Morning Digest: Vulnerable Washington Republican plays 3D chess to keep career afloat

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

Leading Off

WA-04: Rep. Dan Newhouse, who is one of the two remaining House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, has launched an ad attacking one of his intraparty foes ahead of Washington’s Aug. 6 top-two primary—but not the one endorsed by Trump.

The congressman's target instead is Tiffany Smiley, who was the GOP’s nominee against Democratic Sen. Patty Murray in 2022. Newhouse's spot, which appears to be his first negative ad of the campaign, does not mention Trump's choice in the conservative 4th District, former NASCAR driver Jerrod Sessler.

Rather, Newhouse's ad features a cast of voters in central Washington arguing that Smiley "deceived" her donors following her defeat last cycle.

"Tiffany Smiley started a PAC claiming to raise money to support conservative candidates," one declares, "but contributions were funneled to pay off her own multimillion-dollar campaign debt."

Smiley raised $20 million for her Senate race, a contest that, according to several conservative pollsters, had a real chance to succeed in an otherwise blue state. Despite those optimistic numbers, though, she finished on the wrong end of a 57-43 landslide and wound up with $1 million in unpaid bills.

Smiley took to conservative media a few months later to announce the launch of a group called Endeavor PAC to aid "political outsiders," and she pledged that "every dollar amount goes directly towards helping candidates." The Seattle Times' Jim Brunner, however, reported that donations to the group were directed toward paying off Smiley’s remaining debts to a Virginia-based consulting firm.

Brunner noted that Endeavor PAC's website did explain how donations would be prioritized—albeit in the "eighth paragraph of tiny print on the PAC's donation page."

"If you are not familiar with this stuff, it all looks like a bunch of gobbledygook," said Brendan Glavin of the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, who nonetheless agreed that Smiley appeared to be adhering to the law.

Smiley, for her part, recently debuted her own commercial in which she argues that voters can "secure our border and make life affordable again by picking better people to fight for us in Congress." A different ad explicitly attacks Newhouse for his 2021 impeachment vote and calls Sessler a vegan who “wants to tax our beef.” 

Sessler tells The Spokesman-Review that the claim about him wanting to tax beef is “a complete lie.” He also says that, while he’s tried to eat “a lot of raw, fresh, organic food” after being diagnosed with cancer 25 years ago, he still consumes beef. Sessler does not appear to have launched any TV ads of his own yet.

The only poll we’ve seen is a late June internal for Smiley from Newton Heath, a firm we don’t often come across, that the Tri-City Herald first reported about on Friday. The survey places Smiley in first with 30% as Newhouse beats out Sessler 21-11, with Democrats Mary Baechler and Barry Knowles at 9% each. 

While this is just one survey, there was already reason to think the general election could be an all-Republican affair, just as it was in both 2014 and 2016. In more recent cycles, only a single Democrat has appeared on the primary ballot: This time, however, Baechler, Knowles, and another contender named Jane "Birdie" Muchlinski are each campaigning as Democrats. (This doesn't include John Malan, a perennial candidate who will be listed on the ballot as a "MAGA Democrat.")

With such a crowded field, the vote could be badly fractured, but that's likelier to keep Democrats from advancing rather than Republicans: Given that Trump carried the 4th District 57-40 in 2020, there are simply fewer left-leaning votes to go around.

And not only are we almost entirely flying blind in terms of polling, there hasn't been much money to follow either: So far, outside groups have spent just $50,000 to boost Newhouse and around $75,000 on behalf of Smiley. That could, however, change during the final weeks of the contest.

Newhouse is hoping to avoid the fate of his former Evergreen State colleague, Jaime Herrera Beutler, who made history the hard way two years ago in the neighboring 3rd District. Until her race, no incumbent had ever failed to advance out of a top-two primary since Washington adopted the system in 2008.

But like Newhouse, Herrera Beutler supported impeaching Trump, who responded by endorsing her MAGA challenger, Army veteran Joe Kent. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez consolidated the Democratic vote, while Kent narrowly edged past Herrera Beutler, only to lose to Gluesenkamp Perez in an upset in the fall.

Herrera Beutler was one of eight pro-impeachment Republicans who never returned to Congress, with several losing primaries and several others opting to retire. Just two held their seats: Newhouse and California Rep. David Valadao, who is a top Democratic target this fall.

Governors

DE-Gov: An outside group called Citizens for a New Delaware Way released a poll on Thursday arguing that Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long is beatable in the Sept. 10 Democratic primary for governor and said it would seek deprive her of the nomination.

The survey, conducted by Slingshot Strategies, shows Hall-Long deadlocked 27-27 with New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer while National Wildlife Federation leader Collin O'Mara take 7%. A 34% plurality are undecided, while the remaining 5% opt for "someone else."

Citizens for a New Delaware Way said it would spend "upwards of $1 million" in this year's elections, though it hasn't said how much it plans to commit specifically to the primary to succeed termed-out Democratic Gov. John Carney. The organization, which says it "promotes transparency, accountability, diversity, and inclusion in Delaware's state government and court system," said it was targeting Hall-Long because of what it called her "failure to support judicial diversity." It does not appear to have endorsed Meyer or O'Mara.

House

WA-06: State Sen. Emily Randall has publicized an endorsement from former Gov. Christine Gregoire, a fellow Democrat who led Washington from 2005 to 2013, ahead of the Aug. 6 top-two primary for the open 6th District.

Poll Pile

  • WI-Sen: North Star Opinion Research (R) for American Greatness: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 41 (46-44 Trump in two-way, 38-36 Trump with third-party candidates) (April: 49-40 Baldwin)

  • IL-11: Cygnal (R) for Jerry Evans: Bill Foster (D-inc): 41, Jerry Evans (R): 34 (38-37 Biden with third-party candidates)

Ad Roundup

Morning Digest: Freedom Caucus chief loses—just barely—after Trump sought his ouster

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

Daily Kos will be off Wednesday in observance of Juneteenth, so there will be no Morning Digest on Thursday. It will return on Friday.

Leading Off

VA-05: State Sen. John McGuire defeated House Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good by the narrowest of margins in Tuesday's Republican primary for Virginia's conservative 5th District, a shockingly close loss—but cold comfort—for an incumbent whose congressional career had looked doomed for quite some time.

The AP had not called the race when we put the Digest to bed, though McGuire declared victory on election night. Good, meanwhile, insisted that he would work to "ensure all the votes are properly counted in the coming days." An unknown number of provisional ballots remain to be tallied, and a recount is possible. However, with McGuire ahead by about 300 votes, a change in the lead would be very unlikely.

McGuire's ultra-tight victory came after Good spent his second and final term infuriating just about every power player in the party, including Donald Trump, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and most of his colleagues. 

The congressman's underdog status seemed cemented when, in early May, McGuire released an internal poll that showed him ahead 45-31. Good's team offered the feeblest of responses: "The only poll that matters is the final count on Election Day," his campaign said in a statement, all but admitting they had no better numbers to counter with.

Trump himself tried to deliver the final blow a short time later by endorsing McGuire. He specifically sought revenge for Good's decision to support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the presidential primary, a move that had put the Virginian crossways with Trump and his legions of adherents.

Allies of McCarthy also worked to punish Good for joining Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz's successful effort to terminate McCarthy's speakership. Other major donors were eager to simply extricate a troublesome rebel from the House. AdImpact says that, all told, a hefty $9 million was spent on ads that either sought to boost McGuire or tear down Good.

But Good's camp, which included the hardline Club for Growth and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's Protect Freedom PAC, never gave up. Collectively, they spent more than $5 million on the airwaves to try to keep him in office.

The final stretch of the race devolved into warring assertions about internal polling, with both sides claiming to be well ahead. But while Good never produced any data of his own, McGuire's arguments were still based on his original poll, by now six weeks old.

As Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin wryly pointed out, both candidates were "wrong by double digits." But even if his final margin of victory was far skinnier than he anticipated, McGuire got to enjoy the last laugh.

Good's loss, as close as it was, makes him only the second member of Congress from either party to lose renomination anywhere in the country this cycle. But while Alabama Rep. Jerry Carl lost to fellow incumbent Barry Moore in March following a round of court-ordered redistricting, Good is the first representative to lose to a challenger.

Good, who spent the last several months backing unsuccessful primary campaigns against several of his colleagues, will at least feel a pang of recognition at his fate, since he earned his ticket to Capitol Hill four years ago by defeating a Republican congressman. Good decided to take on freshman Rep. Denver Riggleman after the incumbent infuriated hardliners by officiating a same-sex wedding between two of his former campaign volunteers.

The GOP nomination in 2020 was decided not in a primary but at a convention, which just so happened to take place at Good’s own church. Good, an elected official in Campbell County, also benefited from his post as an athletics official at Liberty University, which has long been one of the Christian right's most prominent institutions and is located in the district.

Riggleman fought back with endorsements from Trump and Jerry Falwell Jr. (who would resign in disgrace as Liberty's president two months later), but it wasn't enough. The conclave of some 2,500 delegates favored Good 58-42, though he had a tougher time that fall, managing a surprisingly small 52-47 win over Democrat Cameron Webb in an expensive contest.

(McGuire, who was a member of the state House at the time, lost a convention for the GOP nomination in the old 7th District the following month to fellow Del. Nick Freitas, who in turn lost to Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger.)

Good had no trouble winning renomination at the Republican convention in 2022 and handily prevailed in the general election. But he faced a very different battle this time around. A law passed in 2021 required that all absentee voters have the chance to take part in nomination contests, a policy that made it difficult for political parties in Virginia to hold conventions rather than primaries. That shift may have made all the difference.

But while many of Good's colleagues will be overjoyed to see McGuire replace him in the 5th District, which favored Trump 53-45 in 2020, Riggleman may not be entirely enjoying the schadenfreude.

"McGuire might be more dangerous than Bob Good," Riggleman tweeted in March as he shared a picture of the challenger at the Jan. 6 Trump rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. "McGuire coming at Bob from the RIGHT— a panting sycophant who will do anything to win," Riggleman continued. "A box of hammers with a love of power." The former congressman went on to write last month, "Bob Good could be worst member—McGuire might be worse!"

Election Recaps

GA-03 (R): Brian Jack, a former aide to Donald Trump, outpaced former state Sen. Mike Dugan 63-37 in the Republican runoff to replace retiring GOP Rep. Drew Ferguson. Jack, who benefited from his old boss' endorsement and spending from a group backed by the cryptocurrency industry, should have no trouble in the general election for this dark red constituency in Atlanta's southwestern exurbs.

OK-04 (R): Rep. Tom Cole easily fended off businessman Paul Bondar 65-26 in an unexpectedly expensive primary for this safely red seat in southern Oklahoma. 

Bondar poured over $5 million of his own money into ads attacking Cole, who chairs the powerful appropriations chairman, as an insider who "voted with Democrats for billions in new deficit spending." But the incumbent and his allies spent millions on their own messaging reminding viewers both that Cole had Donald Trump's support and that Bondar had only recently moved to Oklahoma from Texas.

VA-Sen (R): Navy veteran Hung Cao beat Scott Parkinson, a former official at the Club for Growth, 62-11 in the Republican primary to take on Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine. Two years ago, Cao held Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton to a modest 53-47 victory in the 10th District, but he'll face a far tougher battle against Kaine in a race that neither national party is treating as competitive.

VA-02 (D): Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal defeated attorney Jake Denton 70-30 for the right to take on freshman GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans in a swing district based in Virginia Beach. Smasal, who lost a competitive race for the state Senate in 2019, had the support of the DCCC and all six members of Virginia's Democratic House delegation for her campaign against Kiggans.

VA-07 (D & R): Former National Security Council adviser Eugene Vindman and Green Beret veteran Derrick Anderson respectively won the Democratic and Republican primaries for Virginia's competitive 7th District based in the southern exurbs of Washington, D.C. The two will face off this fall to succeed Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who decided not to seek reelection so she could focus on her 2025 bid for governor, in a constituency that Joe Biden carried 53-46.

Vindman decisively outpaced his nearest opponent, former Del. Elizabeth Guzman, by a 49-15 margin in a field that also included three sitting local elected officials. The frontrunner, who was a key figure in Donald Trump's first impeachment in 2019, has proven to be one of the strongest House fundraisers in the nation.

Anderson, for his part, defeated former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton 46-37 in an expensive race. Anderson had the backing of House Speaker Mike Johnson and his allies, while Rand Paul's network spent big for Hamilton.

VA-10 (D & R): State Sen. Suhas Subramanyam edged out Del. Dan Helmer 30-27 in the 12-way Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton in Northern Virginia 10th District, which favored Joe Biden 58-40 four years ago. Subramanyam's election would make him both Virginia's first Indian American and Hindu member of Congress.

Citing worsening symptoms of a serious neurodegenerative disease, Wexton unexpectedly announced her retirement last year while serving her third term. But the endorsement she gave to Subramanyam was likely a key reason he prevailed over Helmer, who outraised the rest of the field and benefited from over $5 million in outside spending.

Helmer also drew ugly headlines during the final week of the campaign after four current and former officials in the Loudoun County Democratic Committee put out a statement accusing him of engaging in "inappropriate behavior" with an unnamed committee member in 2018. Helmer denied the allegations.

Subramanyam will face attorney Mike Clancy, who defeated 2020 GOP nominee Aliscia Andrews 64-21. However, while Republicans have talked about putting this once competitive seat back in play, it remains to be seen whether they'll devote the hefty resources needed to accomplish this herculean effort.

House

AK-AL, FL-08, UT-02: Donald Trump on Monday evening endorsed three candidates in contested House primaries: Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom for Alaska's at-large seat; former state Senate President Mike Haridopolos in Florida's 8th District; and Rep. Celeste Maloy in Utah's 2nd District.

Dahlstrom faces GOP businessman Nick Begich and Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola in the Aug. 20 top-four primary, and none of them should have trouble securing a spot in the instant-runoff general election. (The fourth spot is all but certain to be claimed by one of the nine minor candidates who are also running.) Begich, however, has promised to drop out if Dahlstrom outpaces him this summer, a move that would delight party leaders who view him as a weak candidate and want to avoid infighting.

Trump is one of them, and he wrote Monday that Begich, who is the rare Republican member of Alaska's most prominent Democratic family, "has Democrat tendencies." Trump continued that "most importantly, he refused to get out of this Race last time, which caused the Republicans to lose this important seat to Mary Peltola."

Haridopolos, meanwhile, already appeared to be on a glide path to replace GOP Rep. Bill Posey, who timed his April retirement announcement so that Haridopolos could avoid serious opposition. The former state Senate leader only faces a pair of unheralded primary foes in this conservative seat in the Cape Canaveral area, and he'll be even harder to beat with Trump's blessing.

Maloy, finally, is fighting for renomination next week against Colby Jenkins, an Army Reserve colonel who has far-right Sen. Mike Lee's endorsement, in a safely red constituency based in southwestern Utah. Maloy, though, has the backing of all three of her colleagues in the state's all-GOP delegation. She also used this week to unveil an ad starring Gov. Spencer Cox, who is one of the party's few remaining Trump critics who still holds a prominent office.

Trump's new endorsements came hours before NOTUS' Reese Gorman published a story detailing the far-right Freedom Caucus' frustration with Trump's picks in contested primaries this cycle, including his drive to oust chair Bob Good in Virginia this week. The acrimony is only likely to intensify because the Freedom Caucus is backing both Begich and Jenkins.

Unsurprisingly, the House GOP leadership is not at all sympathetic. "The real story here is that these guys throw a temper tantrum every time Trump endorses against their preferred candidate," an unnamed senior aide told Gorman, "where most of the time their preferred candidate is a total shitbag."

AZ-01: Businessman Andrei Cherny this week picked up an endorsement from Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, whose city is home to just over 60% of the 1st District's residents, for the July 30 Democratic primary to face GOP Rep. David Schweikert.

CO-03: The Colorado Sun reports that both parties have become heavily involved in next week's GOP primary for Colorado's open 3rd District as Republicans try to counter the Democrats' attempts to pick their preferred opponent. The candidate at the center of all this is former state Rep. Ron Hanks, a far-right election denier whom both sides agree would be a weak GOP nominee for this 53-45 Trump district.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC aligned with House GOP leadership, is spending at least $325,000 on new TV and radio ads attacking Hanks. The TV spot claims Hanks is insufficiently pro-Trump, arguing that Democrats are supporting him to "elect another liberal to Congress" after the Democratic super PAC Rocky Mountain Values has spent $400,000 this month on ads to aid Hanks or attack a rival. (Democrats previously ran ads last cycle to elevate Hanks in his unsuccessful 2022 Senate primary bid.)

Meanwhile, 2022 Democratic nominee Adam Frisch has put at least $100,000 behind a new TV commercial to deter Republicans from nominating a more formidable candidate, attorney Jeff Hurd. Frisch's spot lambastes Hurd for refusing to clarify his positions on abortion, immigration, and whether he supports Trump. The ad continues, "All we really do know about Jeff Hurd is he's financed by out-of-state corporate money."

Hurd is also taking fire from a Republican rival, financial adviser Russ Andrews, who has spent at least $70,000 on ads opposing him. No copy of Andrews' commercial is available yet, but The Sun's description notes it goes after Hurd for inadequate fealty to Trump and being an "Ivy League Lawyer."

Republican chances of holding this district appeared to improve significantly earlier this cycle when far-right Republican incumbent Lauren Boebert switched to run in the redder 4th District after only beating Frisch by a razor-thin margin in the 3rd last cycle. However, Frisch had already taken advantage of his now-former opponent's national notoriety by raising millions of dollars, funding he's now deploying to ensure that Republicans select another deeply flawed nominee.

FL-01: The House Ethics Committee announced Tuesday that it was continuing to review allegations that Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz had engaged in a wide variety of wrongdoing, including "sexual misconduct and illicit drug use," accepting "improper gifts," awarding "special privileges and favors" to associates, and obstructing investigations into his alleged misdeeds.

The Committee, however, said it was no longer probing a variety of other accusations, including claims that Gaetz had shared "inappropriate" videos on the floor of the House, put campaign funds to personal use, and accepted a bribe.

The panel released its statement one day after Gaetz tweeted that the Committee was "now opening new frivolous investigations" into the congressman despite supposedly having "closed four probes into me."

The Committee disputed that characterization, saying that its current investigation is the same one that had already been underway. It also said it experienced "difficulty in obtaining relevant information from Representative Gaetz and others."

The Committee initially deferred its inquiry after the Justice Department began its own investigation into Gaetz in 2021 regarding the alleged sex trafficking of a minor and other accusations, but that probe ended last year without charges. The Ethics Committee says that it later "reauthorized its investigation after DOJ withdrew its deferral request."

IL-17: Politico has obtained a recent 1892 Polling internal conducted for the NRCC and former state Circuit Judge Joe McGraw, which finds McGraw trailing 44-35 against freshman Democratic Rep. Eric Sorensen with 20% undecided. The sample also shows Biden leading Trump just 39-38 in a district Biden carried 53-45 in 2020.

This is the first publicly available survey of the race for Illinois' 17th District, which includes the communities of Rockford and Peoria, since McGraw won the Republican nomination in March.

NY-16: Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman's allies at Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party are spending $900,000 on a TV ad to support the incumbent in next week's primary against Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who has been the beneficiary of most of the outside spending.

First reported by Politico, the commercial takes "Republican megadonors" to task for contributing millions for ads to "smear" Bowman and elevate Latimer, citing news stories to portray the challenger as opposed to key parts of Joe Biden's agenda. The move comes after the hawkish pro-Israel group AIPAC has spent weeks running spots arguing that Bowman is the one who has undermined Biden, and its newest spot once again criticizes the incumbent for having "voted against President Biden's debt limit deal."

However, data from AdImpact underscores the lopsided advantage that Latimer's side enjoys in blasting out its preferred narrative. AIPAC has deployed $14 million on Latimer's behalf, and the pro-crypto group Fairshake has dropped another $2 million. By contrast, Justice Democrats and the Working Families Party have spent only $1.5 million to aid Bowman.

UT-03: Sen. Mike Lee endorsed state Sen. Mike Kennedy on Monday ahead of next week's five-way Republican primary to replace Rep. John Curtis, who is giving up the 3rd District to campaign to succeed Mitt Romney in Utah's other Senate seat. Kennedy, who briefly attracted national prominence in 2018 by taking on Romney, is a hardliner who has successfully pushed laws like a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

But while Kennedy won an April party convention dominated by far-right delegates, he's been decisively outspent by a pair of self-funding businessmen who are each hoping to replace Curtis. One of those contenders is Case Lawrence, a former CEO of the trampoline park chain Sky Zone who threw down almost $2.5 million of his own money through June 5. The other is Roosevelt Mayor Rod Bird, who self-funded about $1 million.

The race also includes state Auditor John Dougall, who will be listed on the ballot with his nickname "Frugal." Dougall, who is the only statewide elected official in the contest, has paid for billboards identifying him as "MAINSTREAM NOT MAGA," which is an unusual pitch for today's GOP. The Salt Lake Tribune's Robert Gehrke writes that the auditor is the one contender "to publicly criticize and disavow Trump."

Rounding out the field is attorney Stewart Peay, who has Romney's endorsement. (Peay's wife, Misha, is a niece of Romney's wife, Ann.) Peay, who has dodged questions about whether he backs his party's master, has argued he'd emulate one of his MAGA's prominent GOP critics, Gov. Spencer Cox. "I believe in the civility we’ve seen from Cox, the pragmatism you see from John Curtis, and the bipartisanship you see from Mitt Romney," he told the Deseret News.

There has been no outside spending in this contest, nor have we seen any polls. Whoever wins a plurality in next week's GOP primary should have no trouble in the fall for a safely red constituency based in the Provo area, southeastern Salt Lake City, and rural southeastern Utah.

House: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced its first fall TV ad reservations of the 2024 election cycle on Tuesday, with bookings totaling $16.4 million across 15 different media markets. The committee also said it had reserved $12 million for digital advertising in 21 different states that "represent the majority of the House battlefield."

We've added these new television reservations to our continually updated tracker, which also shows which districts the committee likely plans to target. (As yet, we've seen no surprises.) While the DCCC's initial foray is considerably smaller than the $146 million in TV reservations its allies at the House Majority PAC announced in April, this list will grow as new bookings are announced. (In 2022, the D-Trip spent almost $100 million on 45 different races.)

The committee's move also means that three of the four largest outside groups involved in House races have announced their first round of reservations this year. Early last month, the pro-GOP Congressional Leadership Fund said it had booked $141 million in airtime. The National Republican Congressional Committee, however, has yet to make an appearance.

Poll Pile

  • NC-Gov: Spry Strategies (R): Mark Robinson (R): 43, Josh Stein (D): 39 (48-44 Trump in two-way, 45-37 Trump with third-party candidates)
  • AZ-06: Public Opinion Strategies for Juan Ciscomani: Juan Ciscomani (R-inc): 50, Kirsten Engel (D): 39 (49-45 Trump)

Ad Roundup

Campaign Action

Live coverage: June 18 primaries in Oklahoma and Virginia, plus runoffs in Georgia

Downballot primaries continue tonight with races in three states, with the first polls closing at 7 PM ET in Georgia and Virginia. We'll be liveblogging the results here and also covering the returns closely on X.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:39:54 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-05 (R): The “percentage of vote” counted is just an estimate, and as such, it’s subject to revisions, both up and down. Over the last several minutes, the AP’s estimate has dropped from greater than 95% to 88% to 84% to (now) 79%. Meanwhile, they’ve still been adding votes for both candidates. McGuire is up 52-48 (about 1,100 votes), but suddenly, there’s a lot more runway.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:35:29 AM +00:00 · David Nir

OK-04 (R): Rep. Tom Cole and his allies sure seemed freaked, but the AP just called the race for the longtime Republican congressman, who is leading challenger Paul Bondar by a giant 68-21 margin. Cole & co. spent a ton to protect the incumbent, but evidently, there was no need. Would love to see the internal polling that had them so panicked, though.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:29:02 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-10 (D): We could have a very close race brewing here. Suhas Subramanyam is up 31-26 on Dan Helmer with about 80% reporting, but Subramanyam’s base in Loudon County appears to have finished county. Helmer is leading in everywhere else in the district, though he still would have to make up another 2,000+ votes to close the gap.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:23:02 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-05 (R): This is turning into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it primary. Good and McGuire have traded leads repeatedly in the last few minutes. At this precise second, McGuire is back up 51.5 to 48.5 with an estimated 79% of the vote reporting, but that could truly change at any second.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:17:41 AM +00:00 · David Nir

OK-04 (R): We should note that polls closed about a quarter of an hour ago in Oklahoma, where veteran GOP Rep. Tom Cole faces an expensive challenge from a guy who’s so new to the state that he literally voted in the Texas primaries in March. Only a trickle of votes so far, though.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:15:56 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-05 (R): Well this is most unexpected. Rep. Bob Good has now moved into a narrow lead of less than 1 point over his challenger, John McGuire. Geoffrey Skelley of 538 does some back-of-the-envelope math and suggests that Good—who had looked like the underdog for the longest time—could actually survive, particularly because most of Campbell County (Good’s home turf) has yet to report.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:11:12 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-07 (D): No surprise: Former National Security Council adviser Eugene Vindman has won the Democratic nomination in a walk, per the AP, which has called the race with Vindman up 51-14 on his closest opponent. Vindman benefitted from his close association with his identical twin brother, Alexander, who was a key figure in Donald Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. That allowed Vindman to raise enormous sums in the form of small-dollar donations from progressives, something local elected officials just could not match.

It’s not clear yet who his Republican opponent will be for this swingy seat, but Army veteran Derek Anderson is leading right now.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:07:42 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-02 (D): The AP has called the Dem primary for Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal, who now heads to a general election against freshman GOP Rep. Jen Kiggans. Joe Biden carried the 2nd, which is based in the Hampton Roads suburbs, by a slender 50-48 margin, so this should be a competitive race.

UPDATE: Wednesday, Jun 19, 2024 · 12:04:10 AM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-05 (R): If you’re watching a live AP tally, the results have been going haywire. At the moment, McGuire is up 53-47 with 42% counted, but at least twice, the AP shot all the way to 69% (and gave McGuire a 40-point lead). That appears to have been based on an error, though.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:59:17 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-07 (D & R): We’ve finally crossed the 10% mark in the Dem primary, where former National Security Council adviser Eugene Vindman has a giant 54-14 lead on his nearest opponent, former Del. Elizabeth Guzman, with 12% reporting. On the GOP side (where the AP says almost half of all votes are tallied), Army veteran Derrick Anderson 47-37 on former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton.

This race is for the right to succeed Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who announced her retirement to focus on her 2025 bid for governor.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:55:37 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-02 (D): We just shot up to 19% reporting, and Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal has a commanding 68-32 lead on attorney Jeremiah Denton. In a rare move, the DCCC decided to back Cotter Smasal (who lost a competitive race for the state Senate in 2019) ahead of the primary. Dems are eager to unseat first-term GOP Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, who defeated Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria in 2022 in this swingy district.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:53:08 PM +00:00 · David Nir

GA-03 (R): The AP has called this runoff for Brian Jack, a former Trump aide who will now be on a glide path to Congress given this district’s deep red lean. The guy he’s replacing, incidentally, is retiring GOP Rep. Drew Ferguson, who is bailing on Congress at the age of just 57 after only four terms. Another sign of how lovely life must be in the Republican caucus.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:43:11 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-07 (D & R): This open seat in the exurbs south of D.C. is extremely swingy and therefore both parties’ primaries tonight are high on everyone’s watch list. But there’s something strange going on here, too. The AP thinks that 30% of the vote has been tallied for the GOP but just 4% for Democrats. It’s hard to understand what the thinking is here, but we’re gonna hold off a bit so that we delve into this more.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:39:27 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-10 (D): Subramanyam has now legged out to a much larger 34-21 lead on Helmer with more than a third reporting, on the strength of a good showing (comparable to his overall lead) in Loudon County.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:35:39 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-05 (R): Things are, as expected, looking rough for GOP Rep. Bob Good in the 5th District. He trails state Sen. John McGuire 52-48 with an estimate 12% reporting, but this appears to be the advance vote (ie, mail and/or early voting). McGuire, who has Donald Trump’s endorsement, is likely to do even better with Election Day voters, since the MAGA base hates mail voting. (In case you were wondering what’s got Trump so upset, Good, who chairs the House Freedom Caucus, committed the unforgivable sin of endorsing Ron DeSantis in the presidential race.)

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:32:57 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-Sen (R): The AP has called this race for Navy veteran Hung Cao, who ran a reasonably creditable campaign for the House last cycle in the 10th District but now will be a massive underdog against Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:29:38 PM +00:00 · David Nir

VA-10 (D & R): We’re at our threshold in Northern Virginia’s open 10th District, a once-Republican seat that has swung sharply toward Dems in the Trump era. State Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, who has the backing of retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton for the Democratic nod, is up 26-21 on Del. Dan Helmer, who is the best-funded candidate in the race. Former state Education Secretary Atif Qarni is in third with 15%, but this one could be volatile.

A bit oddly, the AP is saying 18% of votes have been counted on the Dem side but 48% have already been tallied for the GOP. That would imply a huge turnout disparity, which is not impossible but bears keeping an eye on (the AP often shifts its estimates of the vote reporting). Republican Mike Clancy has a massive lead.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:23:49 PM +00:00 · David Nir

GA-03 (R): In the runoff for Georgia’s open (and very conservative) 3rd District, former Trump aide Brian Jack has jumped out to an early 63-37 lead on former state Sen. Mike Dugan with around 14% reporting. Jack had the endorsement of his old boss and also had a wide lead in the first round, so a victory for him is quite likely.

UPDATE: Tuesday, Jun 18, 2024 · 11:09:45 PM +00:00 · David Nir

Good evening, everyone! We have a tiny trickle of votes in Georgia, but nothing worth discussing yet. As is our practice, we always wait until we have at least 10% of the estimated vote tallied before we talk about any results.

But as keen election watchers know, things can change a lot even once that threshold is hit. That’s especially true on primary nights, where different areas report in at different times—and when different candidates often have regional bases of support. In addition, mail and early votes often behave differently from votes cast in-person on election day, and the former are usually counted first. So strap in!

Why it seems like the entire GOP wants this Republican to lose his primary

Three states are holding major primaries on Tuesday, headlined by Virginia, where Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy are both working to punish the chair of the Freedom Caucus for his disloyalty. Oklahoma is also on tap, while Georgia is holding runoffs in contests where no one earned a majority of the vote in the first round of voting on May 21.

Below, you'll find our guide to all of the top races to watch, arranged chronologically by each state’s poll closing times. When it’s available, we'll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each race, but if we don't mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.

To help you follow along, you can find interactive maps from Dave's Redistricting App for Georgia, Oklahoma, and Virginia. You can find Daily Kos Elections' 2020 presidential results for each congressional district here, as well as our geographic descriptions for each seat. You’ll also want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.

We'll be liveblogging all of these races at Daily Kos Elections on Tuesday night, starting when the first polls close at 7:00 PM ET. Join us for our complete coverage!  

Georgia

Polls close at 7 PM ET.

• GA-03 (R) (64-34 Trump): Brian Jack, a former Donald Trump aide who has his old boss' endorsement, outpaced former state Sen. Mike Dugan 47-25 in the first round, making him the favorite to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson in this seat in Atlanta's southwestern exurbs.

Jack consolidated his position by earning the backing of the third- and fourth-place finishers, Mike Crane and Philip Singleton, who took a combined 23% of the vote in the first round. Outside groups, including the crypto-aligned Defend American Jobs, have also deployed over $800,000 to help Jack in the runoff, while there's been no serious spending for Dugan.

Virginia

Polls close at 7 PM ET.

• VA-02 (D) (50-48 Biden): Two Democrats vying to take on Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who flipped a swing district based in Virginia Beach last cycle and will likely be a top Democratic target this year.

Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal, who lost a competitive race for the state Senate in 2019, has the support of the DCCC and all six members of Virginia's Democratic House delegation. Her rival is Jake Denton, an attorney whose late grandfather, Jeremiah Denton, represented Alabama in the Senate as a Republican in the 1980s.

Smasal has decisively outraised Denton, and there's been no outside spending in the primary.

• VA-05 (R) (53-45 Trump): Rep. Bob Good has spent his tenure as chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus antagonizing GOP leaders and rank-and-file Republicans alike. Now, thanks to all the grief he's caused, the two-term congressman faces an uphill primary against state Sen. John McGuire for the right to keep representing this conservative district in central and southwest Virginia.

Good knows all about bitter intra-party battles: He first got to Congress by wresting the GOP nomination from then-Rep. Denver Riggleman at a Republican convention in 2020. But now a similar fate looms for him. Good infuriated Trump last year by endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' doomed presidential campaign, prompting Trump to exact his revenge last month by endorsing McGuire.

Good also was one of eight House Republicans who last fall voted to end the speakership of Kevin McCarthy, who's now looking to get even. On top of that, several conservative megadonors close to the party's current leadership are tired of Good's antics and want him gone. All of this has led outside groups to throw down close to $6 million to attack Good and promote McGuire.

But Good's allies, including the hardline Club for Growth and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's Protect Freedom PAC, haven't given up. They've spent almost $5 million on messaging arguing that Good, unlike McGuire, is an ardent conservative.

• VA-07 (D & R) (53-46 Biden): Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger decided not to seek reelection so she could focus on her 2025 bid for governor, spurring busy primaries on both sides for her district based in the southern exurbs of Washington, D.C.

The frontrunner in the seven-way Democratic contest is former National Security Council adviser Eugene Vindman, who, along with his identical twin brother, Alexander, was at the center of the scandal that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment in 2019.

Thanks to the siblings' high profile during that affair, Vindman has been one of the strongest fundraisers among House candidates in the nation. Vindman has also benefited from about $1.3 million in outside spending from a pair of super PACs: VoteVets, which promotes Democratic veterans, and Protect Progress, a group with ties to the crypto industry. The Washington Post, which has a large readership in Northern Virginia, is supporting him as well.

Vindman faces four current and former elected officials who have faulted him for not being active in politics in what's long been a competitive region and for sometimes displaying a lack of knowledge about local matters. However, the members of this quartet—Prince William County Supervisors Andrea Bailey and Margaret Franklin, Del. Briana Sewell, and Elizabeth Guzman—have each raised just a fraction ​of the money Vindman has at his disposal.

The only other third-party spending of note has come from a super PAC called Casa In Action, which has deployed $200,000 to promote Guzman, who would be the first Hispanic person to represent Virginia in Congress.

A late May internal poll for Vindman showed him beating Bailey 43-10, with his rivals taking single-digit support. No one has released any data to contradict the idea that Vindman is well-positioned to triumph in a contest where none of his many opponents have established themselves as the clear alternative.

Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping that Spanberger's absence will give them a chance to flip this seat. The main contender in the five-candidate field appears to be Green Beret veteran Derrick Anderson, who lost a close primary for this seat in 2022 and has House Speaker Mike Johnson's endorsement for his second try.

The other notable Republican is former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton, who has the support of much of the Freedom Caucus. Both veterans have been attacking the other from the right, and their allies have spent well over $1 million on behalf of each man. Anderson's main support has come from the American Patriots PAC, which is funded by Republican megadonors Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, while Rand Paul's network is supporting Hamilton.

• VA-10 (D) (58-40 Biden): A dozen Democrats are campaigning to replace retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton in a district based in the southwestern suburbs and exurbs of Washington, D.C.

Wexton is backing state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, who would be both Virginia's first Indian American and Hindu member of the House. Subramanyam has raised more money than most of his many opponents and has also gotten more than $500,000 in support from the Indian American Impact Fund.

Del. Dan Helmer, though, still enjoys a huge financial advantage over Subramanyam and the rest of this busy field. Helmer, an Army veteran and the top fundraiser in the race, has been the beneficiary of well over $5 million in outside spending. His largest ally is the crypto-aligned Protect Progress, while VoteVets is also spending to help him. In addition, the Washington Post has endorsed Helmer

However, few of Helmer's current constituents live in the congressional district he wants to represent, though he may have more serious concerns to worry about.

Four current and former officials in the Loudoun County Democratic Committee put out a statement during the final week of the race publicly accusing Helmer of engaging in "inappropriate behavior" with one of their number in 2018. One signatory told NOTUS that the committee's sexual harassment policy was adopted as a "direct result" of his actions. The candidate responded by denying what he called "baseless claims."

The race also includes four other current and former members of the state legislature: state Sen. Jennifer Boysko, Dels. Michelle Maldonado and David Reid, and former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn. But while Filler-Corn has raised considerably more than the rest of this foursome, her old legislative seat doesn't overlap with Wexton's district at all. Boysko has the same problem, while Maldonado and Reid have struggled to raise money.

Two other names to watch are defense contractor Krystle Kaul, who has self-funded much of her campaign, and former state Education Secretary Atif Qarni. Kaul would be the state's first Indian American or Sikh member of Congress, while Qarni would be both its first Pakistani American and Muslim representative.

The only survey we've seen here in recent weeks was a Qarni internal poll from mid-May that showed Helmer edging out Subramanyam 17-16, with Qarni and Filler-Corn respectively at 12% and 9%. That survey, however, was conducted with almost a month left to go before the primary.

Oklahoma 

Polls close at 8 PM ET/7 PM local time. An Aug. 27 runoff would take place in any races where no candidate wins a majority of the vote.

• OK-04 (R) (65-33 Trump): Rep. Tom Cole faces an unexpectedly expensive primary battle thanks to the arrival of businessman Paul Bondar, who has spent over $5 million of his own money to portray the appropriations chairman as an insider who "voted with Democrats for billions in new deficit spending."

The 11-term incumbent, though, has benefited from almost $4 million in support from third-party groups. Those include the American Action Network, a nonprofit with ties to the House GOP leadership, which has been airing TV ads on the congressman's behalf. Cole and his allies have spent the campaign both touting his support from Trump and reminding voters that Bondar did not register to vote in Oklahoma until April—a month after he cast a ballot in the Texas primaries.

Three little-known candidates are also on the ballot, so it's possible that neither Cole nor Bondar will capture a majority of the vote on Tuesday. Bondar has been airing ads featuring that trio saying they'd back him in a hypothetical runoff.

GOP congressman caught again doing same thing he accuses Biden of

For nearly a year, Head of the House Oversight Committee Rep. James Comer has used the power of his position to produce an evidence-free investigation into what he has called the “Biden family cover-up.” Warping half-truths in order to drive an investigation into old and debunked conspiracy theories has resulted in virtually no meaningful evidence of wrongdoing by President Joe Biden. It has, however, exposed the world to how much of a raging hypocrite Comer is.

In August, Comer told Newsmax that “Joe Biden was using pseudonyms to hide the fact that he was working with his son to peddle access to our enemies around the world.” The Kentucky congressman has repeatedly implied Biden’s use of aliases, a “common practice” in government correspondence, is proof he was involved in shady activities connected to his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings. 

The Daily Beast reports that when he was Kentucky’s commissioner of agriculture in 2011, Comer was sending pseudonymous emails for government business. In fact, he was bungling hemp seed deals with China, and sending those emails from a government account, named after his 7-year-old son, to a big campaign donor who had a possible interest in the hemp product.

This is just the latest example of how enormous his hypocrisy is in regards to the allegations he levied against President Biden.

Back in November 2023, Comer accused Joe Biden of corruption based on a check for $200,000 he gave to his brother Jim Biden in 2018, which was repaid. Comer called it a “bombshell” piece of evidence. Days later, it was revealed that Comer had also paid his own brother $200,000, in one of many “land swaps” deals the Comers and their businesses had been involved in over the years. 

In March 2023, the Congressional Integrity Project—the Democratic-aligned group committed to putting Republicans on the defensive—wrote a letter asking for a Kentucky prosecutor to investigate Comer for possibly committing “at least one, and perhaps multiple, felony offenses during his failed attempt to secure the Republican nomination for governor in 2015.” The motivation for the letter was a New York Times profile on Comer, in which the congressman talked about the tight gubernatorial primary he had lost—which included allegations by a blogger against him that he was abusive to a college girlfriend: 

The month before the primary, a story appeared in The Lexington Herald-Leader in which leaked emails suggested coordination between the blogger and the husband of the running mate of one of Mr. Comer’s opponents in the race, the Louisville developer Hal Heiner.

The rumor whispered around Kentucky political circles at the time was that Mr. Comer had swiped the emails from the computer server for the husband’s former law firm and leaked them to the newspaper. In an interview with The Times, Mr. Comer confirmed, for the first time, that he had been behind the leak and strongly hinted he had gotten them from the server.

“I’ve had two servers in my lifetime,” Mr. Comer said when asked about the emails. “Hunter Biden’s is one, and you can — I’m not going to say who the other one was, but you can use your imagination.”

This tactic by Comer seems to have worked out as well as his investigation into Biden, as Comer’s former girlfriend, angered by the leaked emails, wrote and published a letter detailing what she described as a “toxic, abusive” relationship with Comer. Comer has denied the allegations of abuse.

Recently, reports say Comer spends his days fantasizing about the dead-end Biden impeachment disappearing. The constant humiliation of having failed to actually prove anything against Biden has prompted even right-wing news outlets like Fox News to stop giving him primetime mentions

However, Donald Trump is running for president again, and the demands to create the semblance of corruption by Biden seems to be Comer’s primary job. On Sunday, Comer told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo he was not done with trying to get Biden, saying “This is just the beginning.” 

He’s had almost a year, and all he’s proven is that Biden is a supportive father.

RELATED STORY: House GOP wants to prosecute Biden's family days after Trump conviction

Donald Trump was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records on May 30. What are potential voters saying about this historic news? And what is the Biden-Harris campaign doing now that the “teflon Don" is no more?

Campaign Action

The Downballot: The biggest supreme court races of 2024 (transcript)

It's right there in the name of the show, so yeah, of course we're gonna talk about downballot races on this week's episode of "The Downballot"! Specifically, we drill down into the top contests for attorney general and state supreme court taking place all across the country this year. Democrats and liberals are playing defense in Montana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, but they have the chance to make gains in many states, including Michigan, Arizona, Ohio, and even Texas.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday's runoffs in the Lone Star State, where a GOP congressman barely hung on against an odious "gunfluencer." They also dissect a new Supreme Court ruling out of South Carolina that all but scraps a key weapon Black voters have used to attack gerrymandering. And they preview New Jersey's first primaries in a post-"county line" world.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. New episodes come out every Thursday morning!

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

David Beard: Hello and welcome. I'm David Beard, contributing editor for Daily Kos Elections.

David Nir: And I'm David Nir, political director of Daily Kos. “The Downballot” is a weekly podcast dedicated to the many elections that take place below the presidency from Senate to city council. You can subscribe to “The Downballot” wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.

Beard: Let's dive into today's episode. What are we talking about?

Nir: Well, we are recapping Texas runoffs, where a Republican congressman survived by the skin of his teeth, as did the GOP speaker of the state House, but there is still a major blood-letting going on in the state. Then we are discussing a new Supreme Court ruling that has once again undermined the cause of fighting against gerrymandering. And then we have more primaries coming up next week. We are previewing a top race in New Jersey as a table-setter for the month of June.

Then on our deep dive, we are discussing some of our absolute favorite types of races here at “The Downballot.” We are covering the most important contests for state Attorney General and state Supreme Court across the country. These are the sorts of races that you need to learn about so that you can tell all your friends about them. We have a ton to cover on this episode, so let's get rolling.

Nir: Well, we wrapped up May with a few runoffs down in Texas, and we need to recap some of the top results.

Beard: Yes. Now, the Tuesday after Memorial Day is probably not the best day to hold an election, but Texas has never been accused of making voting easy, so here we are nonetheless. Now in Texas’s 23rd district, that's a district that stretches from El Paso to San Antonio, Representative Tony Gonzales is an incumbent Republican. He really, really narrowly defeated his primary opponent, gun influencer — whatever that is — Brandon Herrera, by just 407 votes. That's less than a 1.5% margin.

Herrera is really, really far out there, very far right. He's mocked veteran suicide. He's mocked the Holocaust, even Barron Trump. You know you're getting too far out there when you're mocking Trumps because that's the one thing that's supposed to be off-limits. But despite that, he almost knocked Gonzales off, but Gonzales held on.

Nir: Yeah, Donald Trump didn't weigh in on this race. Maybe if Herrera had managed to shut up about his son, he would have, because that clearly would've been a difference-maker.

Beard: And Gonzales had called him a neo-Nazi. He'd bashed the other congressional members of the Freedom Caucus who'd come out and supported Herrera. Gonzales said, "It's my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I served with some real scumbags," which I can't disagree with, but that's his own party, so you think he'd be a little nicer about it.

Now, Gonzales's side heavily, heavily outspent Herrera's, so it's very easy to imagine a less crazy far-right person primarying Gonzales next time, and him either losing in the primary or retiring ahead of 2026.

Nir: I could see someone just as crazy as Herrera, if not Herrera himself, doing it. I mean 407 votes. Now, yeah, like you said, right after Memorial Day turnout is very low; a weird electorate, not the usual electorate that you see for a primary. But Gonzales represents a pretty conservative district that Republicans helped gerrymander to make it redder. So he's very likely to win in November. But after that, I'd be pretty surprised if he comes back for a further term beyond that one.

Beard: Honestly, if Herrera had just not attacked Barron Trump, there's every chance Trump might've endorsed him and he would've won. So I could very easily imagine either Herrera or someone else winning this in 2026.

Nir: So the other big set of races in Texas were a whole batch of Republican runoffs for the statehouse. A whole bunch of Republican incumbents were in jeopardy because of various vendettas by major figures in their own party, particularly Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott. But somehow Speaker Dade Phelan managed to survive in a huge surprise; he defeated fellow Republican David Covey by also just under 1.5 points.

Covey had actually led Phelan 46 to 43 in the first round of voting, which was way back in early March. So this really did feel like an upset, but almost all of the other Republican incumbents in the House who were on the ballot on Tuesday were not as lucky as Phelan. Six of the other seven lost. That's on top of nine who lost outright in March in the first round of voting.

Beard: Now, the interesting thing here is that there were two different operations underway going after some of these incumbent Republicans. There was Governor Greg Abbott, who was spending a lot of money targeting Republicans who opposed his plan to give taxpayer money to private schools, causing it to fail. Attorney General Ken Paxton was on a revenge tour against the Republicans who had voted to impeach him on corruption charges last year. There was a lot of overlap between those two groups, but it wasn't universal.

Now, Abbott was already declaring victory for his school voucher plan claiming on Tuesday night that the legislature now has enough votes to pass school choice because of all of these primary defeats of Republicans. Of course, there are elections in November and it's not clear the exact makeup of how many Democrats might defeat some of these Republicans to make that not the case.

Nir: Yeah, it's absolutely not surprising to me at all that Greg Abbott was counting his chickens immediately on runoff night. It's not entirely clear whether Democrats can flip enough seats held by pro-voucher Republicans to thwart the Abbott voucher agenda, but it's certainly possible, especially if Democrats have a good year in Texas, which is also possible.

So yeah, let's maybe wait until this thing called “elections” happens. As for Paxton, he immediately threatened any Republican who might vote for Phelan to return as Speaker next year. Phelan was largely in Paxton's crosshairs as opposed to Abbott's. Phelan had overseen the impeachment vote, but he also wasn't especially aggressive in pushing Abbott's voucher plan either. So I'm sure Abbott wouldn't mind seeing him replaced.

It's an open question as to what's going to happen next year. It certainly seems like Phelan does have a lot of supporters in the statehouse, but this is one of just many state legislatures across the country where Republicans are in bitter disarray and there's huge infighting over who should actually lead them. I think we're going to see many more messy battles come January,

Beard: And to be clear, Phelan is no moderate. This is not a case of the moderate caucus in the Texas Republican Party.

Nir: Yeah, that's funny.

Beard: Growing or losing, there's not really a moderate caucus at all. Phelan is very much his own man. He has his own opinions about Paxton: he is this corrupt guy, and so we should impeach him. He didn't feel like he should push through the school voucher plan over a lot of Republican's objections. And for that, Abbott and particularly Paxton, don't like him because he won't do what they say, and so that's why he might not be Speaker again.

Nir: Moving on from Tuesday's runoffs, we need to discuss the recent big Supreme Court ruling out of South Carolina. To catch you up on this one, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling that said that South Carolina Republicans had engaged in illegal racial gerrymandering in drawing their new congressional map. So by way of background, Republicans had moved tens of thousands of Black voters from the 1st district, which had seen competitive elections in both 2018 and 2020 to the dark blue 6th district, and they did so knowing that Black voters overwhelmingly vote Democratic.

But thanks to prior Supreme Court precedents that were actually pushed by conservatives decades ago, it's generally impermissible to divide voters by race this way. So something has changed in the past few decades, and I'll tell you what it was. This new opinion was authored by Sam Alito, who of course has been in the news lately for the insurrectionist flags that just somehow seemed to keep getting flown at his various homes, but he can't do anything about it. I mean, God, you really got to feel for this guy. I find this happens to me all the time. You too, right?

Beard: Yeah. I hate it when others in my household fly insurrectionist flags. It's such a common problem.

Nir: So Alito, who totally is not an insurrectionist, and his fellow conservatives did something really extreme with this ruling, which is that they rejected the findings of fact by the trial court, and this is very rare. Speaking in broad terms, courts make two types of assessments. They determine the facts of the case, and then they apply the law to those facts.

Normally, an appellate court sticks to reviewing the law, and there's good reason for that. It's the trial court judges who are actually in the courtroom. They're the ones hearing testimony from witnesses, judging credibility, and taking in all the million intangible things that simply can't be conveyed by a transcript or a written opinion.

But Alito said nope. He said the court was wrong in how it adduced the facts. He said that legislatures must be entitled to a presumption of good faith when they draw maps, which essentially makes it impossible for anyone to ever prove racial gerrymandering again. If legislators are entitled to a presumption of good faith, then as election law expert Rick Hasen put it, you basically need smoking gun evidence to have any chance of overturning that.

And these Republican lawmakers, they might be crazy, but they aren't stupid, and they read these Supreme Court opinions and they know exactly what they should shut up about or not send emails about, and they're going to make it almost impossible for anyone to ever find the kind of extremely burdensome evidence that you would need to prove a racial gerrymandering case ever again.

So the idea of a racial gerrymandering claim that you can't divide voters by race is something that conservatives on the court had really come up with decades ago. And Rick Hasen noted something interesting about the history of these cases. He pointed out that in the 1980s, it was white Republicans who were trying to undo newly created Black districts in the South that the DOJ was pushing states to create, under the DOJ's interpretation of the Voting Rights Act.

But over the ensuing decades, Republicans took power throughout the South and they started using race as a proxy for partisanship, just like in this South Carolina case, in order to curtail Black voting power by cracking and packing Black voters to minimize their ability to elect Black Democrats. So Black voters started bringing racial gerrymandering cases and they had some success in knocking down some of these districts where Republicans had really cherry-picked and drawn lines based on voters race.

So it's really a very obvious and naked turnaround on the part of Alito and his fellow conservatives because this tool, these racial gerrymandering claims, were once very helpful to Republicans in striking down majority-black districts. Now it's been turned against them. And so the far-right conservatives on the Supreme Court want to scrap it. It really couldn't be more obvious, and it is yet another tool in the toolbox, that advocates for Black voting rights and for voting rights for people of color are simply going to be almost unable to use.

Beard: Yeah, and what we've seen pretty consistently with the Supreme Court is that it is not terribly interested in a lot of legal details and running through the exact way something should be done. It's interested in outcomes. The conservatives on the court want certain outcomes. They clearly wanted a specific outcome in this case to let Republicans have a freer hand to gerrymander and not have these restrictions around race.

And so they got to where they wanted to go by going into stuff like you talked about the facts of the trial court as opposed to the law because they wanted to get to the outcome. So they got to the outcome they wanted, even if it was a really ugly way to get there.

Now, one last topic we wanted to cover for our weekly hits. We're going to have a full June primary preview with Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer next week. But there was one June 4th race that we wanted to highlight ahead of that, and that's New Jersey's 8th district where incumbent Democratic representative Rob Menendez is facing off against Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla.

Now, Bhalla is hoping that the ongoing trial against Senator Bob Menendez is going to drag down his son. Bhalla has said that voters should fire the "entitled son of corrupt Bob Goldbars Menendez." In response to that, the younger Menendez ran an ad saying, "My opponent wants to run against my father because he is scared to run against me. That's on him." So there's a lot of back and forth about, are you running against Bob Menendez? Are you running against Robert Menendez?

Of course, so Rob Menendez became a congressman, at least in part due to the fact that his father was Senator Bob Menendez. So now the fact that it's a downside is also going to affect him, in the way that it was an upside before. One other note is that there's a third candidate on the ballot, businessman Kyle Jasey. So conceivably, we could see one of these candidates win with less than 50% support, more likely Menendez who might be able to squeak through if some of the opposition votes are divided between the two candidates.

Nir: And also, of course, we have talked a lot on the show about New Jersey's county line where party-endorsed candidates would receive favorable placement on primary ballots. Of course, as “Downballot” listeners very well know, the county line is no more, as of Tuesday's primary, so that's going to affect Democratic primaries all up and down the ballot. And it's possible that it could have an impact here because Menendez ordinarily would've had that favorable placement.

In fact, he was on track. He got endorsed by all of the county Democratic parties in the 8th district, which is a deep blue district. So whoever wins the Democratic primary is definitely going to win in November. So it'll be a really, really interesting test.

The lawsuit to bring an end to the line was chiefly brought by Andy Kim in the Senate race, but of course, he no longer has any top-tier opponents. So it'll be really interesting if the major test case for it against an incumbent winds up happening in the district held by the son of the guy that Kim was looking to boot from Congress.

Beard: And if you remember, for everyone outside of New Jersey who maybe isn't super familiar with how the line worked or how it looked, Menendez would've been in this grouping with Joe Biden, with Andy Kim, with all these other incumbent Democrats in this line that the county party endorses and then Bhalla would've been in a different section without any of those fellow incumbents or very well-known names now like Andy Kim. So the fact that the line isn't there and they're just both listed for an office is a huge, huge difference, and we'll see if that knocks Menendez off come next week.

Nir: There are several other primaries in New Jersey taking place on Tuesday night, including in the race to succeed Andy Kim in the 3rd district. There are also primaries in other states including Montana, where there is an open seat, thanks to Matt Rosendale finally deciding to completely bail on Congress altogether. We will be recapping those next week, and as David Beard said, we will also be previewing the many, many additional primaries coming up in the rest of June with Jeff Singer next week.

That does it for our weekly hits. Coming up after the break, we are taking a deep dive far down the ballot into some of our favorite sorts of races. We are talking about attorneys general and state Supreme Courts who know that these are favorite topics here at “The Downballot.” But they don't get enough recognition, so we are going to be rounding up all of the top races that should be on your radar this year.

Nir: Today for our deep dive on “The Downballot,” we are talking about statewide elections below the top of the ticket that don't get as much attention as they deserve. Specifically, we are going to round up the top elections in 2024 for Attorneys General and state Supreme Court. Now, you might notice there's one category missing that we often talk a lot about at Daily Kos Elections, and that is Secretaries of State.

As you know, most elections for state office take place in midterm years. There are far fewer that happen simultaneously with presidential elections. And while there are a few Secretary of State elections on the ballot this year, none of them look like they're going to be particularly competitive in November. However, for Attorneys General, we have two major open seats in two super important swing states. So we are going to dive right in to talking about Pennsylvania.

Now in Pennsylvania, we have an open seat because of the Democratic governor — that's Josh Shapiro, who of course won in 2022 in huge fashion over far-right Republican lunatic Doug Mastriano. When he left the post of Attorney General to become governor, he appointed one of his deputies, Michelle Henry, in his place. But Henry declined to run for a full term, so that created the open seat that we have now, and Pennsylvania had primaries last month.

The Democrat who emerged as his party's nominee is a former statewide elected official, Eugene DePasquale. He used to be the state auditor. He also ran an expensive race for the US House after being termed out after two terms in the auditor's role.

Beard: Now the Republican nominee is York County District Attorney Dave Sunday. York County is a midsize county, sort of west of the main Philadelphia suburban counties, but certainly a little bit of a voter base. Now, Democrats are on a three-cycle winning streak for this office. They won it in 2012, 2016, even though Trump won the state, and then again in 2020, so they'll be looking to win it for a fourth straight term.

Nir: This is one of the most high-profile AG positions in the country, in part because of Pennsylvania's large size and also simply because Pennsylvania is a swing state. Shapiro really surged in prominence following the November 2020 elections when Donald Trump unleashed his Kraken trying to overturn the outcome of the election, and Shapiro heavily defended the state's elections in court.

He had also tangled a lot with Trump in the years before, but he got to stand up as a defender of democracy and also just made Donald Trump lose many, many times in court. He totally humiliated him. So it's very possible that the current incumbent, who is Henry, who is not seeking another term might play a similar role after this November, but Democrats very, very badly want to keep this job so that Republicans can't pull this kind of crap and potentially find an ally in the Attorney General's office after future elections.

Beard: And DePasquale is a good candidate. Obviously, he has won statewide before. That's what you want for an office like that. So I think that probably gives him a bit of a leg up, but this will certainly be very, very competitive into November.

Now, the other big Attorney General race that we're going to be focused on is in North Carolina. It's another open seat. Josh Stein is running for governor. That's the Democratic incumbent. So that leaves two Representatives who are going to be duking it out for the office. For the Democrats, that’s Representative Jeff Jackson, and for the Republicans, Representative Dan Bishop. Now Jackson is a freshman from the Charlotte area who won under the fair maps that North Carolina briefly had in 2022. He has since been redistricted out of a seat that he couldn’t ever possibly win, and so he decided to instead run for Attorney General, a statewide office that can't be gerrymandered.

Meanwhile, Dan Bishop is a far-right House Freedom Caucus member, really beloved by the Trumpist wing of the party. He'll be the standard bearer for all of that craziness. It should certainly be a very competitive race. Democrats have held the seat for quite a while. Stein, of course, has won it twice, and before that, Roy Cooper was the Attorney General for a number of years. So there's been a long streak of Democratic Attorneys General, which we'll be hoping to of course see continue with Jackson in November.

Nir: I’ve got to say, I'm a huge Jeff Jackson fan on a personal basis. He puts out this phenomenal newsletter totally for free. It's extremely well written and it gives insight both into his life as a member of Congress on the Hill and just the kind of day-to-day stuff that he deals with and sees, often stuff that doesn't make it into media reports. And he really shares things in a very clear and understandable way.

And then he also devotes some coverage to his race for Attorney General. So if you like our style of coverage on “The Downballot” of elections, you'd love his newsletter. And if you like congressional goings-on, you'd also love his newsletter. Definitely recommend it.

On a less fanboyish level, I will say that I think it's very possible that Republicans could live to regret redistricting Jackson out of his seat. I'm sure Democrats would have found a strong nominee regardless, but Jackson really cleared the field. He did have some opponents in the primary. They really did not run impressive campaigns.

And Bishop, meanwhile, isn't just a far-right nut job. He's the guy... Beard, I know I hardly need to remind you of this… who was the architect of North Carolina's infamous bathroom bill, the anti-trans "bathroom bill" that led to Governor Pat McCrory losing in 2016 to Roy Cooper, who of course as you noted was Stein's predecessor.

So I wonder if that kind of extremism might come back to haunt him. Also, we haven't yet really mentioned abortion, but you know abortion is going to play a big role, especially in North Carolina where Republicans did pass an abortion ban, thanks to that turncoat Democrat in the legislature. And Bishop, of course, is as crazy and extreme as they come on abortion.

Beard: Yeah, it seems like every Attorney General or state Supreme Court race that's in a red or purple state, we have a big like... And also abortion is a huge factor in this race for, of course, understandable reasons because for anybody who lives in North Carolina or Arizona that we're going to talk about, or Montana, which we're going to talk about, this is the main way to affect abortion rights in the state is some of these races. So that's of course going to come up again and again.

It is funny to think about how Bishop led to McCrory's defeat in 2016. He could very well lead to Jackson now becoming Attorney General if he loses that race. So maybe in a weird way, he is a bad luck charm for Republicans when you go to these competitive races and hopefully, it'll work out well for Jeff Jackson.

Nir: I should also mention that DePasquale in Pennsylvania has been emphasizing abortion as well. Their abortion rights are under much less threat. You have a Democratic governor, of course, who we just mentioned, Shapiro, who is not up for reelection until 2026. The statehouse is currently under Democratic control and also the state Supreme Court has a wide democratic majority.

But it's Pennsylvania. Republicans used to hold the governorship not all that long ago. They had a hammerlock in the legislature for years and years. They controlled the state Supreme Court, so you could imagine things going sideways for abortion rights in Pennsylvania. So yeah, that is going to be a top topic in every race, whether it's a slightly blue-leaning state or a straight-up swing state or a red-leaning state, it's going to be everywhere.

Beard: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's also a good reason to transition to the other races that we wanted to talk about, which is state Supreme Court races. And we're going to stay in North Carolina where there's a very important state Supreme Court race. Allison Riggs is an appointed justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court, appointed by Governor Cooper. She's going to be running for a full term. Her Republican opponent is Court of Appeals judge Jefferson Griffin, which I think is the most Republican judge name I've ever heard. Maybe for the South, I guess that's it. But Jefferson Griffin is just such a Republican judge name. It's wild.

So he's the GOP candidate, with Democrats holding the seat. If Riggs wins, that would maintain a five to two minority on the court, but it would keep the Democrats at their current two seats, and then obviously open up for gains when the Republican seats come up in future years. So it's very, very important to hold its seat not to go down to six to one.

Nir: Yeah, we have talked before on the show about the path back for Democrats in North Carolina. With the current far-right Supreme Court green-lighting gerrymandering, and with Republicans holding a hammerlock on the legislature, you got to win the governorship and you got to try to chart a path back to the majority on the state Supreme Court.

We talked about a five-year plan — not that kind of five-year plan, the good kind. Democrats could conceivably win a majority by 2028. We laid out this plan last year in case you're doing the math. So yeah, that was five years ahead. That is of the utmost importance because retaking that Supreme Court would allow the court to once again outlaw gerrymandering and create a fair and level playing field for the state legislature.

It starts by keeping this seat getting back to a majority on the state Supreme Court, which Democrats had as recently as 2022 is really only going to be possible if we can keep it at five-two and not go down to six-one.

Beard: Now, just before we leave North Carolina, I did want to flag there are a ton of competitive downballot statewide races here, not just the Attorney General race and the state Supreme Court race. We're not going to cover them right now, but there's a competitive Lieutenant Governor race. There's a competitive Commissioner of Labor race; there's a competitive Superintendent of Public Instruction race. North Carolina has a lot of statewide offices and a lot of them are very competitive. So if you're in North Carolina, keep your eyes peeled on all of those.

Nir: Sticking with state Supreme Courts, we're going to run through several other states as well. We also mentioned on the show previously, Arizona, which has different sorts of elections. These are retention elections for two conservative justices on the state Supreme Court there. That just means voters get to vote either yes or no, keep this person on the court, or declare the seat vacant and let the governor, who is Democrat Katie Hobbs, appoint a replacement.

Now retention elections — these are almost always won by incumbents. It's very rare for anything else to happen. However, in Arizona just a couple of years ago, a few lower court judges lost retention elections. So I wouldn't want to rule out the possibility of either Clint Bolick or Kathryn Hackett King losing in November, specifically because they were part of the court majority that upheld Arizona's Civil War era ban on almost all abortions.

Now, lawmakers, despite the fact that the legislature is run by Republicans, actually quickly convened and voted to repeal that ban. But I think that anger isn't going to fade over this issue. Abortion is going to remain the top issue in the state, especially because there's also going to be a ballot measure for an amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. There was another abortion ban, less restrictive, but that the GOP passed in more recent years that would conceivably come back into play if this amendment doesn't pass in November.

And Beard, I was reading an article that came out just on Wednesday about abortion and state Supreme Courts in the Los Angeles Times by Faith Pinho. There was a quote that I thought was interesting from a professor at UNLV, Rebecca Gill, who said, "Usually, I would never put a dime on betting in favor of someone losing a retention election," speaking of Arizona. "But in this one, I'm actually kind of thinking it's a little bit more plausible."

Well, Professor Gill, I totally agree with you. I really do think it's plausible. Progressives are starting to mobilize to focus on these races. I think one of the difficulties is that you do have so much going on in Arizona. You have the presidency, for which Arizona is now a swing state. You have the Senate race, Ruben Gallego versus Kari Lake. You have the fights over the state legislature where Republicans hold just a tiny advantage in both chambers.

So the real fight I think will be for attention, but I don't think it'll cost that much money to run good campaigns because it's not like you have to fund a whole candidate and their staff and find someone to run. All you have to do is run negative ads, say vote no on retention, and end of story.

Beard: Yeah, I think there are two main things that you need for a retention election to potentially result in not retaining that person who's in office. And that's one, you need an issue that people care enough about, and two, it is heard enough about that even voters who are not tuned into politics are aware of it and what happened.

And I think abortion is something that definitely meets that threshold. We saw in previous decades that same-sex marriage was something that sort of permeated enough through regular voters who don't pay attention to the day-to-day ins and outs of politics, that it became an issue in some retention elections in other states. So I think abortion definitely rises to that level.

And then you also need voters to be enough on the side against the judge in sufficient numbers to then obviously vote them down because you're always going to lose some really low-information voters who just don't know enough to do anything other than check retain because they're like, "I don't know, they're judges, they're in office, sure." They're always going to have some of those voters. And so you have to not just have 51% of voters who wouldn't like their ruling on abortion and would consider voting them down, you need a much larger percentage.

But I think both of those things are here. I think reproductive rights are popular enough in Arizona, and I think it's salient enough for Arizona voters that it's going to be a real possibility.

Nir: Now, one thing we need to mention about Arizona is that all seven justices were appointed by Republican governors. So it is a very conservative court; on that abortion ruling in the 1860s abortion ban case, two of these conservative justices actually voted against. But it would obviously be a while — even if Bolick and King were to lose in November — before Democrats could actually install a more progressive majority on that court.

But again like we were saying with North Carolina, you got to start somewhere, and this is the year to start.

Beard: Now moving to another state with some key state Supreme Court races, which is Michigan, where Democrats currently hold a four to three majority on the court. There are two seats up for election. Kyra Harris Bolden is a Democrat who was appointed to a seat by Governor Whitmer and she's running for the remainder of the term she was appointed to. There's another seat that's for a full term; it's held by a Republican. That Republican is retiring, not running for re-election, so it's an open seat.

We have a Democratic candidate already, that's Kimberly Thomas. The Republicans haven't chosen a nominee yet, so that's still to be determined. Obviously, if Democrats are able to pick up this seat, that would turn the court from a four-to-three Democratic majority to a five-to-two Democratic majority. It would certainly make the court a more stable Democratic majority. They could afford a loss of an individual justice on certain issues or if they were to lose a future race and still hopefully maintain that majority. So it's definitely important to get up to that five to two majority.

Nir: So a couple of things worth noting about Michigan that differ from the states we've mentioned previously, North Carolina elections, straight up partisan. You have D and R labels on the ballot. In retention elections in Arizona, there are no partisan labels at all. Michigan is a weird hybrid because parties nominate candidates, but then on the general election ballot, there are no party labels. But what there is, is a designation on the ballot of who the incumbents are.

We saw this exact same thing happen in Georgia just the other week when Democrat John Barrow lost that race. One huge disadvantage he had is that the conservative incumbent got listed as the incumbent on the ballot, and that's also going to be the case in Michigan. But that's why it's such a huge deal that this Republican justice, David Viviano, decided to retire because in this open seat race. Then it's simply a matter of educating voters about who the Democrat is and who the Republican is.

And Michigan, obviously it's a swing state but hopefully still a little bit blue-leaning, that ought to give Democrats a bit of an advantage in that race. Meanwhile, Kyra Harris Bolden, the Democratic incumbent, she will be identified as the incumbent. So hopefully, that gives Democrats the edge that they need in order to have a shot at moving the court to a five-two majority.

So we're going to move on to Montana. This is yet a different situation still. The way that states conduct Supreme Court elections tends to vary a lot from one another. Montana races are strictly nonpartisan, at least on a formal basis, and that's rather similar to what we saw in Wisconsin. But once again, like in Wisconsin, there are going to be some very clear ideological dividing lines. Now, unlike in Michigan where we can say very clearly the court is four to three Democratic, or in North Carolina, where we know it's five to two Republican, pinning down the ideology of the Montana Supreme Court is actually a bit more difficult.

There are seven members, and on the surface, there are three justices who are generally considered liberals, two who are considered conservatives, and two who have often been swing votes. However, two of the liberals including the Chief Justice are retiring, and that means that if conservatives prevail in both of those races, they will have a four-seat majority on the court.

But like I say, Montana's been a bit of an odd duck and it's not always been obvious how cases are going to divide along ideological lines. In particular, Montana has one of the strongest judicial precedents in favor of a right to an abortion. It's rooted in the state constitution's right to privacy, which has much stronger language than anything you're going to find in the federal constitution, for instance.

The Supreme Court has blocked a lot of GOP attempts to restrict abortion access based on its own precedent, and many of those cases have involved unanimous rulings. So even the conservatives have stuck with the majority to strike down GOP abortion restrictions. The question is would they continue to do so if they actually had four out-and-out conservatives on the court? Who's to say let's not find out?

There are actually primaries for both of these seats for the chief justice seat and the associate justice seat that are coming up on Tuesday. It's very clear who the progressive and the conservative candidates are. In the chief justice race, Democrats are uniting behind a former federal magistrate judge, Jerry Lynch. The GOP establishment meanwhile is backing Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson. He's the district attorney for that county.

In the other contest for Associate Justice, the two main candidates are both trial court judges. For Democrats, that's Judge Katherine Bidegaray. And for Republicans, it's Judge Dan Wilson. Again, these are officially nonpartisan races, but there is going to be a ton of money spent educating voters on exactly who stands where on the issues.

Beard: And one positive that might help these races a little bit is, of course, Jon Tester's race higher up the ticket. They're going to be driving Democratic turnout as much as possible. This won't be like your average red state where no one's campaigning because Republicans are going to win and you're fighting against that tide to try to win that race.

Every Democrat who lives in Montana is going to be pushed out to vote for Tester, and hopefully, they will know to vote for the more liberal candidates for these races. And hopefully, that will help, in addition to, of course, discussions of reproductive rights and other issues that Montanans generally support. Montana, of course, is not a deep red state on some issues the way that other states we think of are. It is certainly red, but it has some libertarian leanings and some more freedom-y leanings that could be helpful.

Now we want to wrap up with a couple of redder states. First off is Ohio where there are three seats up. Now we've got a strange situation here. There are three different races and there are three incumbent justices, but they're not each running in one race. We've got two incumbents running for the same seat. So the court is currently four to three Republican, and two of these seats are held by Democrats and one of the seats is held by a Republican. If the Democrats were to sweep all three seats, they would actually take a majority on the court.

In the first seat, we've got a Democratic incumbent, Michael Donnelly, who's running for reelection. He'll face a Republican; it’s pretty straightforward. In the second seat, we've got another Democratic incumbent, Melody Stewart, who will be facing off against Joseph Deters. Now, Deters is a GOP Supreme Court justice. He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor DeWine. But instead of running for his seat, which is that third seat, he's running for the second seat because the first two seats are for full terms.

So Stewart, the Democratic incumbent justice, and Deters, the Republican-appointed justice, are both running for that second seat so they can have a full term, which then leaves that third seat, which is now technically an open seat because there's no incumbent running for it. And that is just for a partial term. So for that third seat, it'll be between Democrat Lisa Forbes and Republican Dan Hawkins.

Nir: Beard, didn't we see something like this in North Carolina where we had two incumbent Supreme Court justices run against one another? I think Cheri Beasley, right? She lost reelection to a fellow incumbent a few years ago.

Beard: Yes, and that wasn't about full terms. That was about specifically the position of Chief Justice, which is a different position in North Carolina. You run specifically for Chief Justice. And I believe they have some additional authority around appointing judges to certain cases and such. So yes, he took on Beasley for the Chief Justice position and did defeat her by about 400 votes, very unfortunately.

Nir: Yeah, that's another thing to mention. We talked about with regard to Montana, the Chief Justice position being a separate election from Associate Justice. Of course, the chief does have certain rights and privileges, so those races take on even greater importance. But not every state Supreme Court elects Chief Justices specifically. Oftentimes, they are chosen by the members of the court, or there are other rules around who gets to be the Chief Justice based on seniority and other factors like that.

Beard, it's also interesting to me that you mentioned Tester. I am wondering if you might have a similar situation in Ohio with Sherrod Brown being on the ballot and obviously going to do everything he can to get every last Democrat and potentially Democratic-leaning voter out for him. And there's also likely to be a measure on the ballot to ban gerrymandering to finally put in place genuine independent redistricting in the state of Ohio. Of course, abortion was on the ballot last year. Hopefully, there's a whole bunch of good motivating reasons that would get softer partisans to actually want to show up and also vote for Democrats in the Supreme Court elections.

Finally, we want to briefly mention Texas. This is another state where Republicans are absolutely dominant. No Democrat has won a statewide election of any sort in Texas since 1994. Republicans have a nine-to-zero majority on the state Supreme Court. But there are three Republican Justices who are up for election this year. And once again, if they're going to lose, it's going to be because of abortion.

I'm sure all “Downballot” listeners remember the horrifying story of Kate Cox, who was the pregnant woman who said that her pregnancy was posing a serious threat to her health and possibly her life and sought an emergency abortion, which a lower court ruled that she could have and then the Texas Supreme Court told her no. They overturned that ruling and she had to leave the state to have a very, very difficult abortion. That issue, if the Democrats challenging these Republican incumbents can put that front and center, who knows? Maybe they can throw a scare into them.

Beard: Obviously, these are a ton of really important races, as we mentioned. Things like abortion and gerrymandering will be key issues that a lot of these races are going to be confronting. There are also a lot of other downballot statewide races that we're going to be focused on that will definitely hit in the months ahead as we get closer to November.

Nir: And just to note, these are by no means the only states holding Supreme Court elections this year. There are in fact a few dozen that will have races on the docket. There will be potentially competitive contests in other states as well, maybe in a place like Florida. There is also, believe it or not, a potentially competitive seat in Kentucky. So as these races continue to develop, we will of course revisit them, and we definitely plan to be talking about this subject much more for the rest of the year.

Beard: That's all from us this week. “The Downballot” comes out every Thursday, everywhere you listen to podcasts. You can reach out to us by emailing thedownballot@dailykos.com. If you haven't already, please subscribe to “The Downballot” and leave us a five-star rating and review. Thanks to our editor, Drew Roderick, and we'll be back next week with a new episode.

At Texas GOP convention, Republicans call for spiritual warfare

By Robert Downen, The Texas Tribune

From his booth in the exhibit hall of the Texas GOP’s 2024 convention, Steve Hotze saw an army of God assembled before him.

For four decades, Hotze, an indicted election fraud conspiracy theorist, has helmed hardline anti-abortion movements and virulently homophobic campaigns against LGBTQ+ rights, comparing gay people to Nazis and helping popularize the “groomer” slur that paints them as pedophiles. Once on the fringes, Hotze said Saturday that he was pleased by the party's growing embrace of his calls for spiritual warfare with “demonic, Satanic forces” on the left.

“People that aren’t in Christ have wicked, evil hearts,” he said. “We are in a battle, and you have to take a side.”

Those beliefs were common at the party’s three-day biennial convention last week, at which delegates adopted a series of new policies that would give the party unprecedented control over the electoral process and further infuse Christianity into public life.

Delegates approved rules that ban Republican candidates—as well as judges—who are censured by the party from appearing on primary ballots for two years, a move that would give a small group of Republicans the ability to block people from running for office, should it survive expected legal challenges. The party’s proposed platform also included planks that would effectively lock Democrats out of statewide office by requiring candidates to win a majority of Texas’ 254 counties, many of which are dark-red but sparsely populated, and called for laws requiring the Bible to be taught in public schools.

From left: Conservative activists Steven Hotze and Jared Woodfill enter the Senate gallery during the afternoon session of Day 1 of the Ken Paxton impeachment trial in the Texas Senate on Sept. 5, 2023.

Those moves, delegates and leaders agreed, were necessary amid what they say is an existential fight with a host of perceived enemies, be it liberals trying to indoctrinate their children through “gender ideology” and Critical Race Theory, or globalists waging a war on Christianity through migration.

Those fears were stoked by elected officials in almost every speech given over the week. “They want to take God out of the country, and they want the government to be God,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Thursday morning.

“Our battle is not against flesh and blood,” Sen. Angela Paxton, Republican of McKinney, said Friday. “It is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

”Look at what the Democrats have done,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said Saturday. “If you were actively trying to destroy America, what would you do differently?”

Controlling elections

The Texas GOP’s conventions have traditionally amplified the party’s most hardline activists and views. In 2022, for instance, delegates approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas secession; resistance to the “Great Reset,” a conspiracy theory that claims global elites are using environmental and social policies to enslave the world’s population; proclamations that homosexuality is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”; and a declaration that President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

The 2024 convention went a step further.

It was the first Texas GOP convention set against the backdrop of a civil war that was sparked by the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton and inflamed by scandals over white supremacists and antisemites working for the party’s top funders, West Texas oil billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. This year’s convention was also sparsely attended compared to past years, which some longtime party members said helped the Dunn and Wilks faction further consolidate their power and elect their candidate, Abraham George, for party chair.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Texas GOP Convention on Thursday, May 23, 2024 in San Antonio.

“What we're seeing right now is a shift toward more populism,” said Summer Wise, a former member of the party’s executive committee who has attended most conventions since 2008, including last week’s. “And the [party’s] infrastructure, leadership, decision-making process, power and influence are being controlled by a small group of people.”

That shift was most evident, she said, in a series of changes to the party’s rules that further empower its leaders to punish dissent. The party approved changes that would dramatically increase the consequences of censures—which were used most recently to punish House Speaker Dade Phelan for his role in impeaching Paxton, and against U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for voting for gun safety legislation.

Under the changes, any person who is censured by the party would be banned for two years from appearing on GOP primary ballots—including judges, who are elected in partisan races but expected to be politically neutral once on the bench. The party also voted to unilaterally close its primaries, bypassing the Legislature, in a move intended to keep Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.

“It’s pretty hypocritical,” Wise said of the changes, which legal experts and some party members expect will face legal challenges. “Republicans have always opposed activist judges, and this seems to be obligating judges to observe and prioritize party over law—which is straight-up judicial activism.”

The convention came amid a broader embrace of Christian nationalism on the right, which falsely claims that the United States’ founding was God-ordained and that its institutions and laws should reflect their conservative, Christian views. Experts have found strong correlations between Christian nationalist beliefs and opposition to migration, religious pluralism and the democratic process.

Wise said she has seen parts of the party similarly shift toward dogmatic political and religious views that have been used “to justify or rationalize corrupting the institution and stripping away its integrity, traditions, fundamental and established principles"—as if “‘God wants it, so we can rewrite the rules.’”

“Being Republican and being Christian have become the same thing,” she said. “If you're accused of being a (Republican in Name Only), you're essentially not as Christian as someone else. … God help you if you're Jewish.”

The “rabbit hole”

Bob Harvey is a proud member of the “Grumpy Old Men’s Club,” a group in Montgomery County that he said pushes back against Fox News and other outlets that he claims have been infiltrated by RINOs.

“People trust Fox News, and they need to get outside of that and find alternative news and like-minded people,” Harvey, 71, said on Friday, as he waited in a long line to meet Kyle Rittenhouse, who has ramped up his engagement in Texas politics since he was acquitted of homicide after fatally shooting two Black Lives Matter protesters.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, wave to attendees during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, May 23, 2024.

Rather, Harvey’s group recommends places such as the Gateway Pundit, Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News or the Epoch Times, a far-right website that also had a booth at this year’s convention and is directly linked to the Falun Gong, a hardline anti-communist group.

Such outlets, Harvey said, are crucial to getting people “further down the rabbit hole,” after which they can begin to connect the dots between the deep-state that has spent years attacking former President Donald Trump, and the agenda of the left to indoctrinate kids through the Boy Scouts of America, public schools, and the Democratic Party.

Harvey’s views were widely-held by his fellow delegates, many of whom were certain that broader transgender acceptance, Critical Race Theory, or “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives were parts of a sinister plot to destroy the country and take over its churches.

The culprits behind the ploy differed—Democrats, socialists, or “globalists,” to name a few. But their nefarious end goals loomed over the convention. Fearing a transgender takeover of the Republican Party of Texas, delegates pushed to explicitly stipulate that the party’s chair and vice chair must be “biological” men or women.

At events to recruit pastors and congregations to ramp up their political activism, elected leaders argued that churches were the only thing standing between evil and children. And the party’s proposed platform included planks that claim gender-transition care is child abuse, or urge new legislation in Texas that's "even more comprehensive" than Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits the teaching of sexual orientation or gender identity in public schools.

“Our next generation is being co-opted and indoctrinated where they should have been educated,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, Republican of Fort Worth, said at a Friday luncheon for pastors and churches. “We are in a spiritual battle. This isn't a political one.”

Kyle Rittenhouse shakes hands with conventioneers at a meet and greet during the Texas GOP convention on Thursday in San Antonio.

For at least a half-century, conservative Christian movements have been fueled by notions of a shadowy and coordinated conspiracy to destroy America, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on movements to put the Bible in public schools.

“It's like the boogeyman that won't go away, that gets summoned whenever a justification is needed for these types of agendas,” he said. “They say that somebody is threatening quintessential American freedoms, and that these threats are posed by some sort of global conspiracy—rather than just recognizing that we're a pluralistic democracy.”

In the 1950s, such claims were the driving force behind the emergence of groups such as the John Birch Society, a hardline anti-communist group whose early members included the fathers of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and Trump. After decades of dwindling influence, the society has seen a revival since Trump's 2016 election. And in the exhibit hall last week, so-called Birchers passed out literature and pamphlets that detailed the New World Order's secret plans for "world domination."

Steve Oglesby, field director for the Birch Society's North Texas chapter, said interest and membership in the group has been on the rise in recent years—particularly, as COVID-19 lockdowns and international climate change initiatives have spurred right-wing fears of an international cabal working against the United States.

"COVID really helped," he said, adding that the pandemic proved the existence of a global elite that has merely shifted its tactics since the 1950s. “It’s not just communism—it’s the people pulling the strings.”

Throughout the week, prominent Republicans invoked similar claims of a coordinated conspiracy against the United States. On Friday, Patrick argued that a decadeslong decline in American religion was part of a broader, “Marxist socialist left” agenda to “create chaos,” including through migration—despite studies showing that migrants are overwhelmingly Christian. Attorney General Ken Paxton echoed those claims in his own speech minutes later, saying migration was part of a plan to "steal another election."

“The Biden Administration wants the illegals here to vote,” he said.

As Paxton continued, Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest held hands and nodded their approval from the convention hall’s front row. Last year, the two were spotted outside of a Tarrant County office building where Nick Fuentes, a prominent white nationalist and Adolf Hitler fan, was hosted for nearly seven hours by Jonathan Stickland, then the leader of Dunn and Wilks' most powerful political action committee. They eventually lost their jobs after The Texas Tribune reported on their ties to Fuentes or white nationalist groups.

Ella Maulding and Konner Earnest watch as Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick speaks during the Republican Party of Texas convention in San Antonio on Thursday, the first day of the gathering.

Maulding has been particularly vocal about her support for Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy theory that claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to replace white people through migration, LGBTQ+ acceptance or interracial marriage. Once a fringe, white nationalist worldview, experts say that Great Replacement Theory has been increasingly mainstreamed as Republican leaders, including some who spoke last week, continue to claim that migration is part of a coordinated effort to aid Democrats. The theory has also been cited by numerous mass shooters, including the gunman who murdered 22 Hispanic people at an El Paso WalMart in 2019.

Five hours after Paxton and Patrick spoke, Maulding took to social media, posting a cartoon of a rabbi with the following text: “I make porn using your children and then make money distributing it under the banner of women’s rights while flooding your nation with demented lunatics who then rape your children.”

David Barton

Kason Huddleston has spent the last few years helping elect Christians and push back against what he believes is indoctrination of children in Rowlett, near Dallas. Far too often, he said, churches and pastors have become complacent, or have been scared away from political engagement by federal rules that prohibit churches from overt political activity.

Through trainings from groups like Christians Engaged, which advocates for church political activity and had a booth at this year’s convention, he said he has been able show more local Christians that they can be “a part of the solution” to intractable societal ills such as fatherlessness, crime or teen drug use. And while he thinks that some of his peers’ existential rhetoric can be overwrought, he agreed that there is an ongoing effort to “tear down the family unit” and shroud America’s true, Christian roots.

David Barton, left, of WallBuilders, at a Texas Eagle Forum reception at the Republican Party of Texas convention in Fort Worth on June 7, 2012.

“If you look at our government and our laws, all of it goes back to a Judeo-Christian basis,” he said. “Most people don’t know our true history because it’s slowly just been removed.”

He then asked: “Have you ever read David Barton?”

Since the late 1980s, Barton has barnstormed the state and country claiming that church-state separation is a “myth” meant to shroud America’s true founding as a Christian nation. Barton, a self-styled “amateur historian” who served as Texas GOP vice chair from 1997 to 2006, has been thoroughly debunked by an array of historians and scholars—many of them also conservative Christians.

Despite that, Barton’s views have become widespread among Republicans, including Patrick, Texas Supreme Court Justice John Devine and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson. And his influence over the party was clear at last week’s convention, where his group, WallBuilders, maintained a booth and delegates frequently cited him.

This year’s platform, the votes for which are expected to be released later this week, included planks that urged lawmakers and the State Board of Education to “require instruction on the Bible, servant leadership and Christian self-governance,” and supports the use of religious chaplains in schools—which was made legal under a law passed by the state Legislature last year.

Warren Throckmorton, a former Grove City College professor and prominent conservative, Christian critic of Barton, told the Tribune that the platform emblematized Barton’s growing influence, and his movement’s conflicting calls to preserve “religious liberty” while attempting to elevate their faith over others. The platform, he noted, simultaneously demands that students’ religious rights be protected, and for schools to be forced to teach the Bible.

“What about the other students who aren’t Christians and who don't believe in the Bible?” he said. “This is not religious liberty—it’s Christian dominance.”

As Zach Maxwell watched his fellow Republicans debate and vote last week, he said he was struck by the frequency and intensity with which Christianity was invoked. Maxwell previously served as chief of staff for former Rep. Mike Lang, then the leader of the ultraconservative Texas House Freedom Caucus, and he later worked for Empower Texans, a political group that was funded primarily by Dunn and Wilks.

He eventually became disillusioned with the party’s right wing, which he said has increasingly been driven by purity tests and opposition to religious or political diversity. This year’s convention, he said, was the culmination of those trends.

“God was not only used as a tool at this convention, but if you didn’t mention God in some way, fake or genuine, I did feel it was seen as distasteful,” he said. “There is a growing group of people who want to turn this nation into a straight-up theocracy. I believe they are doing it on the backs of people who are easily manipulated.”

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Tracking URL: https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/28/texas-gop-convention-elections-religion-delegates-platform/

11 times Donald Trump escaped justice—until now

Donald Trump is an enigma inside a riddle wrapped in 34 felony convictions, so it’s difficult to work out exactly where he goes from here. Conventional wisdom tells us the presidential campaign of a traitorous Putin sympathizer with this much legal baggage should officially be over, but this is Trump we’re talking about. The dude makes no apologies, has no shame, and continually respawns like a Grand Theft Auto character on a 24-hour killing rampage. 

And since the Republican Party is now basically the Jonestown Cult without the complimentary beverages, few GOP luminaries—including elected officials—will dare gainsay him.

Indeed, in the wake of his conviction, the party of law and order is queuing up to kiss his arse in perpetuity. And Trump himself is trying to divert attention from his own crimes by claiming that New York—and the nation as a whole—is hopelessly steeped in lawlessness because Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is only paying attention to this one case.

(Actually, the crime wave that started under Trump has now ebbed, and crime as a whole is close to a 50-year low—except among former U.S. presidents, of course. Among that admittedly narrow cohort, it’s up approximately 100%.)

Ah, but now is not the time to be complacent. Trump’s goose might look cooked, but one thing we’ve all learned over the years is that no matter how grotesque and silly he might appear at any given moment, he keeps coming back. He’s sort of like Jason Voorhees that way. Or Infrastructure Week.

Indeed, we’ve seen this movie many times, and it’s always set us up for sequels. Which means we’re not done fighting this cancer—not by a long shot.

Here are 11 times it looked like the Trump train had—or should have—officially derailed, only for some weak-kneed enabler (I’m looking at you, Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell) to lift it back onto the tracks and send it on its merry way. (Note: This list is not chronological, and it’s by no means exhaustive.)

1. The “Access Hollywood” tape

For many, this was the first time it looked as though Trump was cooked for sure. You can’t gleefully admit to serial sexual assault and still be elected president, right? Right?! It’s over! Let’s spike the ball right here—on the 10-yard line. What could possibly go wrong now?

Ah, memories. As we now recall, this seismic October surprise was ultimately papered over with the infamous Jim Comey letter, and Trump was elected our 45th—and first future felon—president. 

2. His campaign launch

Many forget that Trump’s campaign stumbled right out of the gate when he infamously declared that Mexican immigrants were criminals and rapists. The remarks were offensive (and false) enough to prompt NBC to sever ties with their star reality show host. Sadly, they weren’t quite offensive enough for Republican primary voters. Indeed, his remarks probably gave him an edge over his opponents, who were still relying on dog whistles as Trump was blithely blowing an airhorn.

3. Mocking a disabled reporter

There have been numerous instances involving Trump saying or doing something so beyond the pale, it felt like no one outside the fringiest of fringes could possibly still support him. And yet they did.

In November 2015, he cruelly mocked reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a condition that “can impact the function and range of motion of joints and can cause muscles to atrophy.” 

It was the ugliest thing most longtime political observers had ever seen, and yet it somehow failed to dissuade millions of Republican primary voters, who proudly nominated him as the Republican presidential candidate in July of the following year.

As long as I live, I will never understand how this alone wasn’t the end of it. pic.twitter.com/2MaLkBJ2Xo

— Damien Owens (@OwensDamien) November 15, 2016

4. Disrespecting Gold Star families and John McCain

In July 2015, Trump downplayed GOP Sen. John McCain’s military service, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Roughly a year later, he was disrespecting military families again (well, their lost loved ones were suckers and losers, right?). After Gold Star father Khizr Khan, whose son died in the line of duty in Iraq, spoke on Hillary Clinton’s behalf during the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Trump showed once again that he has the impulse control of an Arby’s grease fire.

In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump first claimed that, contrary to what Khan had said in his address, Trump actually had made sacrifices for his country by employing “thousands and thousands of people.”

Then he attacked Khan’s wife, Ghazala, saying, “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say. You tell me."

Oh, boy! He won’t survive this one! He’s like a shark with three barrels stuck in him! It’s over! Right?

5. The Mueller probe

We all thought this investigation would enfeeble Trump beyond hope of recovery, didn’t we? And then Bill Barr happened.

After months of waiting for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to drop his report on Russian election interference, we did get some real answers about the Trump campaign’s extensive contacts with the Russians involved in ratfucking the 2016 presidential election—and we also discovered that Trump had gone out of his way to obstruct the investigation. But Barr furiously spun the report’s findings, and nothing much came of them.

Trump continued to claim his innocence, even after a later Senate investigation definitively proved collusion between Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian intelligence officer. But by that time the public had largely moved on.

6. Charlottesville

We all recall when Trump both-sidesed Nazis. Nazis! How the fuck can you both-sides Nazis?!

Well, Trump can—and he did.

“You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides,” Trump said in the wake of the violent white-ring Charlottesville protests.

Seriously, dude, these are NAZIS! World War II—and pretty much every war movie filmed in its wake—made very clear that these are the bad guys.

Ah, but Trump loves to move the Overton window, and sadly, Nazi apologia was not a bridge too far for the GOP. 

7. Extorting Ukraine/first impeachment

You’d think withholding congressionally approved military funds meant to aid a democratic ally caught in a life-or-death struggle with a hostile authoritarian regime would be enough to get you impeached and convicted. Especially if you were doing it to compel that ally into digging up dirt on your likely future opponent.

You’d think.

Well, you’d be wrong, because … Republicans.

The Government Accountability Office determined that Trump had broken the law in withholding the funds, but that wasn’t nearly enough for the law-and-order party, which continued to pretend Trump was the most brutally persecuted—and unluckiest—human in history.

8. The Helsinki Surrender Summit

If you had any doubts about Trump’s lickspittle obeisance to Russian war criminal Vladimir Putin, they were put to rest after this sorry incident.

At a joint press conference with Putin in July 2018, Trump took the dictator’s word over the findings of our own intelligence agencies (who had determined Russia interfered in our elections).

“[Putin] just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be,” he said.

For once, Trump’s remarks actually seemed to scandalize stalwart Republicans. As The Associated Press wrote at the time, “The reaction back home was immediate and visceral, among fellow Republicans as well as usual Trump critics. ‘Shameful,’ ‘disgraceful,’ ‘weak,’ were a few of the comments. Makes the U.S. ‘look like a pushover,’ said GOP Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee.”

But, in the end, nothing really changed, as Republican spines dissolved faster than Lindsey Graham’s dignity at the Mar-a-Lago omelet bar

9. Jan. 6 and the Second Impeachment

Okay, he’s really done now, right? Right?

Violently attempting to overthrow the government is so egregious, even Graham dropped the ocher abomination. (Sadly, a little more than a month later, he came groveling back.)

Unfortunately, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, while clearly upset by Trump’s outrageous attack on democracy, refused to back his conviction, preserving his eligibility for future office. And before the month was over, Rep. Kevin McCarthy—apparently assuming Trump was the ticket to a long and rewarding speakership—helped rehabilitate his image among the “fuck your feelings and our 245-year-old democracy crowd” by hurrying to Mar-a-Lago to sample every square inch of Trump boots.

Thanks, guys!

10. The E. Jean Carroll judgment

Yeah, Trump was found civilly liable for lying about sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll in a department store. And, sure, he’s being forced to cough up $83 million. What of it?

Trump assured us Carroll wasn’t his type, and as we all know, Trump never lies. The fact that he later thought an old picture of her was a photo of his ex-wife Marla Maples is irrelevant, and definitely not something you should spend any time thinking about. Especially if you’re a Republican.

MAGA ‘24, baby!

11. Four—four!—felony cases ... and 4 million Republican yawns

It might seem like a cop-out to shove all of these into one catchall category, but when you really think about it, one felony charge should have been enough. And yet Republicans were able to ignore 91 with unprecedented aplomb.

Besides, two of those four felony cases were related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and install himself as a dictator, and Republicans had already established that they don’t care about such picayune matters.

Also, who doesn’t steal box loads of highly sensitive government secrets and randomly stack them in a heavily trafficked ballroom at a country club? That’s what the U.S. is all about. If they can go after Trump for that, they can go after you for doing the same thing. Think about it. It’s just common sense.

And if it’s this easy to ignore 91 felony charges, ignoring 34 convictions should be a doddle, now shouldn’t it? 

Of course, both President Joe Biden and Trump have stressed that the real verdict will come on Nov. 5. And they’re not wrong.

As we’ve clearly seen, we voters are the only ones who can put an end to this feral fuckery. No doubt y’all are happy about this verdict—I know I am—but there’s “happy” and then there’s “cosmically orgasmic.” We haven’t attained the latter yet—and we won’t until Trump is permanently consigned to the Walmart parking lot dumpster of history.

In other words, now is no time to get cocky. We need to run through the tape all the way through November—which means our work has just started.

We can all do something to help push Biden over the goal line, whether that involves donating or getting out the vote (phone-banking, door-knocking, postcard-writing, talking to friends, etc.). But the last thing we can be is complacent. We all remember how we felt when Clinton lost in 2016—it’s far too early to let our guard down. Too much is at stake.

So by all means, celebrate over the next couple of days, but then get back in the trenches and fight like your life depends on it. Because, you know, it very well might.

Daily Kos’ Postcards to Swing States campaign is back, and I just signed up to help. Please join me! Let’s do this, patriots! Democracy won’t defend itself.

Every day brings a new prognostication that is making President Joe Biden's campaign operatives worry or freak out. Is Donald Trump running away with the election? No. Not even close.

Morning Digest: A Republican worse than Boebert? Colorado Democrats think they’ve found one

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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CO-03: A Democratic group is now meddling in next month's GOP primary in the hopes of helping underfunded election denier Ron Hanks secure the nomination for Colorado's 3rd District―a maneuver that comes two years after Democrats spent more than $4 million on an unsuccessful attempt to get the very same Republican candidate through a primary for the U.S. Senate.

The Colorado Sun, which first reported the news, says that a super PAC called Rocky Mountain Values has spent at least $84,000 "and counting" to ostensibly attack Hanks, a former state representative.

"Ron Hanks and Donald Trump say they're going to secure the border," the ad's narrator begins before switching to clips of the candidate speaking. "We need to start rounding up people," says Hanks. "We have to stop the immigration." The narrator jumps back in to label Hanks "too conservative for Colorado," which is the very line that Democrats used in their ads in 2022. (The commercials even appear to share the same voice-over artist.)

This new spot doesn't mention any of Hanks' five intra-party rivals, who are all running in the June 25 primary to replace far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert, who is running for the more conservative 4th District rather than defending her western Colorado constituency.

However, the PAC has dipped into other mediums to undermine the best-financed contender, attorney Jeff Hurd, who had been waging a challenge against Boebert before she switched districts. One newspaper advertisement highlighted by the Sun questions whether Hurd voted for Trump in the last two presidential elections and featured a quote from the candidate, who told the Denver Post just last month, "I don't talk about who I vote for."

While both parties often form new super PACs to make it tougher to tell who's behind attempts to influence the other side's primary, Rocky Mountain Values has been active in state Democratic politics for years. Hanks, though, pleaded ignorance when the Sun asked him about the new Democratic effort to select him as their opponent.

"I don't know who they are," he said. "I don't know what their motives are."

The winner will take on 2022 Democratic nominee Adam Frisch, who lost to Boebert by a shockingly small 546-vote margin two years after Trump carried the 3rd District 53-45. While Boebert's singular flaws were a major contributor to that close outcome, Hanks might be an even weaker opponent.

Hanks, who badly lost a 2010 congressional bid—in California—to Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson, quickly established himself as a vocal Big Lie proponent and fierce opponent of reproductive rights after he was elected to the Colorado legislature a decade later. He also attended the Jan. 6 "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., and marched on the Capitol following Trump's speech, though he claims he did not enter the building. He's further made it clear he opposes abortion under any circumstances.

But what Hanks has not established himself as, though, is an adequate fundraiser: The former lawmaker ended March with a paltry $6,000 in the bank, a far cry from Hurd's $528,000 total and Frisch's eye-popping $5.8 million war chest.

Senate

MN-Sen: Banker Joe Fraser announced Thursday that he'd compete in the Aug. 13 Republican primary against Royce White, a former NBA player and far-right conspiracy theorist who unexpectedly won the state party convention almost two weeks ago. The eventual nominee will be in for an uphill battle against Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has won by at least a 20-point margin in all three of her statewide campaigns.

Minnesota candidates often pledge to, in local parlance, "abide" by the convention endorsement and end their campaigns if someone else wins, and Fraser himself made this promise before Royce's upset win. Fraser, though, said Thursday he was switching course because of Royce's "history of questionable conduct and serious charges leveled against him."

This includes a litany of ugly headlines that have followed Royce since he beat Fraser, such as a recent MSNBC piece titled, "Royce White's resurfaced remark about women being 'too mouthy' shows how MAGA recruits with misogyny.

NJ-Sen: Indicted Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez reportedly has collected the necessary 800 voter signatures ahead of Tuesday's deadline to appear on November's ballot as an independent, according to NBC. New Jersey holds its party primaries that same day, and Rep. Andy Kim is heavily favored to win the Democratic nomination for Menendez's Senate seat.

The incumbent's corruption trial is ongoing, and NBC writes that it's expected to continue into July or longer. Ostensibly continuing to run would enable the senator to keep raising donor money for his legal defense, and it's unclear if he would wage an actual campaign to try to beat Kim and the Republican nominee this fall. Any independent who makes the ballot has until Aug. 16 to withdraw their name.

PA-Sen: The New York Times' Michael Bender reports that a conservative super PAC called Keystone Renewal has reserved $30 million for TV ads to support Republican Dave McCormick against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, greatly expanding upon the $3.6 million it has already spent. Financial industry billionaires have heavily funded Keystone Renewal to back McCormick, who stepped down as CEO of a major hedge fund before his unsuccessful 2022 Senate campaign.

Bender furthermore reports that Democratic groups have already spent amply, including $8.5 million from Casey and $9 million from his supporters at the DSCC. Both parties have also made large reservations here for the fall.

Governors

ND-Gov, ND-AL: Donald Trump on Thursday endorsed Rep. Kelly Armstrong in the June 11 Republican primary for governor and Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak in the contest to replace Armstrong in North Dakota's lone House seat.

The few polls that have been released of the former contest have shown Armstrong decisively beating Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller, who is retiring Gov. Doug Burgum's preferred choice. Trump's decision to reject Miller comes at a time when Burgum is reportedly a top contender to become the GOP's vice presidential nominee. However, Trump did describe the governor as "my friend" in a separate endorsement message noting their mutual support for Fedorchak.

The House race, by contrast, lacked a clear frontrunner before Thursday. A pair of polls conducted earlier this month found a competitive race between the public service commissioner and former state Rep. Rick Becker, with former State Department official Alex Balazs and former Miss America Cara Mund further behind. However, many Republicans were undecided in those surveys, and Trump's endorsement could tip them toward Fedorchak.

WV-Gov: Retiring Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told the Charleston Gazette-Mail's Ty McClung on Wednesday that he would not make a late entry into the race for governor and that he's continuing to support Huntington Mayor Steve Williams, the Democratic nominee who faces a very uphill race against Republican state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in what has become a very red state.

Manchin's announcement follows a May 20 report from MetroNews' Brad McElhinny that Republicans seeking a moderate alternative to the far-right Morrisey were encouraging Manchin to join the race, something he didn't fully rule out later that same day. Manchin likely would be the strongest candidate for Democrats thanks to his record of winning several statewide races, but Williams would have to withdraw from the race by Aug. 13 for the senator to replace him as the Democratic nominee.

While Manchin's latest announcement appears definitive, he's spent the last year and a half keeping everyone in suspense about what he might run for in 2024. As recently as March, he didn't rule out seeking reelection as an independent despite announcing his retirement last fall, and that option remains open to him until Aug. 1. Consequently, we may not know for sure what he'll do until the deadlines pass.

House

LA-05: The Republican pollster Victory Insights, which tells Daily Kos Elections it has no client, shows Rep. Garret Graves leading fellow Republican incumbent Julia Letlow 38-35 in a hypothetical Nov. 5 all-party primary matchup for the safely red 5th District, with Green Party candidate Rivule Sykes at 6%. This is the first survey we've seen of a possible battle between Graves, whose 6th District became dark blue under the new map, and Letlow.

This potential contest is difficult to poll, though, and that's not only because Graves is keeping everyone guessing if he'll challenge Letlow, defend the 6th District, or do something else. No Democratic candidates appear to have announced bids yet for the 5th, but that may well change ahead of the July 19 filing deadline.

The presence of a Democratic rival could be a problem for Graves' hopes of making a December runoff, as this survey shows him outpacing Letlow 31-21 among Democrats even as she carries Republicans 55-35. (Unaffiliated voters go for Graves 40-22.) However, it's also possible that multiple Democrats will file and split the vote too much for any of them to deny either GOP representative a spot in a second round of voting.

MI-13: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on Thursday backed Detroit City Councilwoman Mary Waters' uphill campaign to deny renomination to freshman Rep. Shri Thanedar in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary. The Motor City is home to just over half of the residents of the safety blue 13th District, which also contains several nearby communities.

Duggan's move came about a week after Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett determined that former state Sen. Adam Hollier, who was Thanedar's leading intra-party rival, had failed to collect enough valid signatures to appear on the ballot. (Hollier’s appeal of that decision was rejected by state officials on Thursday.)

Waters used her Thursday event with Duggan to argue that majority-Black Detroit needs an African American member of Congress. (Hollier is also Black, while Thanedar is Indian American.) The last Black person to represent Detroit in the House was Brenda Lawrence, who left office at the start of last year.

Duggan, who is white, also echoed Waters' argument that Thanedar has done a poor job serving the city. "We need somebody in Congress who fights for us, and right now, I don't feel like we got any help from our congressperson," declared the mayor.

Waters ended March with just $5,000 in the bank, but she predicted Thursday that Duggan's endorsement will "supercharge" her bid. There's little question, however, that Thanedar, who had more than $5 million at his disposal thanks largely to self-funding, will continue to hold a huge financial edge.

Waters, who previously served in the state House from 2001 to 2006, also argued that her long history in Detroit politics will help her overcome Thanedar, who only moved to the city from Ann Arbor ahead of his successful 2020 bid for a local state House district.

That history, though, contains some incidents she won't be eager to see revisited. Waters pled guilty in 2010 to conspiring to bribe an elected official in nearby Southfield and to falsifying a tax return. However, she eventually returned to elected office when she won a citywide seat on the council in 2021.

VA-10: Former state Education Secretary Atif Qarni has publicized a poll from SurveyMonkey showing him in a close third ahead of the June 18 primary to succeed his fellow Democrat, retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton.

Del. Dan Helmer edges out state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam 17-16, with Qarni and former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn at 12% and 9%, respectively. A 26% plurality is undecided, while the balance is split between eight other candidates.

This is the first poll we've seen of this contest in over two months. Qarni's campaign tells Daily Kos Elections that this survey sampled 792 likely primary voters from May 17 through May 23.

Other Races

Miami-Dade, FL Elections Supervisor: Attorney Megan Pearl ended her campaign to become the top elections administrator for Florida's most populous county a month after Donald Trump endorsed her opponent, state Rep. Alina Garcia, in the Aug. 20 GOP primary.

Four Democrats are running including attorney J.C. Planas, who served in the state House as a Republican from 2002 to 2010, and political consultant Willis Howard.

Poll Pile

The Cook Political Report has released more polls jointly conducted by the GOP firm Benenson Strategy Group and the Democratic pollster GS Strategy Group that also include Senate matchups:

  • AZ-Sen: Ruben Gallego (D): 46, Kari Lake (R): 41 (45-44 Trump in two-way, 41-37 Trump with third-party candidates)
  • PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc): 49, Dave McCormick (R): 41 (48-45 Trump in two-way, 43-40 Trump with third-party candidates)
  • WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 37 (45-45 presidential tie in two-way, 41-41 presidential tie with third-party candidates)

Cook also released polls of Michigan and Nevada, but these tested an "unnamed Republican challenger" against named Democratic foes.

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Morning Digest: A Supreme Court majority is on the line in Montana this fall

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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MT Supreme Court: Conservatives have a chance to take a majority on Montana's Supreme Court in November thanks to the retirements of two liberal justices. However, a high-profile battle looms as progressives seek to defend a court that has long stood as a defender of democracy and abortion rights.

The race to replace Mike McGrath as chief justice has drawn the most attention to date. Three candidates are running in Tuesday's officially nonpartisan primary, though each party has coalesced around a single choice. (The top two vote-getters will advance to a November faceoff.)

Democrats are united behind former federal Magistrate Judge Jerry Lynch while the Republican establishment is backing Broadwater County Attorney Cory Swanson. The third entrant, criminal defense attorney Doug Marshall, doesn't seem to be running a credible campaign (he's said he might vote for Swanson).

The contest to succeed Dirk Sandefur, an associate justice, is arrayed similarly. The two main candidates are both trial court judges: Judge Katherine Bidegaray, the consensus Democratic pick, serves five counties in the eastern part of the state, while Judge Dan Wilson, the top choice of Republicans, has jurisdiction in Flathead County in Montana's northwestern corner.

A former Republican state lawmaker, Jerry O'Neil, is also running, but he's currently challenging the state's eligibility rules because he's not a member of the bar.

The four top contenders have all banked similar sums, between about $80,000 and $100,000, as of the most recent fundraising reports that run through mid-May. (Marshall and O'Neil have reported raising almost nothing.) Those totals in part reflect Montana's relatively low donation caps, which top out at $790.

But outside spending is sure to dwarf whatever the candidates put in. In 2022, when just a single seat on the court was seriously contested, third parties on both sides combined to spend at least $3 million—a huge sum given the state's small population—and very likely more. (The Montana Free Press said that figure was "almost certainly an undercount" due to errors in campaign finance filings.)

In that race, Justice Ingrid Gustafson won reelection to an eight-year term by defeating conservative James Brown 54-46. That victory preserved the ideological balance on the court, which has generally been described as including three liberals, two conservatives, and two swing justices, including Gustafson.

Those two swing votes have played a crucial role in recent years, often joined with the liberal bloc. Most notably, in a 5-2 decision issued in 2022, the court barred Republican lawmakers from proceeding with a ballot measure that would have let them gerrymander the court itself.

The court has been more united on abortion rights, which are protected under a 1999 precedent known as the Armstrong decision. Two years ago, the justices unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that temporarily blocked a trio of anti-abortion bills passed by GOP lawmakers. And earlier this year, on a 6-1 vote, the court gave the green light to a ballot initiative that would enshrine the right to an abortion into the state constitution.

But a court with four conservatives could feel emboldened to revisit Armstrong, which is a major reason why reproductive rights advocates are pushing forward with their amendment.

The issue is also certain to be a focus in the races for both Supreme Court seats. Both Lynch and Bidegaray have spoken in favor of abortion rights, albeit less explicitly than some liberal judicial candidates in other states have.

At a campaign event last year, Lynch said that Montanans deserved to be "[f]ree from government interference, especially when it comes to reproductive rights." Bidegaray has been less direct, telling ABC News in March that she's running "to protect our democratic principles, which include the separation of powers and the unique rights provided by the 1972 Montana Constitution, including women's rights."

The leading conservatives, however, have sought to avoid the issue altogether. Wilson declined to comment to ABC, while Swanson demurred. "I don't believe it would be appropriate to discuss potential outcomes of future cases," he said.

The Downballot

It's right there in the name of the show, so yeah, of course we're gonna talk about downballot races on this week's episode of "The Downballot"! Specifically, we drill down into the top contests for attorney general and state supreme court taking place all across the country this year. Democrats and liberals are playing defense in Montana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, but they have the chance to make gains in many states, including Michigan, Arizona, Ohio, and even Texas.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday's runoffs in the Lone Star State, where a GOP congressman barely hung on against an odious "gunfluencer." They also dissect a new Supreme Court ruling out of South Carolina that all but scraps a key weapon Black voters have used to attack gerrymandering. And they preview New Jersey's first primaries in a post-"county line" world.

Subscribe to "The Downballot" wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode. You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by Thursday afternoon. New episodes come out every Thursday morning!

Senate

AZ-Sen: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus' Bold PAC announced this week that it has reserved $1.1 million in TV, radio, and digital advertising for September to aid Democrat Ruben Gallego. "The statewide investment represents the first Spanish language reservations in the general election in this race and is the largest single independent expenditure in BOLD PAC’s 23 year history," the group said.

WI-Sen: A Senate Majority PAC affiliate has debuted a TV ad that attacks Republican Eric Hovde as a rich CEO whose bank "makes millions at seniors' expense" and "owns a nursing home being sued for elder abuse and wrongful death," citing a story from last month that the New York Times had first reported.

The commercial then plays a clip from a right-wing talk show appearance earlier in April where Hovde told the host that "almost nobody in a nursing home is in a point to vote" and insinuated without evidence that there was widespread voter fraud at Wisconsin nursing homes in the 2020 election.

Hovde's campaign has also unveiled new ads, with one spot covering generic far-right themes and cultural grievances. His second ad highlights his upbringing and family ancestry in Wisconsin to hit back against Democratic claims that he has mostly lived out-of-state for decades and spent most of his time in California before joining the race.

However, Hovde doesn't actually rebut those claims. After noting he graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1986, he only says he's had a business in the Madison area "for over 20 years" and his family currently lives there.

House

MI-08, DCCC: The DCCC announced Wednesday that it was adding Michigan state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet to its Red to Blue program for top candidates even though, unlike the other four new inductees, she still has a contested primary to get through.

McDonald Rivet's main opponent in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary for the open and swingy 8th District is businessman Matt Collier, a former Flint mayor and Army veteran who has VoteVets' support. State Board of Education President Pamela Pugh is also running to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee, but she's struggled to raise money.

But while this is the first time that national Democratic leaders have publicly taken sides in the primary for this seat, which is based in the Flint and Tri-Cities areas, there were already indications that they wanted McDonald Rivet as their nominee. In its January article covering her entry into the race, the Detroit News wrote that party strategists viewed the state senator as a top recruit" they'd hoped to land.

Last year, Democratic consultant Adrian Hemond described her to the Daily Beast as the type of "solidly center-left Democrat" who can "play nice" with the district's large Catholic electorate, adding, "In terms of people who have a track record of winning tough elections in this area, Kristen McDonald Rivet is probably top of the list." McDonald Rivet since then has earned endorsements from EMILYs List and powerful labor organizations like the United Auto Workers and the state AFL-CIO.

The DCCC rarely adds candidates to Red to Blue unless they've already won their primary or it's clear that they'll have no trouble doing so, and that's the case for the other four new names on the list. The committee is backing former U.S. Department of Justice official Shomari Figures, who secured the nomination in April for Alabama's revamped 2nd District.

Also in the program are a pair of Democratic nominees who are challenging Republican incumbents in Pennsylvania: retired Army pilot Ashley Ehasz, who is taking on Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in the 1st District, and former TV news anchor Janelle Stelson, who is going up against far-right incumbent Scott Perry in the 10th.

The final new name belongs to Wisconsin Democrat Peter Barca, who is trying to beat GOP Rep. Bryan Steil and reclaim the seat he last held three decades ago. Candidate filing doesn't close in the Badger State until June 3, but there's no indication that any other serious Democrats are interested in campaigning for the 1st District.

The only one of those seats with a contested GOP primary is also Michigan's 8th District, and the Republican nomination contest has already gotten nasty with more than two months to go.

Retired Dow Chemical Company executive Mary Draves on Tuesday began running ads attacking her main intra-party rival, 2022 nominee Paul Junge, about two weeks after he started airing commercials against her. Draves' narrator says that, while Junge publicly says he supports American jobs, he really "invested his inherited trust fund in, you guessed it, China. Not one dollar invested in Michigan jobs." The rest of the spot touts Draves as a loyal Donald Trump ally with a history of creating local jobs.

Junge has been promoting a very different narrative about Draves with advertising portraying her as a phony conservative who served on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's "climate change council to push her green agenda."

Draves was the subject of an unwelcome headline later in the month when the Detroit News reported both that she'd donated to Democratic Sen. Gary Peters' 2020 reelection committee and that she'd contributed last October to McDonald Rivet's own political action committee.

Draves defended herself by arguing that 99% of the political donations she's made in the last 18 years went to help conservatives and that she shouldn't be admonished for these two outliers. "I made a symbolic contribution to Peters as he was supportive of our work at Dow," she said in a statement, adding, "A friend of mine was hosting an event for Rivet's state Legislature leadership PAC and had asked me to buy a ticket, so I did but did not attend."

Republican leaders may be content if primary voters accept this argument so they can avoid having Junge as their standard bearer again. The 2022 nominee lost to Kildee by an unexpectedly wide 53-43 margin two years after Joe Biden carried the 8th District by a small 50-48 spread, and Democrats would likely once again hammer Junge over his weak ties to the region. Unlike the DCCC, however, national GOP leaders have yet to take sides in their nomination contest.

MI-13: Former state Sen. Adam Hollier announced Wednesday that he had filed an appeal with Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson days after Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett determined that he'd failed to collect enough valid signatures to appear on the August Democratic primary ballot.

The Detroit News says it's not clear if the state Bureau of Elections will take up this matter before the Board of State Canvassers meets Friday to address the fate of other candidates who have been disqualified from the ballot. Hollier is Rep. Shri Thanedar's most serious intra-party opponent.

MO-01: AIPAC, the hawkish pro-Israel group, has launched its first TV ad to support St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell ahead of his Aug. 6 Democratic primary against Rep. Cori Bush. The commercial promotes Bell as a criminal justice reformer but does not mention Bush. AdImpact reports AIPAC has reserved at least $344,000 via its United Democracy Project super PAC.

NY-01: Former CNN anchor John Avlon has publicized endorsements from three members of New York's Democratic House delegation: Rep. Tom Suozzi, who represents a neighboring seat on Long Island, and New York City-based Reps. Dan Goldman and Greg Meeks. Avlon faces Nancy Goroff, who was the 2020 Democratic nominee for a previous version of the 1st District, in the June 25 primary to take on freshman GOP Rep. Nick LaLota.

NY-16: AIPAC's United Democracy Project has now spent roughly $8 million to support Westchester County Executive George Latimer's primary challenge against Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman, according to AdImpact data relayed by Politico's Emily Ngo. By contrast, Bowman's campaign has spent just $715,000 with just a month until the June 25 primary.

VA-07: Former National Security Council adviser Eugene Vindman has released an internal from Global Strategy Group that shows him decisively beating Prince William County Supervisor Andrea Bailey 43-10 in the June 18 Democratic primary for the open 7th District; another 32% are undecided, while the balance is split between three other candidates.

This is the first poll we've seen of the contest to succeed Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who is giving up this seat to concentrate on her 2025 run for governor. Vindman massively outraised the rest of the field through the end of March, and almost all of the outside spending on the Democratic side has been to support him.

WA-06: The Washington Public Employees Association this week endorsed state Sen. Emily Randall over the other leading Democrat, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz, and its leaders made sure to highlight that it represents Franz's subordinates in the Department of Natural Resources.

The Washington Observer reported earlier this month that DNR staffers successfully urged another group, the Washington State Labor Council, to back Randall by citing "issues of worker safety and low morale" in their workplace. A third labor organization that represents DNR personnel, the Washington Federation of State Employees, also endorsed the state senator last month ahead of the Aug. 6 top-two primary.

Attorneys General

NC-AG, NC Supreme Court, NC Superintendent: The progressive group Carolina Forward has publicized the downballot portion of a mid-May poll it commissioned from Change Research, which finds narrow leads for Democratic candidates while many voters remain undecided.

In the race to succeed Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Stein as attorney general, Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson posts a 43-40 edge over Republican colleague Dan Bishop. For the state Supreme Court, appointed Democratic Justice Allison Riggs is ahead 41-40 over Republican Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals.

For education superintendent, Democrat Moe Green is up by 42-39 over Republican Michele Morrow, a far-right conspiracy theorist who won her primary in an upset over GOP incumbent Catherine Truitt.

Carolina Forward had previously released the poll's results for the top of the ticket, where Trump led 45-43 in a two-way matchup and 41-38 in a three-way race with independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. taking 11%. Stein held a 44-43 edge over far-right Republican Mark Robinson for governor.

Ballot Measures

MO Ballot: Republican Gov. Mike Parson on Tuesday set Aug. 6 as the date for a re-do of a 2022 state constitutional amendment that empowered the state legislature to require Kansas City to spend at least 25% of its general revenue on its police. Parson's move comes even though the state Supreme Court explicitly ordered this amendment appear before voters on Nov. 5 rather than on the summer primary ballot.

Statewide voters last cycle approved Amendment 4 by 63-37 even though it only impacts Kansas City, which is the only major city in America that doesn't have control over its own police force. Last month, though, the state's highest court ruled that a new vote was required because election officials had included a misleading fiscal summary that said the amendment "would have no fiscal impact when the fiscal note identified a sizeable one."

Legislatures

TX State House: Six state House Republicans lost their runoffs Tuesday even as Speaker Dade Phelan won renomination in an upset, and GOP Gov. Greg Abbott was quick to insist that he "now has enough votes" to pass his stalled plan to use taxpayer money to pay for private schools.

Abbott didn't bother to acknowledge that there are general elections in November, and the Texas Tribune's Jasper Scherer noted that Democrats are hoping to flip at least one of the seats the governor is already counting as a pickup for his cause.

That constituency is the 121st District in San Antonio, where Marc LaHood defeated Rep. Steve Allison in the March GOP primary. Democrat Laurel Jordan Swift will face LaHood in a district that, according to VEST data from Dave's Redistricting App, favored Donald Trump by a small 50-48 spread in 2020.

Ultimately, 15 Republican representatives lost renomination this year, though Abbott wasn't happy to see them all go. Attorney General Ken Paxton also used this year's primaries and runoffs to punish members who voted to impeach him for corruption last year, and he was sometimes on the opposite side of Abbott in key races.

One member who escaped Paxton's wrath, though, was Phelan, who narrowly defeated former Orange County Republican Party chair David Covey 50.7-49.3 in a contest where Abbott didn't take sides. (The only other sitting GOP representative to get forced into a runoff but survive was Gary VanDeaver, who beat an Abbott-backed foe.)

The attorney general characteristically responded to the 366-vote loss for Covey, who also sported endorsements from Donald Trump and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, by accusing Phelan of having "blatantly stolen" the election by encouraging Democratic voters to back him. Texas, notes Axios' Asher Price, does not have party registration.

Paxton also called for Republican representatives, who are all but certain to maintain their hefty majority in the gerrymandered chamber, to end Phelan's speakership next year. Rep. Tom Oliverson, who avoided casting a vote in Paxton's impeachment, announced his own bid for speaker in March, and he responded to Phelan's victory on Wednesday by proclaiming, "Campaign For Speaker Begins In Ernest."

Prosecutors & Sheriffs

Hillsborough County, FL State Attorney: Former State Attorney Andrew Warren this week publicized endorsements from several Tampa-area Democrats including Rep. Kathy Castor, who represents about 40% of Hillsborough County, ahead of the Aug. 20 primary.

Warren is trying to regain his old office from Republican incumbent Suzy Lopez, whom Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed in 2022 after permanently suspending Warren. First, though, Warren needs to win the Democratic primary against attorney Elizabeth Martinez Strauss, who hails from a prominent local legal family.

Strauss has stated that she believes that Warren was unfairly removed for, among other things, refusing to prosecute people who obtain or provide abortions. However, she's also argued that Warren is "a risky candidate" because DeSantis could just suspend him all over again. "Voters should have a choice and they may want a state attorney who can hold the job for more than 24 hours," Strauss told Florida Politics last month.  

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