023 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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● 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: Father of anti-trans ‘bathroom bill’ joins race for North Carolina attorney general

Posted on August 4, 2023 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.

Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast

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Leading Off

● NC-AG, NC-08: Far-right Rep. Dan Bishop, an election denier who rose to prominence after spearheading North Carolina's transphobic "bathroom bill" in 2016 while in the state Senate, announced Thursday that he'd run for state attorney general next year. The congressman quickly earned an endorsement from the well-funded Club for Growth for his bid to become the first Republican to hold this office since 1975, though he currently faces former state Rep. Tom Murry in the primary.

Bishop, however, may not be the only sitting congressman who ends up running to succeed incumbent Josh Stein, the Democratic frontrunner in next year's race for governor. The very same day, Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson declined to rule out a bid of his own. Jackson told the News & Observer's Danielle Battaglia that he'd only start thinking about a campaign after the state's Republican-run legislature passes a new congressional map sometime this fall, which could leave the freshman without a seat he can win.

Jackson, however, was quick to make clear how he'd go after Bishop. "I did hear his announcement," he said, "and as a prosecutor, I don't think that anyone who supported overturning an election should be talking about law and order." The Democratic field currently consists of Marine veteran Tim Dunn and Navy Reserve veteran Charles Ingram, but both reported having minimal cash stockpiles at the end of June.

Bishop did indeed vote to overturn Joe Biden's win in the hours following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, a move the congressman justified by echoing Donald Trump's lies about mail-in votes. "In the 2020 election, the national Democratic Party carried out a highly coordinated, massively financed, nationwide campaign to displace state regulation of absentee ballots by means of a flood of election-year litigation," Bishop wrote just before the riot, and he's continued to spread the Big Lie since then. The congressman fired off an evidence-free tweet last year claiming that Jack Dorsey "and Twitter put their thumb on the scale in the last election to help Biden." (Unsurprisingly, Bishop has a far more favorable view of that site's new owner.)

Before Bishop devoted himself to enabling conservative extremists in Washington, D.C., he was a state lawmaker who indirectly helped cost the GOP the governorship in 2016. That year, Republican Gov. Pat McCrory signed the Bishop-crafted House Bill 2, which required anyone using bathrooms at schools or public facilities to use the restroom associated with the sex on their birth certificate, regardless of their gender identity. That legislation sparked a national backlash that led several major corporations to cancel planned expansions in the state, and voters responded by narrowly booting McCrory in favor of then-Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Bishop's career, though, survived and thrived even after Cooper signed a law rolling back HB 2. The state senator unexpectedly got the chance to run for Congress in what was then numbered the 9th District in 2019 after the results of the previous year's election were voided because of election fraud carried out to assist Republican nominee Mark Harris. Bishop decisively won the primary and went on to narrowly defeat 2018 Democratic nominee Dan McCready 51-49 after an expensive campaign for a gerrymandered constituency that Trump had taken 54-43 in 2016.

But despite that underwhelming victory, as well as a new court-supervised map that made the 9th District a shade bluer, Bishop turned in an easy 2020 win in a contest that national Democrats didn't target. His constituency was soon renumbered the 8th District following the 2020 census and became safely red turf that Bishop had no trouble holding last year. The congressman then used the first days of the new Congress to cast 11 straight votes against making Kevin McCarthy speaker, but he eventually flipped; McCarthy rewarded Bishop afterward with a spot on the GOP's Orwellian-named "Weaponization of the Federal Government" subcommittee.

Republican legislators were recently given the green light to once again gerrymander to their hearts' content after the newly conservative state Supreme Court overturned a ruling by the court's previously Democratic majority that had banned the practice. They'll likely draw up another safe seat to replace the one Bishop currently represents, and there's already chatter about who could run to replace him.

An unnamed source tells the National Journal's James Downs that Harris and Dan Barry, who took a distant fifth in the 2012 primary for the 9th District several maps ago, are "names to watch." Harris chose not to run in the 2019 special election that Bishop ultimately won, but while the consultant responsible for the fraud that wrecked his campaign went to prison, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced the following year that she wouldn't charge the candidate as part of her probe.

P.S. While Bishop would be the first Republican to serve as attorney general in 50 years, the last member of his party to actually win this office was Zeb Walser all the way back in 1896. Republicans last held the attorney general's office in 1974 when GOP Gov. James Holshouser appointed James Carson to fill a vacancy, though Carson lost the ensuing special election a few months later to Democrat Rufus Edmisten.

Senate

● AZ-Sen: Noble Predictive Insights, which until recently was known as OH Predictive Insights, has released a poll that finds Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego leading in six different general election scenarios:

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D): 33, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb (R): 25, Kyrsten Sinema (I-inc): 24
Gallego (D): 40, Lamb (R): 36
Gallego (D): 32, Sinema (I-inc): 28, 2022 Senate nominee Blake Masters (R): 24
Gallego (D): 44, Masters (R): 36
Gallego (D): 34, Sinema (I-inc): 26, 2022 gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake (R): 25
Gallego (D): 45, Lake (R): 35

Gallego and Lamb are the only notable candidates who have announced they're running. NPI, which sometimes does work on behalf of GOP groups, is the very first poll we've seen from anyone since April.

● ND-Sen: Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer told KUMV this week that he hasn't decided whether he'll seek reelection, though the incumbent sounds like he's leaning strongly towards another campaign. "A second term for me would mean greater clout, probably a chairmanship as well," Cramer said. "Seniority matters in the Senate. That's where my thinking is today without telling you exactly what I intend to do. I guess I would be surprised if I decided not to run for reelection." The senator does not appear to have indicated what factors would push him toward retirement.

● WV-Sen: The Washington Post reports that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to direct money towards positive ads "to help prop up his poll numbers before he decides whether he'll run," but Manchin won't use his own $10.8 million war chest for this purpose because he "doesn't want to spark speculation that he's running for reelection by making an ad buy to boost his image." The Democratic group Duty and Honor did run commercials in the spring to counter a GOP offensive to damage the incumbent, but the paper says that Schumer doesn't want to make a big investment here before he knows if Manchin will actually run again.

Governors

● MS-Gov: Republican incumbent Tate Reeves seems to agree with Democrats that the state's $77 million welfare funds scandal could hurt him even in this red state because he's already up with a response spot two days after Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley launched his first commercial on the topic. The challenger may not mind too much, though, because Reeves' ad makers adopt the dubious strategy of repeating some of the very attacks Presley is leveling against him.

"Have you seen this ad attacking our governor, Tate Reeves?" asks the narrator as footage fills the screen of Presley's earlier piece, complete with on-screen text reading, "REEVES … PLAGUED BY WELFARE FRAUD SCANDAL." Reeves' narrator isn't happy, saying, "Tate Reeves had nothing to do with the scandal … it all happened before he was governor." It's rarely a good move to put your candidate's name in the same sentence as "scandal," but Presley's team is also disputing the idea that Reeves isn't to blame for something that occurred while he occupied the powerful lieutenant governor's office.

"[T]he reality is Tate Reeves used to brag about his watchdog responsibilities and overseeing the state budget," the campaign said in a statement, which included a quote from a 2019 ad where Reeves proclaimed he was "managing the government's money like it's your money―because it is."

● WA-Gov: Richland School Board member Semi Bird on Thursday pledged to continue his campaign for governor two days after the Republican appears to have lost a recall election along with two colleagues. The trio voted in February of 2022 to defy the state's COVID protocols and make it optional to wear masks in local public schools; school was canceled for two days as a result, and the group ultimately backed down.

Bird hasn't gained much traction ahead of a top-two primary contest where former Rep. Dave Reichert appears to be the GOP frontrunner, but he's hoping his likely ouster will change that. (The state is still counting ballots, but the pro-recall "yes" side was ahead 56-44 in Bird's race as of Thursday; the results were similar in the other two contests.) "The teachers unions and leftest activists may have won the recall battle, pouring 10's of thousands of dollars into the effort," Bird wrote Thursday in a fundraising email, "but when the people of Washington send me to Olympia, we will win the war."

House

● DE-AL: EMILY's List on Thursday endorsed state Sen. Sarah McBride in the Democratic primary for this statewide seat, declaring that it "was proud to support McBride when she made history in 2020 as the first openly transgender state senator in the country — and we are thrilled to once again help her make history and become the first openly transgender member of Congress."

● NC-??: State House Speaker Tim Moore announced last month that he will not seek another term leading the chamber after the 2024 elections, and he and his team are continuing to evade questions about whether he'd run for the U.S. House after his party passes a new gerrymander. Political advisor Paul Shumaker told the News & Observer, "We don't know what the maps are going to look like. We have all this speculation." Shumaker added that his client could also go into the private sector.

● PA-01: Anti-abortion activist Mark Houck announced Wednesday that he'd run to deny renomination to Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in this competitive suburban Philadelphia seat, a declaration that comes months after he was found not guilty of allegedly violating a federal law designed to protect abortion clinics. Houck became a conservative celebrity in the leadup to that January trial, where he was accused of intimidation by twice shoving a 72-year-old Planned Parenthood volunteer in 2021; Houck never denied he'd done this, though he successfully claimed that he'd only become violent after his son was insulted.

Houck launched his campaign by telling the far-right website The Church Militant, "We're running to protect the rights of families and defend traditional family values in our district. Unfortunately, Brian doesn't represent that." Fitzpatrick, who has made a name for himself as a pragmatist, has always run well ahead of the top of the ticket during his four campaigns, and Democrats would be delighted if Houck gave him a hard time in this 52-47 Biden seat. The well-funded congressman turned back a little-known primary foe 66-34 last cycle before pulling off a 55-45 victory against Ashley Ehasz, a Democrat who is running again.

● TX-28: Conservative Rep. Henry Cuellar on Thursday unveiled endorsements from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and the rest of the chamber's Democratic leadership, as well as Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, in what's likely a move to deter another primary challenge from the left. Cuellar narrowly fended off immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros in 2020 and 2022, and her former spokesperson told the Texas Tribune back in March that she hadn't ruled out a third try. The Lone Star State's downballot filing deadline is Dec. 11, which is one of the earliest in the nation.

Attorneys General

● TX-AG: Thursday finally brought some action concerning Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton's long-stalled trial for securities fraud, with a state judge agreeing to a request from both prosecutors and the defense to delay scheduling anything until Paxton's separate impeachment trial concludes sometime next month. Both sides agreed that Paxton would be more likely to try to reach a deal concerning the eight-year-old security fraud indictment if two-thirds of the state Senate votes to remove him from office, with one of his attorneys explaining that this outcome would be "a kill shot to his political career, so it opens the door to a resolution that’s not open right now."

Ballot Measures

● OH Ballot: A GOP consultant tells cleveland.com that groups looking to beat Issue 1, which would make it much harder to amend the state constitution, have added $2.5 million to their media buys for the final days of the Aug. 8 special election. The story says the conservative pro "yes" side enjoys a small $5.9 million to $5.3 million edge in ad spending for the last week of the race: The GOP firm Medium Buying also tweets that the "no" side has outspent its rivals $12.2 million to $9.7 million on TV and radio for the entire campaign.

Meanwhile, organizers seeking to place a statutory initiative on the November ballot to legalize recreational marijuana say they've submitted 6,500 additional signatures to the secretary of state, and they only need about 10% of them to be valid in order to qualify: The campaign fell just 679 petitions shy of the 124,000 minimum last month, but state law granted them 10 extra days to make up the shortfall.

Because this proposal would not amend the constitution, it would only need to win a majority no matter how the Issue 1 fight ends next week. Issue 1 would also not eliminate the 10-day grace period for statutory initiatives like this, though it would end this rule for future constitutional amendments. Polling from Civiqs shows that two-thirds of Ohio voters believe "the use of cannabis should be legal."

Morning Digest: Three new GOP hopefuls for New Hampshire governor are bound by one unfortunate thing

Posted on July 20, 2023 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.

Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast

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Leading Off

● NH-Gov: Republican Gov. Chris Sununu confirmed Wednesday that he would not seek a fifth two-year term as New Hampshire's chief executive next year, a long-expected announcement that nonetheless instantly turns this race into one of the cycle's top battlegrounds.

Sununu, whose first victory in a tight 2016 race ended 12 years of Democratic control, went on to decisively win his next three campaigns. His departure gives Granite State Democrats their best chance in years to take back this post in a light blue state that hasn't backed a Republican for president since 2000.

Multiple Republican replacements, all of whom showed interest during Sununu's months-long deliberations, immediately started surfacing, but they all share one regrettable thing in common: each of them lost their last race for public office.

Former state Senate President Chuck Morse, who served as acting governor for two days in 2017, immediately confirmed he was in, but party leaders may not be excited to have him as their standard-bearer following his 2022 campaign for the U.S. Senate."Morse, who even a supporter characterized as someone who "is not flashy, and does not have charisma," struggled in the primary against retired Army Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, a Big Lie conspiracy theorist who'd called Sununu a "Chinese communist sympathizer" with a family business that "supports terrorism."

Sununu, unsurprisingly, sided with Morse in the race to take on Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan, while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's allies also spent a hefty $4.6 million on an ad campaign to promote Morse and attack Bolduc as a surefire loser with "crazy ideas." Democrats, though, retaliated with an expensive ad campaign of their own tying Morse to lobbyists, a move aimed at weakening him for the general election if they couldn't keep him from the GOP nomination. But Democrats got exactly what they wanted in the primary: Bolduc edged out Morse 37-36 two months before losing to Hassan in a 54-44 rout.

Morse is once again likely to be in for a tough primary. Former Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who Hassan unseated in a 2016 squeaker even as Sununu was flipping the governor's office, put out a statement saying she "look[s] forward to announcing some big news in the coming days." State education commissioner Frank Edelblut, a self-funder who lost a close primary to Sununu seven years ago, also said Wednesday he'd reveal in the next few days if he'd run to succeed his boss.

A pair of prominent Democrats, meanwhile, had already announced campaigns even before Sununu confirmed he wouldn't be on the ballot. Cinde Warmington, who is the only Democrat on the state's unique five-member Executive Council, launched her bid in June while Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig joined her last week. No other notable Democrats have shown any obvious interest in running, though Rep. Chris Pappas didn't quite rule out his own campaign back in April.

The Downballot

● Latinos have played an increasingly crucial role in our elections, but Democrats' understanding of these voters has often lagged. This week's guest on "The Downballot" is Carlos Odio, the co-founder of EquisLabs, an organization devoted to rectifying this problem. Odio helps us move away from viewing Latino voters as a monolith and offers a helpful framework for getting to know different subsets of this diverse group. He discusses key findings of Equis' 2022 post-mortem, including why Florida went so wrong and how Democrats can make a course correction. He also explains how Latino voter identity can wind up getting dialed up or down depending on the broader election environment.

Host David Nir and guest host Joe Sudbay, meanwhile, dive into Chris Sununu's retirement announcement and why it instantly makes New Hampshire's race for governor a top Democratic target; the Republican shenanigans in Alabama, where lawmakers seem dead-set on ignoring a court order to draw two majority-Black congressional districts or something close to it; why Democrats will take a new effort to recall several Michigan state representative seriously even if the state GOP is a clown-show; and yet another special election in Wisconsin where Republicans badly underperformed the top of the ticket.

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.

Redistricting

● AL Redistricting: Each chamber in Alabama's Republican-run legislature passed a new congressional map on Wednesday, but neither complies with a court directive to include "two districts in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it." Both plans retain a Black majority in the state's 7th District, but the new 2nd District falls well below that mark in each case: In the House version, just 42% of voters are Black, while in the Senate's, only 38% are. Lawmakers face a Friday deadline to enact a new map. If they fail to do so, or if their final product does not comply with the Voting Rights Act, a federal court will likely impose its own map.

Senate

● OH-Sen: Leadership for Ohio Fund, a super PAC that supports Secretary of State Frank LaRose, has released a late June GOP primary survey from Causeway Solutions that shows him leading state Sen. Matt Dolan 28-10, with businessman Bernie Moreno at 5%. This poll, which was taken weeks before LaRose announced his bid against Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown, isn't too different from the 24-11 advantage that Causeway showed in May.

Dolan, for his part, is continuing to air TV ads far ahead of the primary, and the self-funder's latest message features two sheriffs praising him as "tough on illegal immigration."

Governors

● IN-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in for the first six months of 2023, though as the Indiana Capitol Chronicle notes, candidates were forbidden from raising money during most of these first four months because the legislature was in session.

Sen. Mike Braun (R): $2.2 million raised, $4.6 million cash on hand
former state cabinet official Eric Doden (R): $1.8 million raised, $3.8 million cash on hand
Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch (R): $1.1 million raised, $3.9 million cash on hand
former state education superintendent Jennifer McCormick (D): $200,000 raised, $200,000 cash on hand

The Chronicle notes that about a third of Doden's haul came from his father.

Another Republican, former Attorney General Curtis Hill, launched his bid this month after the fundraising period ended. Hill, who lost renomination in 2020 after multiple women accused him of sexual assault, began with $20,000 left over from his prior campaigns.

House

● DE-AL, DE-Sen, DE-Gov: State Treasurer Colleen Davis announced Wednesday that she'd campaign for the statewide House seat that her fellow Democrat, Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, is giving up to run for the Senate. Davis, who had also previously expressed interest in running for the Senate or governor, will face an expensive primary against state Sen. Sarah McBride, who would be the first openly trans person to ever serve in Congress: McBride launched her campaign June 26 and quickly raised $410,000 during the final five days of the quarter.

Davis, writes the Delaware Online' Meredith Newman, was "largely unknown in Delaware" before she entered the 2018 race to unseat Treasurer Ken Simpler, who was the last Republican in statewide office. But Davis, who had no intra-party opposition, rode the blue wave to a 52-46 victory, a win Newman says made her the rare statewide Democrat to hail from conservative Sussex County. The treasurer went on to win her second term 54-46 last year.

● MD-06: Former Frederick County Executive Jan Gardner tells the Frederick Post she's considering seeking the Democratic nod for this open seat, and the paper characterizes her timeframe as "fairly soon." Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin noted in mid-May that Gardner is a proven vote-getter in a community that's home to about 35% of the 6th District's denizens, which could make her a formidable contender in a race where most of the other candidates are likely to hail from Montgomery County.

● MI-04: Attorney Jessica Swartz on Wednesday became the first notable Democrat to announce a campaign to unseat Republican Rep. Bill Huizenga in Michigan's 4th District, a historically red constituency around Kalamazoo that Donald Trump would have taken by a small 51-47 margin in 2020. Swartz, though, said that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer carried it last year, and new numbers from Daily Kos Elections find the governor did indeed prevail by a tight 50-49 as she was pulling off a 54-44 statewide landslide.

The Democrat is a first-time candidate, though she's not quite a political novice. Swartz previously volunteered for Voters Not Politicians, a nonpartisan organization that successfully promoted a 2018 referendum to create Michigan's independent redistricting commission. That body ended up drawing a map for the 2022 elections that led Huizenga, who'd previously represented the reliably red 2nd District along the western Michigan coast, to run for the more competitive 4th even though he only represented about a quarter of the new seat.

For months it looked like there would be an incumbent vs. incumbent primary clash between the Trump-backed Huizenga and longtime Rep. Fred Upton, who'd voted to impeach the GOP's leader after the Jan. 6 attack, but Upton ended up retiring ahead of what would have been a challenging race. Swartz, in an interview with the Holland Sentinel, argued the district needed someone more like Upton, whom she praised for working across party lines and providing for his constituents, than the hard-right Huizenga.

Huizenga, who won his last race 54-42 against an underfunded Democrat, finished June with $630,000 in the bank, though it's possible he won't use it on this contest. The congressman has expressed interest a few times this year in running for Michigan's open Senate seat, with his most recent public comments coming from a May interview with the conservative site The Dispatch. Huizenga acknowledged the state presents a "tough environment" for his party, but while he said he was "hoping to have a decision probably this quarter," June 30 came and went without any word about his plans.

● NY-17: Former Rep. Mondaire Jones has released an internal from Public Policy Polling giving him a wide 43-8 edge over local school board trustee Liz Gereghty in the Democratic primary to face freshman GOP incumbent Mike Lawler. This survey, which was conducted about a week after Jones launched his comeback campaign, is the first we've seen of this nomination contest. The poll did not test former Bedford Town Supervisor MaryAnn Carr, who did not report raising any money through June 30.

● RI-01: State Sen. Sandra Cano has earned the backing of the state affiliate of the National Education Association ahead of the crowded Sept. 5 special Democratic primary.

Legislatures

● PA State House: Democratic state Rep. Sara Innamorato, who won the May primary for Allegheny County executive, announced Wednesday that she'd resigned to focus on the November general election, and the chamber will be tied 101-101 until the already-scheduled Sept. 19 special election takes place. Innamorato's absence may not matter much, though, because state representatives aren't scheduled to return until Sept. 26. Her seat in the Pittsburgh area supported Joe Biden 61-38 in 2020.

If the lower house does reconvene early, however, Democrats, who won 102 of the 203 seats in November and defended their edge in a series of special elections this year, will still remain the majority party in the deadlocked body thanks to a rule they adopted in March. The majority is now defined as the party that "won the greater number of elections for the 203 seats in the House of Representatives" in the most recent general election, and should a vacancy open up, "the political party that won that seat at the last election shall remain the party that won that seat until any subsequent special election is held to fill that seat." Control would still shift, though, if the other side flipped enough seats before the next general election.

It's unlikely that will happen in the race to replace Innamorato, but Democrats will have a more competitive seat to defend later. State Rep. John Galloway won both the Democratic and Republican nominations for a judgeship in Bucks County, and once he resigns to take his new job, there will be a special for his 55-44 Biden constituency in the Philadelphia suburbs. Galloway told Spotlight PA Wednesday that he wouldn't be leaving his current office until he's officially elected in November.

● WI State Assembly: Republicans won a special election for a dark-red seat in the Wisconsin legislature Tuesday night, but once again, their candidate badly underperformed compared to other recent elections in the same district.

Republican Paul Melotik beat Democrat Bob Tatterson 54-46 in the 24th Assembly District, which became vacant after Republican Dan Knodl won a closely contested special for the state Senate earlier this year. The 24th is traditionally conservative turf in the northern Milwaukee suburbs: It voted for Donald Trump by a 57-41 margin in 2020 and backed Knodl for reelection 61-39 last year. But judged against Trump's share of the vote, Melotik ran 9 points behind, accounting for rounding. Knodl (whose new Senate district includes all of his old Assembly district) had likewise trailed the top of the ticket in his own special election by 3 points, prevailing by a narrow 51-49 spread.

Overall, Democratic candidates in special elections this year have outperformed the 2020 presidential numbers in their districts by an average of 7 points. Research by Daily Kos Elections contributing editor Daniel Donner has shown that these elections often correlate closely with the results of the ensuing general elections for the U.S. House.

Morning Digest: First trans state senator kicks off House bid but could have company

Posted on June 27, 2023 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

● DE-AL: Democratic state Sen. Sarah McBride launched a bid for Delaware's lone U.S. House seat that would, if successful, make her the first openly trans person to ever serve in Congress.

McBride took note of "the uniqueness that my voice would bring to the halls of Congress" in an interview with Delaware Online's Meredith Newman that accompanied her kickoff. "But ultimately," she emphasized, "I'm not running to be a trans member of Congress. I'm running to be Delaware's member of Congress who's focused on making progress on all of the issues that matter to Delawareans of every background."

The state senator is the first serious candidate to enter the race to succeed Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, a fellow Democrat who is running for Senate and would also make history as both the first woman and first African American to ever represent the First State in the upper chamber.

McBride, however, may face a competitive primary in this loyally blue state. State Housing Authority director Eugene Young told supporters shortly before Blunt Rochester's launch that if the congresswoman were to seek a promotion that he does "plan to run for her congressional seat." Young, who narrowly lost the 2016 primary for mayor of Wilmington, would be the second Black person to represent Delaware in Congress, after Blunt Rochester.

State Treasurer Colleen Davis also told Bloomberg last month that she wasn't ruling out running for House, Senate, or governor, though she's yet to say which race if any she's leaning toward. However, while insiders previously speculated that two state senators, Majority Leader Bryan Townsend and Majority Whip Elizabeth Lockman, could run against McBride, each instead endorsed their colleague on Monday.

McBride won elected office for the first time in 2020 at the age of 30 when she became the first, and to date only, openly trans person to serve in the upper chamber of any state legislature, a distinction that Newman notes makes her "the country's highest-ranking transgender elected official." (Virginia Del. Danica Roem, whose own 2017 victory made history, is the Democratic nominee this year for a seat in her state's Senate.) Prior to her election, though, McBride had already forged deep connections with notable state and national Democrats, working for both then-Gov. Jack Markell and Attorney General Beau Biden; Markell would even credit her as one of the reasons he pulled off his upset primary win in 2008.

McBride later recounted that both elected officials were supportive after she told them she was trans in 2012, with the attorney general responding, "You are still a member of the Biden family." (His father, Joe Biden, would write the foreword to her 2018 memoir.) She attracted national attention that year when she used an op-ed in the student paper at American University, where she was student body president, to describe her "resolution of an internal struggle."

A subsequent stint as an Obama administration intern made McBride the first openly trans person to serve in the White House. She went on to become the Human Rights Campaign's national press secretary, and became the first openly trans person to address a major party convention when she gave a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

During her bid for elected office in 2020, McBride emphasized the same point about her candidacy she made on Monday. "I don't intend on serving as a transgender state senator," she said. "I intend on serving as a senator who happens to be transgender." Her campaign culminated in easy victories in both the primary and general elections, but its historic nature attracted outsized attention, giving her an unusually high profile for a first-term state lawmaker.

In the legislature, McBride authored the state's paid family leave act, which Newman characterized as "one of the more significant and progressive bills Delaware legislators have passed in recent years." She also drew attention for denouncing a colleague's unsuccessful bill to keep trans student-athletes from playing in the sport that corresponds with their gender identity. McBride, who chaired the hearing on the legislation, tweeted, "For years, trans people have had to go before anti-trans lawmakers in the big chair. Today, anti-trans forces had to come before a trans person in the big chair – me."

Redistricting

● LA Redistricting: The Supreme Court lifted a hold on a lower court decision that would require Louisiana to draw a second congressional district where Black voters can elect their preferred candidate in a new ruling on Monday, paving the way for the state to join Alabama in reconfiguring its map to comply with the Voting Rights Act. At Daily Kos Elections, we take a detailed look at the implications of this ruling, including illustrations of what Louisiana's new district might look like. Potential pitfalls lie ahead for plaintiffs, though, as the ultraconservative 5th Circuit could slow-walk any further Republican appeals.

Senate

● FL-Sen: Alan Grayson on Friday confirmed to the Florida Phoenix he's thinking about seeking the Democratic nod to take on Republican Sen. Rick Scott in an interview that took place a day after the congressman-turned-perennial candidate filed FEC paperwork. Grayson, who indicated he wasn't in a hurry to make up his mind, said that if he ran, "The first $20 million I raise is going to be earmarked for voter registration and turnout." The Democrat raised less than half of that for his 2016 primary bid for Florida's other Senate seat, and he took in under $1 million last cycle when he unsuccessfully tried to return to the House.

Governors

● LA-Gov: Former state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson over the weekend earned the endorsement of the state Democratic Party for the October all-party primary, a development that comes months after termed-out Gov. John Bel Edwards backed him. Wilson is the only serious Democrat in the race, though Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams unexpectedly expressed interest in launching his own campaign about four weeks ago. We've yet to hear anything new from Williams since then, though there's still a while to go before the Aug. 10 filing deadline.

● MT-Gov: Ryan Busse, a former executive at the firearms manufacturing company Kimber America who is now a prominent gun safety advocate, tells the Montana Free Press that he's considering seeking the Democratic nod to take on Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. No other notable Democrats have publicly expressed interest in running to lead this conservative state.

House

● CA-22, CA-12: SEIU California, which Politico previously described as "one of the most powerful union groups in the state," has endorsed former Assemblyman Rudy Salas for the competitive 22nd District and BART board member Lateefah Simon for the safely blue 12th even though the former has yet to announce his campaign.

Salas filed FEC paperwork in December a month after losing to Republican incumbent David Valadao 52-48 in a Central Valley constituency, but we've yet to hear anything from the Democrat since then. SEIU California isn't alone in thinking that a rematch is on, though, as Inside Elections wrote early this month that Democratic operatives are convinced Salas will run again with little intra-party opposition for this 55-42 Biden district, which is one of the bluest the GOP holds nationally.

Ballot Measures

● OR Ballot: Oregon's Democratic-led legislature has placed a measure on the ballot next year that will ask voters whether to reform their electoral system by adopting ranked-choice voting for federal and statewide offices. Lawmakers also put a constitutional amendment on the ballot that would finally empower the legislature to impeach and remove statewide officials for misconduct.

Minimizing the spoiler problem. The ranked-choice voting reform proposed here primarily aims to avoid letting one candidate win with a plurality only because other candidates split a majority of the vote. Democrat Tina Kotek only beat her GOP opponent 47-44 in last year's race for governor, with a former Democrat taking 9% as an independent. That close call may have spurred Democrats to push for ranked-choice voting.
Ranked-choice voting has been growing in popularity. Voters last year in Oregon's largest city, Portland, passed variants of the system for mayoral and city council elections, as have some other jurisdictions around the state. This new ballot measure also marks the first time that any state's legislature has led the way to adopt ranked-choice voting for federal or state elections.
The last state without an impeachment process. Oregon is the only remaining state where legislators lack the power to impeach and remove officials such as the governor. This situation threatened to cause major problems twice in the last decade when a former governor and secretary of state became embroiled in scandals, and a crisis was avoided only because both voluntarily resigned.

Prosecutors and Sheriffs

● New York: Two of the five district attorneys serving New York City, the Bronx's Darcel Clark and Queens' Melinda Katz, face Democratic primary challengers on Tuesday in their dark blue boroughs. Staten Island's Michael McMahon is also up for reelection this year, but the former Democratic congressman has no major-party opposition at all even though Donald Trump twice scored double-digit wins in his jurisdiction.

Clark and Katz each have the support of the party establishment even though, as we wrote in March, the ideological contours of their respective races differ considerably. Clark's intra-party foe is civil rights attorney Tess Cohen, who is challenging the incumbent from the left. Cohen previously told the Gotham Gazette that Clark's "reforms are the reforms that people were starting to do 10-15 years ago, and it's not where reforms are now and where we know we need to go."

Clark, who remains the only Black woman to ever serve as district attorney anywhere in the state, offered a different take on her tenure to the site, saying, "I'm not going to apologize for standing up for victims of crime, but I'm not going to do it at the expense of violating the rights of the accused." The incumbent enjoys a huge financial advantage over Cohen, who has acknowledged she faces a challenging job beating "the Bronx machine."

Katz, meanwhile, is trying to fend off former Queens Supreme Court Administrative Judge George Grasso, who is campaigning against her from the right. While the challenger tells Gothamist he identifies as a progressive, he launched his campaign last year proclaiming, "In my opinion, this is an artificially created crime wave by what I call progressive activists in the state legislature and City Hall." The field also includes Devian Daniels, who lost a 2021 primary for a Civil Court judgeship 80-19 and hasn't reported raising any money.

Katz, who famously won the 2019 primary by 60 votes against progressive Tiffany Cabán, has touted herself as a "steady hand during very turbulent times," and she's largely amassed a moderate record in office. "Some of her policies are indeed reform-oriented," an official at a criminal justice organization told Mother Jones and Bolts before adding, "[But] Katz has in general been less reform-minded in her first term in office, than say, certainly Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, or Alvin Bragg in Manhattan." (Both of those district attorneys are next up in 2025.) Katz went into the final month of the campaign with far more cash available than Grasso, who says he plans to run as a third-party candidate in the November general election should he lose Tuesday.

Other Races

● MS-LG: The Magnolia Tribune's Russ Latino has obtained what he describes as a "leaked poll" sponsored by the National Association of Realtors that finds its endorsed candidate, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, trailing far-right state Sen. Chris McDaniel 45-40 ahead of the Aug. 8 Republican primary for this powerful office. These late-May numbers from American Strategies, a firm that we've only rarely seen numbers from before, are quite different from the 47-32 Hosemann advantage that Siena College showed a couple weeks later in its survey for Mississippi Today. Two minor candidates are also on the ballot, and their presence could prevent anyone from earning the majority needed to avert an Aug. 28 runoff.

Latino writes that word of NAR's poll only recently "began circulating among Mississippi lobbyists and politicos," though the story doesn't say who released the memo. He also notes that Hosemann has been making use of his huge financial edge to run TV ads since American Strategies finished this survey.

Morning Digest: Maine’s Jared Golden ran 13 points ahead of the top of the ticket

Posted on December 7, 2020 by Daily Kos Elections

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, and David Beard.

Leading Off

● Pres-by-CD: Our project to calculate the 2020 presidential results for all 435 congressional districts nationwide goes to Maine, where Democratic Rep. Jared Golden won a second term even as Donald Trump once again carried his 2nd Congressional District. We'll also be taking a look at the seven states that are home to only one U.S. House seat. You can find our complete data set here, which we're updating continuously as the precinct-level election returns we need for our calculations become available.

Joe Biden carried Maine, which has backed every Democratic presidential nominee since 1992, by a 53-44 margin, which was a notable improvement on Hillary Clinton's 48-45 performance there in 2016. Maine, however, gives an electoral vote to the winner of each of its congressional districts (the only other state to do this is Nebraska), and for the second cycle in a row, the 2nd District went to Trump. This seat in the northern part of the state supported Trump 52-45, a somewhat smaller margin compared to his 51-41 performance there four years ago but still a clear win. You can find a larger version of our map here.

Campaign Action

Despite Trump's victory at the top of the ticket, though, Golden defeated Republican Dale Crafts 53-47. At the start of the cycle, Republicans had planned to target Golden, who had flipped this seat in a tight 2018 race, but major outside groups on both sides dramatically cut their ad buys in the final weeks of the race in what Politico characterized at the time as "a sign of no confidence" in Crafts.

Biden took the 1st District, meanwhile, by a 60-37 margin, which was also a big shift from Clinton's 54-39 win. This seat, which contains Portland, has been solidly blue turf for decades, and Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree won her seventh term 62-38.

While Democrats control the governorship and both houses of the legislature, redistricting isn't likely to alter Maine's congressional boundaries all that much. The state requires two-thirds of each chamber to pass a new map, and there are more than enough Republicans to block any districts they view as unfavorable. If the legislature deadlocks, the state Supreme Court would take charge of redistricting.

We'll now take a look at the nation's seven at-large congressional districts. Alaska supported Donald Trump 53-43, a smaller margin than his 53-38 showing in 2016. This was the closest a Democrat's come to winning the Last Frontier's three electoral votes since 1992, when George H.W. Bush edged out Bill Clinton 39-30 as Ross Perot was taking 28%. Biden's 43% was also the highest for Team Blue since 1964, when Lyndon Johnson became the only Democratic candidate to ever carry Alaska.

Rep. Don Young, a Republican whose nearly 48 years in office makes him the House's longest serving current member, faced a rematch this year against Alyse Galvin, an independent who won the Democratic nomination. While outside groups for both parties spent heavily, Young won 54-45, an improvement from his 53-47 showing in 2018.

Democrats also made a serious effort to flip Montana's open House seat but came up short. Trump's 57-41 margin of victory was smaller than his 56-36 showing four years ago, but the state still wasn't close. Republican Matt Rosendale beat Democrat Kathleen Williams 56-44, a win that came two years after Rosendale lost his challenge to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester by a 50-47 margin. It was also a much bigger defeat for Williams than in her previous attempt for this seat in 2018, when she fell to now-Gov.-elect Greg Gianforte 51-45.

Biden, meanwhile, improved on Clinton's performance in his home state of Delaware and in Vermont, where Democratic Reps. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Peter Welch, respectively, also had no trouble winning re-election. North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming remained safely red turf up and down the ballot. Wyoming, which backed Trump 70-27, also gave him his largest margin of victory in any state for the second cycle in a row.

Congressional redistricting hasn't been a factor in any of these seven states in some time, but there's a very good chance that Montana could regain the second House seat that it lost after the 1990 census. However, while Gianforte's win in this year's gubernatorial race gives Team Red the trifecta it lost in the 2004 elections, state law grants a bipartisan commission responsibility over redistricting matters. Rhode Island, meanwhile, could soon join the list of at-large states, as population growth patterns suggest its two seats will shrink to one following reapportionment.

Georgia Runoffs

● GA-Sen-A, GA-Sen-B: A new poll from RMG Research, the firm run by Scott Rasmussen, finds Democrat Jon Ossoff narrowly leading Republican Sen. David Perdue 48-47 while Democrat Raphael Warnock holds a similar 48-46 edge over Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

Ossoff excoriates Perdue in a new ad for "doing nothing" to alleviate the pandemic and "blocking relief for the rest of us." Warnock, meanwhile, holds aloft a photo of his father, an Army veteran born in 1917 who served in World War II, calling him his "hero." Warnock blasts Loeffler for "taking my words out of context to try and fool you into believing that I don't respect members of the military, like my own father."

Finally, AdImpact reports that total ad spending across both runoffs has reached $315 million, with $170 million of that devoted to the special election. In that contest, Warnock has outspent Loeffler $60 million to $45 million so far, but outside GOP groups have spent $53 million versus just $13 million for Democrats.

However, as AdImpact notes, the difference between the third-party spenders is "misleading." That's because at least one large Republican super PAC, American Crossroads, has spent $44 million on ads that will run straight through Jan. 5. Democratic groups, by contrast, have all booked airtime on a week-by-week basis.

Senate

● CO-Sen, CO-Gov: Outgoing Republican Sen. Cory Gardner, who just lost to Democrat John Hickenlooper 54-44 last month, has declined to rule out bids against either Sen. Michael Bennet or Gov. Jared Polis, two Democrats who are both up for re-election in 2022.

● PA-Sen, PA-Gov: Republican Rep. Glenn Thompson, who recently said he'd "like to be the first member of Congress from Pennsylvania in 202 years to chair the House Agriculture Committee" in describing his feelings about a bid for Senate or governor, was elevated to the post of "ranking member" on the committee by his GOP colleagues this week. That makes him the most senior Republican on the committee and puts him in line to chair it in two years' time should the GOP win back the House in 2022.

Gubernatorial

● IL-Gov: State Rep. Darren Bailey, who wouldn't rule out a run for governor in a radio interview over the summer, just decided to pick a Facebook fight with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a fellow Republican whom Capitol Fax's Rich Miller says is "widely rumored" to also be considering a bid against Democratic Gov. J. B. Pritzker.

Kinzinger has been just about the only congressional Republican to explicitly call out Donald Trump's "baseless conspiracies" about the election, as he put it, earning the ire of true believers like Bailey, who termed Kinzinger's view that Trump should accept reality and stop undermining democracy "appalling."

● NV-Gov: Republican Rep. Mark Amodei says in a new interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal's Colton Lochhead that he's "gonna look at" a challenge to Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, who's up for re-election in 2022. For almost six years, Amodei's half-heartedly sought an escape from Washington, D.C., whose culture, he said at a 2015 town hall, "sucks." Not long after, he began mooting a bid for governor in 2018 but ultimately declined—and then said he might run for state attorney general that year … but ultimately declined.

In fact, Amodei even suggested he might retire that cycle, though he wound up seeking another term and winning comfortably in northern Nevada's rural 2nd District, which twice backed Donald Trump by double digits, according to new Daily Kos Elections calculations. Perhaps as a consequence, he was dogged by retirement rumors last year, though he pushed back against them firmly early on and easily won again.

However, he nearly courted electoral disaster when he expressed the slightest openness to impeaching Trump and inspired the Club for Growth to push for former state Attorney General Adam Laxalt to challenge Amodei in the GOP primary. Amodei had earlier accused Laxalt of coveting his seat and fomenting the chatter that he might quit, but in the end, Laxalt left the congressman alone.

Things might play out differently in a gubernatorial race, though. Lochhead says that Laxalt and former Sen. Dean Heller are both "rumored" to be considering bids against Sisolak, who defeated Laxalt 49-45 in 2018. Neither man, however, has publicly said anything about their interest.

House

● NJ-03: Republican Assemblyman Ryan Peters sounds as though he's considering a bid against Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who just won re-election to a second term by a surprisingly hale 53-45 margin. Insider NJ says that Peters is "not ready yet to say he's running for Congress," but he also disparaged the idea of running against Democratic state Sen. Dawn Marie Addiego next year (a race he's been rumored to be interested in) by saying, "Do I want to be in the minority again? I really don't have a burning desire to do that."

Called Races

● NY-01, NY-02: With New York finally certifying the results of last month's elections, the AP called the race for 1st Congressional District for Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin on Friday, a day after Democrat Nancy Goroff conceded; Zeldin defeated Goroff by a 55-45 margin. The AP also called the contest in the neighboring 2nd District, which Democrat Jackie Gordon conceded to Republican Andrew Garbarino a couple of weeks ago. Final tallies there show Garbarino winning 53-46.

That leaves just two unresolved House races, Iowa's 2nd and New York's 22nd, both of which are subject to ongoing legal challenges.