Morning Digest: Disgraced Republican who pushed aides to be surrogate mothers runs for his old seat

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

AZ-08: Former Republican Rep. Trent Franks stunned the Arizona political world Wednesday when he announced he'd run to regain the seat he resigned in 2017 following a shocking sexual harassment scandal in which he pushed a pair of aides to serve as surrogate mothers. Franks is campaigning to replace retiring Rep. Debbie Lesko, a fellow Republican who was elected to succeed him in a 2018 special election.

Franks first won a previous version of this conservative seat (then as now based in the western suburbs of Phoenix) in 2002, and he stood out as an ardent rightwinger even before he called President Barack Obama an "enemy of humanity" in 2009. He made his opposition to abortion rights one of his central causes: Franks would claim in 2010, "Half of all Black children are aborted," and insisted in 2013 that "the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low."

Early in the 2012 cycle, however, something mysteriously went awry. Franks had planned to seek a promotion to the Senate after fellow Republican Jon Kyl decided to retire, and his own consultant confirmed to reporter Dave Catanese the date and time of his April 2011 kickoff. But Franks shockingly pulled the plug without explanation just the day before that event, and we spent more than six years wondering why.

We unexpectedly got our answer in 2017, shortly after he said he'd resign. According to Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts, Franks' "after-hours activities caught up to him," with one unnamed operative claiming there was a "file" on Franks that was shared with him to deter him from running. Another said that Franks "wrote creepy text messages a decade ago" to another politico.

The congressman's sins soon became public as the emerging #MeTooMovement unearthed ugly stories about countless powerful men. Franks, the Associated Press reported, had pushed one aide to carry his child and had offered her $5 million to do so. A separate story from Politico said that the women in Franks' office thought their boss "was asking to have sexual relations with them" because they were unsure whether he was "asking about impregnating [them] through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization."

One staffer said that Franks "tried to persuade a female aide that they were in love by having her read an article that described how a person knows they're in love with someone." Another said that her access to the congressman was cut off after she rebuffed his advances.

But Franks, who now claims he left Congress "to spare those I love from heavily sensationalized attacks in that unique and difficult time," apparently sees a chance for redemption with Lesko's departure. "Now that my family has matured and circumstances have developed as they have, I hope I can move forward," he said in a statement announcing his bid.

Franks joins an August GOP primary that already featured a trio of extremists. One of them is Blake Masters, who ran arguably the worst Senate campaign of 2022 in a cycle chock-full of terrible Republican candidates. Another rival is Abe Hamadeh, who has refused to accept his narrow loss last year in the race for attorney general.

Also in the running is state Sen. Anthony Kern, who was part of a slate of fake Trump electors in 2020; Attorney General Kris Mayes, who beat Hamadeh, is currently investigating that scheme. Lesko's choice, state House Speaker Ben Toma, has not yet announced, though he recently filed paperwork with the state. He may stand out in this crowded field, as Roberts last week described him as a conservative who nonetheless is "not a creature of the MAGA movement."

Trump carried the 8th District 56-43, and it would be difficult for Democrats to beat even one of these unsavory characters. Still, as we've noted before, Lesko only won her initial 2018 special 52-48, and she didn't have anything like the baggage that at least Franks, Hamadeh, Kern, and Masters are all lugging.

The Downballot

Election Day is finally here! Joining us on "The Downballot" this week to preview all the key contests is Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer, who has the goods on races big and small. Singer kicks us off by getting us up to speed on the battles for governor in Kentucky and Mississippi, two conservative Southern states where it's Republicans who are acting worried. Then it's on to major fights in Pennsylvania, where a vacant state Supreme Court seat is in play, and Ohio, where an amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution is on the ballot.

Singer also highlights a pair of bellwether legislative districts in Virginia, where both chambers are up for grabs, and then it's on to some lesser-known—but still exceedingly important—races further down the ballot. Several are also taking place in swingy Pennsylvania, including a critical contest that will determine who controls election administration in a major county in the Philadelphia suburbs. Democrats will also be hoping for a bounce-back in the county executive's race in Long Island's Suffolk County, an area that swung hard to Republicans last year.

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

Senate

MI-Sen: It's a bit of a game of telephone, but Politico reports that two anonymous sources who attended a lunch for Senate Republicans on Tuesday say that Indiana Rep. Todd Young told his caucus that he had "heard" (in the site's phrasing) that former Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer would launch a Senate bid within two days. Both Young and Meijer wouldn't comment when Politico reached out to them, but Meijer has been publicly contemplating a campaign for the upper chamber all year.

Governors

MS-Gov: New disclosures for the month of October show Democrat Brandon Presley far outpacing Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on the financial front, with the challenger outraising the incumbent $3.4 million to $1.1 million ahead of next week's election.

For the entire campaign, Presley has brought in almost twice as much as Reeves, with a haul of $11.2 million versus the governor's $6.2 million take. Reeves does have an edge in cash remaining, as he's still sitting on $3 million, compared to $1.2 million for Presley. However, as Mississippi Today's Taylor Vance notes, $2 million of Reeves' stockpile comes from a "legacy" campaign account that's no longer permitted under state law.

A recent analysis from AdImpact found that Reeves has enjoyed a roughly $1 million edge in ad spending, shelling out $8.3 million on the airwaves to $7.3 million for his opponent. Those figures include reservations made as of last Thursday.

House

CO-04: Rep. Ken Buck said Wednesday that he wouldn't run for a sixth term, an unsurprising decision that followed Buck's surprising emergence as an outspoken critic of his own party.

The Colorado Republican told MSNBC that his decision stemmed from his disappointment "that the Republican Party continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen and rely on the Jan. 6 narrative and political prisoners from Jan. 6 and other things." Buck nonetheless voted to make election denier Mike Johnson House speaker last week, explaining his choice by saying, "I think people make mistakes and still could be really good speakers."

Buck, who remains a member of the Freedom Caucus, was a hard-right ally during most of his time in national politics, and hardcore conservatives are in a strong position to retain his seat. The 4th District, which includes dark-red eastern Colorado and GOP-leaning suburbs of Denver in Douglas County, supported Donald Trump 58-39.

State Rep. Richard Holtorf, who embodies the type of combative far-right politics that Buck was once known for, already had the congressman in his sights: He formed an exploratory committee in September after Buck spoke out against his party's drive to impeach Joe Biden. Other names, however, will likely surface for the June GOP primary now that Buck, who previously showed interest in leaving office to take an on-air cable news job, has announced he won't be on the ballot.

Buck was elected Weld County district attorney in 2004 and emerged on the national scene when he challenged Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in 2010, following Bennet's appointment by then-Gov. Bill Ritter. But Buck first had to get through a tough primary against former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, another extremely conservative politician. Both sides tried to argue that they were the true candidate of the burgeoning tea party movement, but it was the district attorney who proved more adept at consolidating support from anti-establishment figures.

Late in his battle with Norton, Buck made news when he remarked, "I don't wear high heels … I have cowboy boots, they have real bullshit on them," a line Norton argued was sexist.

"My opponent has said a number of times on the campaign trail that people should vote for her because she wears high heels, because she wears a skirt, because she's a woman," Buck said in his defense. "She ran a commercial that said Ken Buck should be man enough to do X, Y, and Z. ... I made a statement, it was a lighthearted statement that I'm man enough, I don't wear high heels and I have cowboy boots on." Buck won 52-48 four days after the NRSC quietly donated $42,000 to Norton.

Bennet, who had just triumphed in his own competitive primary against former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, wasted no time portraying the Republican nominee as too far to the right for what was then still a swing state.

Buck made the senator's task easier on a "Meet the Press" appearance late in the campaign when he said he stood by his 2005 declaration that he had refused to prosecute an alleged rape because "a jury could very well conclude that this is a case of buyer's remorse." He also argued that being gay was a choice. "I think birth has an influence over it," he said, "like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you have a choice."

Bennet prevailed 48-46 during an otherwise horrible year for his party. His fellow Republicans quickly cited him, along with Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and Nevada's Sharron Angle, as a cautionary example of what happens when the party chooses extremist nominees in tossup Senate races. (It's unclear, though, whether Norton, who had for instance blasted Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme," would have actually been a better choice.)

But unlike those fellow travelers, Buck remained in office, even winning another term as district attorney in 2012 before planning a 2014 campaign for Colorado's other Senate seat. Yet even though polls showed Democratic Sen. Mark Udall was vulnerable, Buck and the entire field struggled to raise money and gain traction. But an otherwise stagnant race was completely transformed in February of 2014 when the Denver Post broke the news that Rep. Cory Gardner would make a late bid.

Buck quickly announced that he'd switch course and seek instead to replace Gardner, who ended up endorsing the district attorney as his successor. The two denied that there was any pre-planned switcheroo, but Buck handily dispatched state Sen. Scott Renfroe 44-24 in the primary, and he went on to prevail easily in November. Gardner, meanwhile, accomplished what Buck could not four years earlier and managed to narrowly unseat Udall amid the GOP's second midterm wave election in a row.

Yet while Buck had indeed made it to Congress, he soon signaled he was unhappy in the House long before he ended up retiring. In the summer of 2017, he expressed interest in campaigning to succeed Attorney General Cynthia Coffman in the event that she were to run for governor, though he stayed put even after she launched what turned out to be a disastrous campaign. Buck was elected state party chair two years later, and while he said he'd remain in the House, Inside Elections' Nathan Gonzales reported that he'd told people he was considering retiring that cycle.

The congressman again sought reelection even as some party members groused about him trying to do both his jobs at once. Buck's tenure as party chair was defined by infighting amid Colorado's transformation into a reliably blue state. That shift culminated with Biden's double-digit win in 2020 as well as Gardner's decisive loss to former Gov. John Hickenlooper that same year.

Buck, who was the rare Freedom Caucus member to recognize Biden's win, initially showed some interest in another campaign against Bennet in 2022, but he ended up running for what would be his final term in the House.

MD-03: Democratic state Sen. Clarence Lam tells the Baltimore Sun that he's considering a bid for Maryland's 3rd Congressional District, which recently became open after Rep. John Sarbanes announced his retirement. Lam's legislative seat is located entirely within the House district he's eyeing, making up about 17% of it, according to calculations from Daily Kos Elections.

MT-02: State Auditor Troy Downing has kicked off his campaign for the GOP nomination in this safely red district in eastern Montana, though it's still unclear whether GOP Rep. Matt Rosendale will join the Senate race that he's been flirting with for months or if he'll run for a third House term here. Downing was first elected auditor in 2020 after taking third place for the GOP nomination for Senate in 2018, a primary that Rosendale won before he narrowly lost to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester that fall.

Downing said back in August when he set up an exploratory committee that he wouldn't challenge Rosendale if the incumbent runs again, but Rosendale keeps pushing back his timeline for announcing his decision on a Senate bid and recently said he may not decide until the March 11 filing deadline. Consequently, Downing and any other prospective GOP candidates might not have any idea whether they'll be running against the incumbent until it's too late to switch to another race if Rosendale seeks reelection.

 NY-03: Indicted Rep. George Santos remains in office after a majority of his colleagues voted against an expulsion resolution that needed the support of two-thirds of the chamber. The House voted 213-179 against expulsion on Wednesday evening, one day after the House Ethics Committee declared it would "announce its next course of action" against the Republican by Nov. 17.

A total of 31 Democrats joined 182 Republicans in voting "no," with Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin saying afterward, "Santos has not been criminally convicted yet of the offenses cited in the Resolution nor has he been found guilty of ethics offenses in the House internal process. This would be a terrible precedent to set, expelling people who have not been convicted of a crime and without internal due process." On the other side were 155 Democrats and 24 Republicans.

OR-03: Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal on Wednesday became the first major candidate to launch a bid to succeed retiring Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer in the safely blue 3rd District around Portland. Local law required Jayapal, who is the older sister of Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, to resign her post to run for Congress, which she did just before entering the race.

Both Jayapal siblings were born in India and emigrated as teenagers, though the congresswoman began her political career a few years earlier by winning a state Senate seat in the Seattle area in 2014 before earning a promotion to Washington, D.C., two years later. Susheela Jayapal, by contrast, worked as general counsel to Adidas America and for nonprofits before successfully running for the county commission in 2018. That initial victory made her the first Indian American to hold an elected county post in Oregon, and she'd likewise be the first Indian American to serve the state in Congress.

The sisters sat down for a joint interview with HuffPost this week, with the now-former commissioner declaring, "I cannot imagine being on this path without Pramila and I can't wait to work with her―and we're gonna irritate each other along the way." They'd be only the second set of sisters to serve together in Congress, following in the footsteps of a pair of California Democrats, Reps. Loretta and Linda Sánchez. Loretta Sánchez left the House to wage an unsuccessful 2016 Senate bid against none other than Kamala Harris, while Linda Sánchez continues to represent part of the Los Angeles area.

The Jayapals, however, would together make history as the first two sisters to serve in Congress simultaneously while representing different states. Several sets of brothers have done so in the past, most notably Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and New York Sen. Robert Kennedy, from 1965 until the latter's assassination in 1968.

The University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier also tells us that a trio of brothers served together in the House while representing three different states from 1855 to 1861: Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin, Israel Washburn of Maine, and Elihu Washburn of Illinois, who would become one of the most prominent Republicans in Congress during the Civil War and Reconstruction. A fourth brother, William Drew Washburn, later won a House seat in Minnesota in 1878, though none of his siblings were still in office by that point.

However, Susheela Jayapal will need to get through a competitive primary before she can join her sister in the nation's capital. Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales​ announced his own campaign late Wednesday, a development we'll be discussing in our next Digest​.

State Rep. Travis Nelson also told Willamette Week​, "We need more representation from the nursing profession in Congress, and to my knowledge, a male nurse has never been sent to Congress. Furthermore, we need more LGBTQ+ representation, and a Black LGBTQ+ man has never been elected to Congress outside of the state of New York​." Nelson​ added, "I plan to arrive at my decision this week​."​ Former Multnomah County Board of Commissioners Chair Deborah Kafoury additionally hasn't ruled out getting in herself.

Susheela Jayapal will also be seeking office under a different election system than her sister did in 2016, when she ran to succeed another longtime Democratic member, Jim McDermott, in a dark blue seat. Pramila Jayapal, who is the younger sibling by three years, faced off against eight other candidates in that year's top-two primary, taking 42% to 21% for state Rep. Brady Walkinshaw, a fellow Democrat. She went on to defeat Walkinshaw 56-44 in the general election a few months later. In Oregon, however, only a simple plurality is needed to win a party's nomination, and whoever secures the nod in May's primary will have no trouble in the general election for a seat that favored Joe Biden 73-25.

TX-12: Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who chairs the influential House Appropriations Committee, confirmed Wednesday that she would not seek a 15th term in Congress, following reporting late Tuesday night from the Fort Worth Report that she would retire.

Texas' 12th Congressional District, which is based in the Fort Worth area, favored Donald Trump 58-40 in 2020, so whoever wins the GOP nod should have little trouble in the fall. The primary is set for March 5, though a May 28 runoff would take place if no one wins a majority of the vote in the first round.

Granger's announcement came only a little more than a month before the Dec. 11 filing deadline, though one person was already running against the congresswoman. Businessman John O'Shea attracted little attention when he launched his campaign in April, however, and he finished September with a mere $20,000 in the bank. O'Shea, though, has the backing of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right favorite who has survived numerous scandals and a high-profile impeachment.

State House Majority Leader Craig Goldman, meanwhile, has been talked about as a possible Granger successor for a while, and the Texas Tribune notes that an unknown party reserved several domain names relevant to Goldman in the days before Granger announced her departure. Goldman said Wednesday​, "As far as my political plans go, I’m honored and humbled by all who have reached out and will have a decision made very soon​."

Wealthy businessman Chris Putnam, who lost to Granger 58-42 in the 2020 primary, also tells the Fort Worth Report and KERA News​ he's mulling another run, while Tarrant County Commissioner Manny Ramirez said he'd make his own decision "soon."

State Rep. Nate Schatzline,​ meanwhile, said, "Anything is possible in the future​." Fellow state Rep. Brian Byrd​ played down his own interests but doesn't appear to have said no either; the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes he​ "said he isn’t looking at a bid for the congressional seat at this point."​ However, Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare, who is the county's top executive official, and Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker were both quick noes.

Granger, who founded an insurance agency, got her start in public life in the early 1980s when she joined the Fort Worth Zoning Commission. She first assumed elected office in 1989 when she won a seat on the City Council, a body whose nonpartisan nature kept her from having to publicly identify with a party. (Texas Democrats were still a force at the time, though not for much longer.)

That state of affairs continued two years later when she won a promotion to mayor, a similarly nonpartisan post. Longtime political observer Bud Kennedy would recount to the Daily Beast in 2013, "She was carefully centrist in the way she led the city."

That led both Democrats and Republicans to see Granger as a prize recruit in 1996, when Democratic Rep. Charlie Geren, a conservative who had been elected to succeed none other than former Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, decided to retire from a previous version of the 12th. Granger settled on the GOP, though, and she beat her nearest opponent 69-20 in her first-ever Republican primary.

In a sign of just how different things were three decades ago, Granger campaigned as a supporter of abortion rights. She had little trouble in the general election against Democrat Hugh Parmer, a former Fort Worth mayor who had badly lost a 1990 race to unseat Republican Sen. Phil Graham. Granger beat Parmer 58-41 even as, according to analyst Kiernan Park-Egan, Bill Clinton narrowly beat Republican Bob Dole by 46.3-45.5 in the 12th. (Independent Ross Perot, who hailed from neighboring Dallas, took 8%.)

Granger's win made her the second Republican woman to represent Texas in Congress after Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and the first to serve in the House; there would not be another until Beth Van Duyne won the neighboring 24th District in 2020. Granger, who is tied with Maine Sen. Susan Collins as the longest-serving Republican woman in congressional history, owed her longevity in part to the fact that she only faced one serious reelection challenge during her long career.

That expensive primary battle took place in 2020, when Putnam tried to portray Granger as insufficiently pro-Trump even though she had Trump's endorsement. Putnam, who had the Club for Growth on his side, also tried to tie the incumbent to long-running problems at an expensive local development project called Panther Island that used to be led by the congresswoman's son.

But Granger and her backers at the Congressional Leadership Fund fought back by reminding voters that she was Trump's candidate, and she defeated her opponent by 16 points ahead of another easy general election. While Putnam initially announced he'd seek a rematch the following cycle, his decision not to file left her Granger on a glide path to yet another term.

Granger became chair of the Appropriations Committee after her party retook the House in 2022. From that powerful perch, she was one of the most prominent Republicans to vote against making Jim Jordan speaker. She described that stance as "a vote of conscience," adding, "Intimidation and threats will not change my position." But the chairwoman, like the rest of her caucus, embraced far-right Rep. Mike Johnson a short time later, saying she'd work with him "to advance our conservative agenda."

Franks first won a previous version of this conservative seat (then as now based in the western suburbs of Phoenix) in 2002, and he stood out as an ardent rightwinger even before he called President Barack Obama an "enemy of humanity" in 2009. He made his opposition to abortion rights one of his central causes: Franks would claim in 2010, "Half of all Black children are aborted," and insisted in 2013 that "the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low."

Early in the 2012 cycle, however, something mysteriously went awry. Franks had planned to seek a promotion to the Senate after fellow Republican Jon Kyl decided to retire, and his own consultant confirmed to reporter Dave Catanese the date and time of his April 2011 kickoff. But Franks shockingly pulled the plug without explanation just the day before that event, and we spent more than six years wondering why.

We unexpectedly got our answer in 2017, shortly after he said he'd resign. According to Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts, Franks' "after-hours activities caught up to him," with one unnamed operative claiming there was a "file" on Franks that was shared with him to deter him from running. Another said that Franks "wrote creepy text messages a decade ago" to another politico.

The congressman's sins soon became public as the emerging #MeTooMovement unearthed ugly stories about countless powerful men. Franks, the Associated Press reported, had pushed one aide to carry his child and had offered her $5 million to do so. A separate story from Politico said that the women in Franks' office thought their boss "was asking to have sexual relations with them" because they were unsure whether he was "asking about impregnating [them] through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization."

One staffer said that Franks "tried to persuade a female aide that they were in love by having her read an article that described how a person knows they're in love with someone." Another said that her access to the congressman was cut off after she rebuffed his advances.

But Franks, who now claims he left Congress "to spare those I love from heavily sensationalized attacks in that unique and difficult time," apparently sees a chance for redemption with Lesko's departure. "Now that my family has matured and circumstances have developed as they have, I hope I can move forward," he said in a statement announcing his bid.

Franks joins an August GOP primary that already featured a trio of extremists. One of them is Blake Masters, who ran arguably the worst Senate campaign of 2022 in a cycle chock-full of terrible Republican candidates. Another rival is Abe Hamadeh, who has refused to accept his narrow loss last year in the race for attorney general.

Also in the running is state Sen. Anthony Kern, who was part of a slate of fake Trump electors in 2020; Attorney General Kris Mayes, who beat Hamadeh, is currently investigating that scheme. Lesko's choice, state House Speaker Ben Toma, has not yet announced, though he recently filed paperwork with the state. He may stand out in this crowded field, as Roberts last week described him as a conservative who nonetheless is "not a creature of the MAGA movement."

Trump carried the 8th District 56-43, and it would be difficult for Democrats to beat even one of these unsavory characters. Still, as we've noted before, Lesko only won her initial 2018 special 52-48, and she didn't have anything like the baggage that at least Franks, Hamadeh, Kern, and Masters are all lugging.

The Downballot

Election Day is finally here! Joining us on "The Downballot" this week to preview all the key contests is Daily Kos Elections editor Jeff Singer, who has the goods on races big and small. Singer kicks us off by getting us up to speed on the battles for governor in Kentucky and Mississippi, two conservative Southern states where it's Republicans who are acting worried. Then it's on to major fights in Pennsylvania, where a vacant state Supreme Court seat is in play, and Ohio, where an amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution is on the ballot.

Singer also highlights a pair of bellwether legislative districts in Virginia, where both chambers are up for grabs, and then it's on to some lesser-known—but still exceedingly important—races further down the ballot. Several are also taking place in swingy Pennsylvania, including a critical contest that will determine who controls election administration in a major county in the Philadelphia suburbs. Democrats will also be hoping for a bounce-back in the county executive's race in Long Island's Suffolk County, an area that swung hard to Republicans last year.

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

Senate

MI-Sen: It's a bit of a game of telephone, but Politico reports that two anonymous sources who attended a lunch for Senate Republicans on Tuesday say that Indiana Rep. Todd Young told his caucus that he had "heard" (in the site's phrasing) that former Michigan Rep. Peter Meijer would launch a Senate bid within two days. Both Young and Meijer wouldn't comment when Politico reached out to them, but Meijer has been publicly contemplating a campaign for the upper chamber all year.

Governors

MS-Gov: New disclosures for the month of October show Democrat Brandon Presley far outpacing Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on the financial front, with the challenger outraising the incumbent $3.4 million to $1.1 million ahead of next week's election.

For the entire campaign, Presley has brought in almost twice as much as Reeves, with a haul of $11.2 million versus the governor's $6.2 million take. Reeves does have an edge in cash remaining, as he's still sitting on $3 million, compared to $1.2 million for Presley. However, as Mississippi Today's Taylor Vance notes, $2 million of Reeves' stockpile comes from a "legacy" campaign account that's no longer permitted under state law.

A recent analysis from AdImpact found that Reeves has enjoyed a roughly $1 million edge in ad spending, shelling out $8.3 million on the airwaves to $7.3 million for his opponent. Those figures include reservations made as of last Thursday.

House

CO-04: Rep. Ken Buck said Wednesday that he wouldn't run for a sixth term, an unsurprising decision that followed Buck's surprising emergence as an outspoken critic of his own party.

The Colorado Republican told MSNBC that his decision stemmed from his disappointment "that the Republican Party continues to rely on this lie that the 2020 election was stolen and rely on the Jan. 6 narrative and political prisoners from Jan. 6 and other things." Buck nonetheless voted to make election denier Mike Johnson House speaker last week, explaining his choice by saying, "I think people make mistakes and still could be really good speakers."

Buck, who remains a member of the Freedom Caucus, was a hard-right ally during most of his time in national politics, and hardcore conservatives are in a strong position to retain his seat. The 4th District, which includes dark-red eastern Colorado and GOP-leaning suburbs of Denver in Douglas County, supported Donald Trump 58-39.

State Rep. Richard Holtorf, who embodies the type of combative far-right politics that Buck was once known for, already had the congressman in his sights: He formed an exploratory committee in September after Buck spoke out against his party's drive to impeach Joe Biden. Other names, however, will likely surface for the June GOP primary now that Buck, who previously showed interest in leaving office to take an on-air cable news job, has announced he won't be on the ballot.

Buck was elected Weld County district attorney in 2004 and emerged on the national scene when he challenged Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in 2010, following Bennet's appointment by then-Gov. Bill Ritter. But Buck first had to get through a tough primary against former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, another extremely conservative politician. Both sides tried to argue that they were the true candidate of the burgeoning tea party movement, but it was the district attorney who proved more adept at consolidating support from anti-establishment figures.

Late in his battle with Norton, Buck made news when he remarked, "I don't wear high heels … I have cowboy boots, they have real bullshit on them," a line Norton argued was sexist.

"My opponent has said a number of times on the campaign trail that people should vote for her because she wears high heels, because she wears a skirt, because she's a woman," Buck said in his defense. "She ran a commercial that said Ken Buck should be man enough to do X, Y, and Z. ... I made a statement, it was a lighthearted statement that I'm man enough, I don't wear high heels and I have cowboy boots on." Buck won 52-48 four days after the NRSC quietly donated $42,000 to Norton.

Bennet, who had just triumphed in his own competitive primary against former state House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, wasted no time portraying the Republican nominee as too far to the right for what was then still a swing state.

Buck made the senator's task easier on a "Meet the Press" appearance late in the campaign when he said he stood by his 2005 declaration that he had refused to prosecute an alleged rape because "a jury could very well conclude that this is a case of buyer's remorse." He also argued that being gay was a choice. "I think birth has an influence over it," he said, "like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you have a choice."

Bennet prevailed 48-46 during an otherwise horrible year for his party. His fellow Republicans quickly cited him, along with Delaware's Christine O'Donnell and Nevada's Sharron Angle, as a cautionary example of what happens when the party chooses extremist nominees in tossup Senate races. (It's unclear, though, whether Norton, who had for instance blasted Social Security as a "Ponzi scheme," would have actually been a better choice.)

But unlike those fellow travelers, Buck remained in office, even winning another term as district attorney in 2012 before planning a 2014 campaign for Colorado's other Senate seat. Yet even though polls showed Democratic Sen. Mark Udall was vulnerable, Buck and the entire field struggled to raise money and gain traction. But an otherwise stagnant race was completely transformed in February of 2014 when the Denver Post broke the news that Rep. Cory Gardner would make a late bid.

Buck quickly announced that he'd switch course and seek instead to replace Gardner, who ended up endorsing the district attorney as his successor. The two denied that there was any pre-planned switcheroo, but Buck handily dispatched state Sen. Scott Renfroe 44-24 in the primary, and he went on to prevail easily in November. Gardner, meanwhile, accomplished what Buck could not four years earlier and managed to narrowly unseat Udall amid the GOP's second midterm wave election in a row.

Yet while Buck had indeed made it to Congress, he soon signaled he was unhappy in the House long before he ended up retiring. In the summer of 2017, he expressed interest in campaigning to succeed Attorney General Cynthia Coffman in the event that she were to run for governor, though he stayed put even after she launched what turned out to be a disastrous campaign. Buck was elected state party chair two years later, and while he said he'd remain in the House, Inside Elections' Nathan Gonzales reported that he'd told people he was considering retiring that cycle.

The congressman again sought reelection even as some party members groused about him trying to do both his jobs at once. Buck's tenure as party chair was defined by infighting amid Colorado's transformation into a reliably blue state. That shift culminated with Biden's double-digit win in 2020 as well as Gardner's decisive loss to former Gov. John Hickenlooper that same year.

Buck, who was the rare Freedom Caucus member to recognize Biden's win, initially showed some interest in another campaign against Bennet in 2022, but he ended up running for what would be his final term in the House.

MD-03: Democratic state Sen. Clarence Lam tells the Baltimore Sun that he's considering a bid for Maryland's 3rd Congressional District, which recently became open after Rep. John Sarbanes announced his retirement. Lam's legislative seat is located entirely within the House district he's eyeing, making up about 17% of it, according to calculations from Daily Kos Elections.

MT-02: State Auditor Troy Downing has kicked off his campaign for the GOP nomination in this safely red district in eastern Montana, though it's still unclear whether GOP Rep. Matt Rosendale will join the Senate race that he's been flirting with for months or if he'll run for a third House term here. Downing was first elected auditor in 2020 after taking third place for the GOP nomination for Senate in 2018, a primary that Rosendale won before he narrowly lost to Democratic Sen. Jon Tester that fall.

Downing said back in August when he set up an exploratory committee that he wouldn't challenge Rosendale if the incumbent runs again, but Rosendale keeps pushing back his timeline for announcing his decision on a Senate bid and recently said he may not decide until the March 11 filing deadline. Consequently, Downing and any other prospective GOP candidates might not have any idea whether they'll be running against the incumbent until it's too late to switch to another race if Rosendale seeks reelection.

 NY-03: Indicted Rep. George Santos remains in office after a majority of his colleagues voted against an expulsion resolution that needed the support of two-thirds of the chamber. The House voted 213-179 against expulsion on Wednesday evening, one day after the House Ethics Committee declared it would "announce its next course of action" against the Republican by Nov. 17.

A total of 31 Democrats joined 182 Republicans in voting "no," with Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin saying afterward, "Santos has not been criminally convicted yet of the offenses cited in the Resolution nor has he been found guilty of ethics offenses in the House internal process. This would be a terrible precedent to set, expelling people who have not been convicted of a crime and without internal due process." On the other side were 155 Democrats and 24 Republicans.

OR-03: Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal on Wednesday became the first major candidate to launch a bid to succeed retiring Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer in the safely blue 3rd District around Portland. Local law required Jayapal, who is the older sister of Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, to resign her post to run for Congress, which she did just before entering the race.

Both Jayapal siblings were born in India and emigrated as teenagers, though the congresswoman began her political career a few years earlier by winning a state Senate seat in the Seattle area in 2014 before earning a promotion to Washington, D.C., two years later. Susheela Jayapal, by contrast, worked as general counsel to Adidas America and for nonprofits before successfully running for the county commission in 2018. That initial victory made her the first Indian American to hold an elected county post in Oregon, and she'd likewise be the first Indian American to serve the state in Congress.

The sisters sat down for a joint interview with HuffPost this week, with the now-former commissioner declaring, "I cannot imagine being on this path without Pramila and I can't wait to work with her―and we're gonna irritate each other along the way." They'd be only the second set of sisters to serve together in Congress, following in the footsteps of a pair of California Democrats, Reps. Loretta and Linda Sánchez. Loretta Sánchez left the House to wage an unsuccessful 2016 Senate bid against none other than Kamala Harris, while Linda Sánchez continues to represent part of the Los Angeles area.

The Jayapals, however, would together make history as the first two sisters to serve in Congress simultaneously while representing different states. Several sets of brothers have done so in the past, most notably Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy and New York Sen. Robert Kennedy, from 1965 until the latter's assassination in 1968.

The University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier also tells us that a trio of brothers served together in the House while representing three different states from 1855 to 1861: Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin, Israel Washburn of Maine, and Elihu Washburn of Illinois, who would become one of the most prominent Republicans in Congress during the Civil War and Reconstruction. A fourth brother, William Drew Washburn, later won a House seat in Minnesota in 1878, though none of his siblings were still in office by that point.

However, Susheela Jayapal will need to get through a competitive primary before she can join her sister in the nation's capital. Gresham City Councilor Eddy Morales​ announced his own campaign late Wednesday, a development we'll be discussing in our next Digest​.

State Rep. Travis Nelson also told Willamette Week​, "We need more representation from the nursing profession in Congress, and to my knowledge, a male nurse has never been sent to Congress. Furthermore, we need more LGBTQ+ representation, and a Black LGBTQ+ man has never been elected to Congress outside of the state of New York​." Nelson​ added, "I plan to arrive at my decision this week​."​ Former Multnomah County Board of Commissioners Chair Deborah Kafoury additionally hasn't ruled out getting in herself.

Susheela Jayapal will also be seeking office under a different election system than her sister did in 2016, when she ran to succeed another longtime Democratic member, Jim McDermott, in a dark blue seat. Pramila Jayapal, who is the younger sibling by three years, faced off against eight other candidates in that year's top-two primary, taking 42% to 21% for state Rep. Brady Walkinshaw, a fellow Democrat. She went on to defeat Walkinshaw 56-44 in the general election a few months later. In Oregon, however, only a simple plurality is needed to win a party's nomination, and whoever secures the nod in May's primary will have no trouble in the general election for a seat that favored Joe Biden 73-25.

TX-12: Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who chairs the influential House Appropriations Committee, confirmed Wednesday that she would not seek a 15th term in Congress, following reporting late Tuesday night from the Fort Worth Report that she would retire.

Texas' 12th Congressional District, which is based in the Fort Worth area, favored Donald Trump 58-40 in 2020, so whoever wins the GOP nod should have little trouble in the fall. The primary is set for March 5, though a May 28 runoff would take place if no one wins a majority of the vote in the first round.

Granger's announcement came only a little more than a month before the Dec. 11 filing deadline, though one person was already running against the congresswoman. Businessman John O'Shea attracted little attention when he launched his campaign in April, however, and he finished September with a mere $20,000 in the bank. O'Shea, though, has the backing of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a far-right favorite who has survived numerous scandals and a high-profile impeachment.

State House Majority Leader Craig Goldman, meanwhile, has been talked about as a possible Granger successor for a while, and the Texas Tribune notes that an unknown party reserved several domain names relevant to Goldman in the days before Granger announced her departure. Goldman said Wednesday​, "As far as my political plans go, I’m honored and humbled by all who have reached out and will have a decision made very soon​."

Wealthy businessman Chris Putnam, who lost to Granger 58-42 in the 2020 primary, also tells the Fort Worth Report and KERA News​ he's mulling another run, while Tarrant County Commissioner Manny Ramirez said he'd make his own decision "soon."

State Rep. Nate Schatzline,​ meanwhile, said, "Anything is possible in the future​." Fellow state Rep. Brian Byrd​ played down his own interests but doesn't appear to have said no either; the Fort Worth Star-Telegram writes he​ "said he isn’t looking at a bid for the congressional seat at this point."​ However, Tarrant County Judge Tim O'Hare, who is the county's top executive official, and Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker were both quick noes.

Granger, who founded an insurance agency, got her start in public life in the early 1980s when she joined the Fort Worth Zoning Commission. She first assumed elected office in 1989 when she won a seat on the City Council, a body whose nonpartisan nature kept her from having to publicly identify with a party. (Texas Democrats were still a force at the time, though not for much longer.)

That state of affairs continued two years later when she won a promotion to mayor, a similarly nonpartisan post. Longtime political observer Bud Kennedy would recount to the Daily Beast in 2013, "She was carefully centrist in the way she led the city."

That led both Democrats and Republicans to see Granger as a prize recruit in 1996, when Democratic Rep. Charlie Geren, a conservative who had been elected to succeed none other than former Democratic Speaker Jim Wright, decided to retire from a previous version of the 12th. Granger settled on the GOP, though, and she beat her nearest opponent 69-20 in her first-ever Republican primary.

In a sign of just how different things were three decades ago, Granger campaigned as a supporter of abortion rights. She had little trouble in the general election against Democrat Hugh Parmer, a former Fort Worth mayor who had badly lost a 1990 race to unseat Republican Sen. Phil Graham. Granger beat Parmer 58-41 even as, according to analyst Kiernan Park-Egan, Bill Clinton narrowly beat Republican Bob Dole by 46.3-45.5 in the 12th. (Independent Ross Perot, who hailed from neighboring Dallas, took 8%.)

Granger's win made her the second Republican woman to represent Texas in Congress after Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and the first to serve in the House; there would not be another until Beth Van Duyne won the neighboring 24th District in 2020. Granger, who is tied with Maine Sen. Susan Collins as the longest-serving Republican woman in congressional history, owed her longevity in part to the fact that she only faced one serious reelection challenge during her long career.

That expensive primary battle took place in 2020, when Putnam tried to portray Granger as insufficiently pro-Trump even though she had Trump's endorsement. Putnam, who had the Club for Growth on his side, also tried to tie the incumbent to long-running problems at an expensive local development project called Panther Island that used to be led by the congresswoman's son.

But Granger and her backers at the Congressional Leadership Fund fought back by reminding voters that she was Trump's candidate, and she defeated her opponent by 16 points ahead of another easy general election. While Putnam initially announced he'd seek a rematch the following cycle, his decision not to file left her Granger on a glide path to yet another term.

Granger became chair of the Appropriations Committee after her party retook the House in 2022. From that powerful perch, she was one of the most prominent Republicans to vote against making Jim Jordan speaker. She described that stance as "a vote of conscience," adding, "Intimidation and threats will not change my position." But the chairwoman, like the rest of her caucus, embraced far-right Rep. Mike Johnson a short time later, saying she'd work with him "to advance our conservative agenda."

Donald Trump was Tate Reeves’ silver bullet in 2019 governor’s race. Not this year.

by Adam Ganucheau 

Mississippi Today

Just five nights before the 2019 governor’s election, about 10,000 Republicans packed into the BancorpSouth Arena in Tupelo to hear a rambunctious President Donald Trump plead with Mississippians to vote for Tate Reeves.

It was borderline baffling that an immensely popular Republican president had to fly down to a strong Republican state in the eleventh hour and campaign for a well-known Republican candidate. But Reeves was struggling to reach the 50% mark in polling against longtime Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood, and Democrats smelled blood in the water.

“Wait a minute, how is this guy … I can’t believe this is a competitive race,” Trump acknowledged from the podium that night. “I’m talking to Mississippi, I can’t believe it. I don’t think (Hood) is going to be the right guy. I think the right guy is Tate Reeves. He will be a great governor.”

More than a few prognosticators still believe that rowdy, high-energy Trump rally won Reeves the 2019 race. Advisers close to Hood said they had internal polls going into the last two weeks of the election that actually had the Democrat leading Reeves. But on Election Day five days after Trump’s Tupelo visit, Reeves won with 51.9% of the vote.

Four years later, much is the same. Reeves is again favored at the top of the ticket for governor. But yet again, he’s struggling to reach the 50% mark in polling against another tough Democratic challenger, this time longtime Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley.

But not all is the same this year. Trump, of course, is not the president. Instead of jetting off to political rallies to boost Republican allies across the country, the former president is tied up in numerous legal proceedings at both the state and federal levels. Late this week, two of his closest allies accepted plea deals and appeared to turn on him in those deliberations. And a judge slapped him with a $5,000 fine on Friday for violating a gag order in his New York fraud case.

Trump, who clearly has other things on his mind than Reeves’ chances in November, has not weighed in yet on the 2023 Mississippi governor’s race, and it’s not clear if he will. It’s also not clear if it would mean nearly as much to Mississippi voters if he did.

A Mississippi Today/Siena College poll conducted in September showed an even favorable/unfavorable split among Mississippi voters on Trump — a much more negative overall view of the former president than in previous years’ polling.

With Republican operatives buzzing about GOP enthusiasm and turnout concerns, Reeves likability concerns, and a Democratic campaign that is making some strides, is another Trump visit on the horizon?

And if not, is there another silver bullet Reeves can load into his chamber?

What We're Watching

1) Presley announced a statewide bus tour to close out his 2023 campaign. The campaign said the tour will make 55 stops across the state in the final weeks of the election.

2) Reeves spent his Friday in southwest Mississippi, visiting McComb, Liberty and Woodville. Interestingly, Amite and Wilkinson counties — home to about 21,000 people between the two — got visits from both Reeves and Presley this week. Presley visited the counties Thursday to officially fulfill a promise to visit all 82 counties this year.

3) It's linked in the headlines above, but Mississippi Today's Geoff Pender settled any questions or debate today about how many gubernatorial debates there will be. Pender reports: "It appears (Nov. 1) will be the only gubernatorial debate, not the first. It also would appear Reeves agreed to the single debate just days before the election to defang Presley’s claim — and campaign fodder — that he was dodging and 'hiding' from the voting public, not because of Reeves’ strong desire to debate."

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Sign and send to Congress: Pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

election recaps

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

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

3Q Fundraising

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

Senate

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

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

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

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

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

Governors

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

House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minock also supplies a few names of possible GOP contenders:

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

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

Ad Roundup

Morning Digest: Ohio Republicans once again grovel for Trump’s Senate endorsement

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

OH-Sen: While Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose has experienced what could charitably be described as a rough August, he insists to Jewish Insider that he's "likely" to earn Donald Trump's endorsement in the Republican primary to face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. Trump "wants to be with somebody who can win the race and also be a good ally of his in the Senate, which I would be," argued LaRose, despite the fact that he reportedly earned the wrong type of attention from the party's supreme leader two weeks ago after he appeared to defend Mike Pence's actions on Jan. 6.

That moment came when NBC's Chuck Todd asked the secretary if Pence had done the right thing by refusing to reject the results of the 2020 election. LaRose replied that Pence "made the best decision he could with the information in front of him." An unnamed source told the network, "The video was sent to Trump by multiple people, and he has watched it," though they didn't say how Trump had responded—though it isn't hard to guess.

LaRose's team, for its part, quickly tried to walk back the candidate's remarks. "His position is that a lot of people wish they'd done things differently on January 6th," said the campaign in a statement. "Mike Pence made decisions based on what he knew at the time. Not everyone agrees that he did, and that includes President Trump." LaRose, though, had more cleanup to perform just days later when he fired press secretary Rob Nichols after Trump allies uncovered anti-Trump tweets Nichols had penned. In one, he had told a MAGA fan, "[I]t's been an incredible indictments race to the bottom for your guys and hunter biden...the daytona 500 of felonies and misdemeanors."

All of this took place shortly after Ohio voters decisively refused to heed LaRose's calls to support Issue 1, the Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would have made it more difficult to change the state's governing document. "This is 100% about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution," LaRose told his fellow Republicans in comments that the "no" side plastered across the state in ads.

LaRose also tried to use his ardent support for Issue 1 to enhance his own standing in the Senate primary, declaring at one point that his two wealthy intra-party foes, state Sen. Matt Dolan and businessman Bernie Moreno, should each throw down $1 million to promote it. (Cleveland.com reports that Dolan owns assets worth at least $14.5 million, while Moreno's fortune is valued at a minimum of $25.5 million.) Moreno's team, though, responded to the measure's 57-43 loss by calling it "a preview of what would happen with Frank LaRose at the top of the ticket in 2024—a 14-point landslide loss that crushed conservatives."

Despite LaRose's protestations, Moreno has looked like the candidate with the best chance to secure Trump's endorsement; Trump himself told followers at a July gathering, "We love Ohio, and we love Bernie Moreno." (It also doesn't hurt that Moreno's son-in-law is Rep. Max Miller, a former White House aide who was so close to Trump that a source told Politico in 2021, "They had … kind of a unique 'bro' relationship.")

In his interview with Jewish Insider, LaRose seemed to bash Moreno in particular when he said it was possible to "be a great Trump supporter" without attempting "to be a cheap knockoff" of Trump. We can be pretty certain that he didn't have Dolan in mind: During his failed 2022 campaign for the state's other Senate seat, Dolan said that the GOP needed to move on from the Big Lie and Trump. Predictably, though, he hasn't actually ruled out backing Trump next year.

But Moreno, as the Daily Beast reported last week, has his own history of firing off tweets questioning Big Lie orthodoxy. In December of 2020, the now-candidate tried to argue that, while Democrats were wrong for accusing Trump of colluding with Russia, it was "just as bad for [Trump] to make claims of a fraudulent election without proof." He also condemned the Jan. 6 riots as they were happening and later liked a missive from Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw defending Liz Cheney's vote to impeach Trump. There's no sign yet, however, that Trump wants to punish Moreno, who now defends the Jan. 6 defendants as "political prisoners" and declared during his aborted 2022 Senate campaign, "President Trump says the election was stolen, and he's right."

Moreno still may need to be on guard, however, after what happened last cycle to former state party chair Jane Timken during the race to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman. Trump, reported Politico's Alex Isenstadt, had outright told Timken he'd endorse her only to abruptly change his mind when she initially defended another impeachment backer, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez. Trump eventually endorsed J.D. Vance, who himself had transformed from a one-time critic into a MAGA lackey, a decision that helped the now-senator win the primary.

Just a few months ago, LaRose seemed determined to avoid humbling himself to win Trump's backing as most of the 2022 field had. The secretary, in a springtime "secret recording" obtained by Politico, instead told fellow Republicans that while Trump's support "matters," only 20% of the primary electorate would "vote for whoever" he endorsed. He added that, while he thought he'd win Trump's favor, he didn't think "begging for it" would work. But his decision to fire Nichols, who had a long history in state GOP politics, has some observers thinking that LaRose is now willing to do whatever it takes to secure Trump's approval.

"Is the Trump endorsement worth burning bridges and setting fire to friendships?" an unidentified strategist asked the conservative Washington Examiner. "Is the Trump endorsement worth that much?" In LaRose's case, the operative argued, it very much isn't. "It just appears unnatural. It's like he's twisting himself in knots. When you're not true to yourself, it shows."

The Downballot

Everyone always talks about redistricting, but what is it like to actually do it? Oregon political consultant Kari Chisholm joins us on this week's episode of The Downballot to discuss his experience as a member of Portland's new Independent District Commission, a panel of citizens tasked with creating the city's first-ever map for its city council. Kari explains why Portland wanted to switch from at-large elections to a district-based system; how new multi-member districts could boost diversity on the council; and the commission's surprisingly effective efforts to divide the city into four equal districts while heeding community input.

Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap yet another New Hampshire special election that saw Democrats overperform district baselines—and why Republicans should be worried about an even bigger special in September. They then discuss why a new Democratic recruit could help put Florida's Senate race in play and highlight another effort to put abortion on the ballot in 2024 in a very red state: Nebraska.

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

Governors

LA-Gov: Faucheux Strategies finds GOP Attorney General Jeff Landry in strong shape in a survey conducted for several groups, including the state Urban League, the Public Affairs Research Council of Baton Rouge, and five media outlets. Landry and the one serious Democrat in the race, former state Transportation Secretary Shawn Wilson, respectively take 36% and 26% in the Oct. 14 nonpartisan primary, with wealthy independent Hunter Lundy a distant third with just 7%. Faucheux, which is run by veteran Louisiana pollster Ron Faucheux, also shows Landry beating Wilson 54-36 in a Nov. 18 runoff.

Almost every other firm has also shown Landry and Wilson advancing as all their opponents languished in the single digits. The only contrary numbers came in late June when a Remington Research poll for allies of former state Chamber of Commerce head Stephen Waguespack placed Wilson at 27% as Landry edged out its candidate 25-16. The only prior look at a runoff, by contrast, came from a July BDPC survey for the conservative group Citizens for a New Louisiana, and it had Landry edging Wilson just 45-40.

MS-Gov: Democrat Brandon Presley has launched a response spot days after Republican incumbent Tate Reeves debuted a transphobic ad insinuating that his foe opposed a new state law that banned gender-affirming care for minors. "I'm on the record saying I don't support gender surgery for minors or boys playing girls sports―never have," Presley tells the audience. "Truth is, Tate Reeves will say anything to protect his good ol' boy network work and hide the fact that he's caught up in the largest corruption scandal in the history of Mississippi."

House

MN-01: Democratic state Sen. Nick Frentz tells Axios that he's interested in challenging Republican Rep. Brad Finstad in what would be a difficult race for this 54-44 Trump seat in southern Minnesota, and he added that he has no timeline to decide. This area was swingy turf well into the 2010s, but it moved sharply to the right during the Trump era and has remained tough turf for Democrats.

Finstad himself last year won the August special election to succeed the late Jim Hagedorn just 51-47 against Democrat Jeff Ettinger, but he triumphed 54-42 in their rematch a few months later. (The special was conducted using the old congressional map, but the 1st didn't change much following redistricting.) Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, who represented previous versions of this seat for 12 years, also lost the constituency 52-45 against Republican Scott Jensen even as the governor was winning statewide by that same margin.

TX-23: Punchbowl News' Mica Soellner reports that several members of the hardline Freedom Caucus are "plotting behind the scenes" to deny renomination to GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, but they've yet to consolidate behind any of his challengers. The state party censured the incumbent in March for defying the party line on multiple occasions, but he's remained defiant in a gerrymandered seat that spans from the San Antonio suburbs to El Paso and backed Donald Trump 53-46.

Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, who runs the Freedom Caucus, met with former ICE official Victor Avila in May, while 22nd District Rep. Troy Nehls later hosted an event that Avila addressed. But Avila, who finished a distant fifth place in last year's primary for land commissioner, has yet to earn endorsements from either representative, and he finished June with less than $20,000 available.

Soellner also writes that gun maker Brandon Herrera, who has 2.8 million subscribers on his "The AK Guy" YouTube channel, also had some favorable contact with Florida ​​Rep. Matt Gaetz as he wages his own bid to beat Gonzales. Gaetz last week used his guest-host slot on Newsmax to interview Herrera and call this contest "America's most exciting congressional Republican primary election." Herrera entered the race in July after the new fundraising quarter began.

The field also includes Medina County GOP chair Julie Clark, who kicked off her bid in March. Clark self-funded over $300,000 through June but raised little from donors, and she had only $3,000 left at the end of the last quarter. Arizona Rep. Andy Biggs, says Soellner, has met with Clark as well as Avila. A runoff would take place if no one earned a majority of the vote in next March's primary, a scenario that Gonzales and his $1.6 million war chest would like to avert.

Gonzales defied his party's base by confirming Joe Biden's victory in the hours after the Jan. 6 attack and later supporting gun safety legislation after the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde happened in his district. He responded to the censure vote in March in Spanish with what the Houston Chronicle calls "some words for the group that are probably too coarse for a family newspaper."

Legislatures

NH State House: Democrats racked up another big overperformance in New Hampshire on Tuesday night as David Fracht defeated Republican John Keane 72-28 in a special election for Grafton County's 16th District, 13 points better than Joe Biden's already sizable 64-34 margin. It's the third such result in as many tries this year: In May, Democrats ran 16 points ahead of Biden in another vacant seat in Hillsborough County, which followed a 7-point overperformance in February in a do-over election in Strafford County after November's contest ended in a tie.

Fracht's victory bumps up the Democratic caucus to 197 members, while Republicans have 199 (two more seats are held by independents). Next month, Democrats will try to flip a swingy Republican seat in Rockingham County. If they succeed and then hold another safely blue seat in Hillsborough County in November, then they'll strip away the GOP's majority by forcing the chamber into a 199-199 tie between the parties.

Morning Digest: Father of anti-trans ‘bathroom bill’ joins race for North Carolina attorney general

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Senate

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

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

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

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

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

Governors

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

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

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

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

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

House

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

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

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

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

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

Attorneys General

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

Ballot Measures

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

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

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

Morning Digest: He ranted about ‘European cheese weenies.’ Now he’s running for Congress

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

CO-08: Weld County Commissioner Scott James announced Wednesday that he'd seek the Republican nomination to challenge freshman Rep. Yadira Caraveo in Colorado's 8th District, prompting Democrats to immediately blast him for an anti-abortion, Islamophobic rant he delivered as a talk radio host in 2007.

James, as Media Matters documented at the time, declared "the civilization that you know ... will be overtaken by those who would like you to practice Sharia law ... just by mass numbers" because "the European cheese weenies simply aren't breeding." James continued, "You can do the math and see the rapid decline of ... civilization," before saying of the United Kingdom, "Their birth rate declining, the abortion rate increasing. You do the math. You don't have the sanctity for the life like that, your society will simply extinguish."

Democrats also went after James, who remained on the radio after winning his seat on the county commission in 2018, for his vote the next year to designate Weld County as a "Second Amendment sanctuary." That action, which authorized the county sheriff to "exercise of his sound discretion to not enforce against any citizen an unconstitutional firearms law," came in response to a new red flag law that allows family and household members, as well as law enforcement officials, to petition a judge to confiscate firearms from an individual they fear is dangerous. "Taking constitutional rights away from citizens under the guise that it is for the 'greater good' is a very dangerous path to walk down," James said at the time, "and one we do not support."

James launched his campaign to unseat Caraveo hours after fellow Republican Barbara Kirkmeyer, the GOP's nominee last year, announced that she would seek reelection to the state Senate rather than try to avenge her narrow 48.4-47.7 general election loss. The commissioner is the first notable Republican to join the contest for this constituency in the northern Denver suburbs and Greeley area, turf Joe Biden carried 51-46 in 2020, but he's not the only one who is thinking about running here.

State Rep. Gabe Evans reiterated his interest Tuesday to the Colorado Sun, while Weld County Commissioner Steve Moreno and former state Rep. Dan Woog both said they were mulling over the idea last month. Multiple publications also reported in June that Joe O'Dea, who unsuccessfully challenged Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet last year, is considering as well, though he's shown no obvious sign that he's preparing for another run.

Redistricting

NY Redistricting: A divided state appeals court ordered New York's redistricting commission to draw a new congressional map ahead of the 2024 elections on Thursday, overturning a lower court that had previously ruled in favor of retaining the state's current court-drawn boundaries. Republicans opposing the Democratic-backed lawsuit, however, immediately vowed to appeal in an effort to prevent the adoption of districts that would be less favorable to them.

The dispute wound up in court after the evenly divided bipartisan commission failed to reach an agreement on a single set of redistricting plans for Congress and the state legislature last year.  Instead, it forwarded dueling proposals—one batch supported by Democrats, the other by Republicans—to lawmakers, who rejected them both. After that failure, the commission refused to try again, which led the Democratic-run legislature to pass its own maps.

However, the state's highest court struck down that attempt last year in a 4-3 decision, saying that because the commission had never sent a second set of maps to the legislature as contemplated by the state constitution, lawmakers could not act on their own. As a remedy, an upstate trial court instead imposed maps drawn by an outside expert that saw Republicans make considerable gains in the November midterms.

A group of voters, though, filed a suit demanding that the commission be ordered back to work. While a lower court initially rejected that argument, the Appellate Division agreed with the plaintiffs. The commission still "had an indisputable duty under the NY Constitution to submit a second set of maps upon the rejection of its first set," wrote the majority in a 3-2 opinion, concluding that the court-ordered maps used in 2022 were interim in nature.

If New York's highest court, known as the Court of Appeals, upholds this decision, then the commission will again have to try to compromise on a new congressional map. If it again fails to produce an acceptable map, though, Democrats in the legislature—who enjoy two-thirds supermajorities in both chambers—would, this time, very likely be entitled to create new maps of their own design. That possibility could spur Republican commissioners to accept lines that tilt somewhat more in Democrats' favor than the current districts rather than face the alternative of an unfettered partisan gerrymander.

2Q Fundraising

The deadline to file fundraising numbers for federal campaigns is July 15. We'll have our House and Senate fundraising charts available soon afterwards.

  • AZ-Sen: Ruben Gallego (D): $3.1 million raised
  • CA-Sen: Katie Porter (D): $3.2 million raised, $10.4 million cash on hand
  • WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D-inc): $1.3 million raised, $10.7 million cash on hand
  • LA-Gov: Jeff Landry (R): $4.5 million raised, $9 million cash on hand
  • NC-Gov: Mark Robinson (R): $2.2 million raised (in six months), $3.2 million cash on hand
  • AZ-06: Juan Ciscomani (R-inc): $815,000 raised, $1.6 million cash on hand
  • CA-45: Michelle Steel (R-inc): $1.1 million raised, $1.7 million cash on hand
  • IA-02: Ashley Hinson (R-inc): $690,000 raised, $1 million cash on hand
  • IA-03: Zach Nunn (R-inc): $729,000 raised, $1 million cash on hand
  • IL-17: Eric Sorensen (D-inc): $515,000 raised, $770,000 cash on hand
  • MI-10: John James (R-inc): $1.1 million raised, $1.7 million cash on hand
  • MT-01: Ryan Zinke (R-inc): $786,000 raised, $876,000 cash on hand
  • NC-14: Jeff Jackson (D-inc): $507,000 raised, $663,000 cash on hand
  • NJ-05: Josh Gottheimer (D-inc): $1.2 million raised, $15.1 million cash on hand
  • NJ-07: Tom Kean Jr. (R-inc): $860,000 raised, $1.47 million cash on hand
  • NY-02: Rob Lubin (D): $343,000 raised (in five weeks), additional $7,000 self-funded
  • NY-03: Anna Kaplan (D): $455,000 raised
  • OR-05: Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-inc): $717,000 raised, $1 million cash on hand
  • TX-15: Monica De La Cruz (R-inc): $833,000 raised, $1 million cash on hand
  • WA-03: Joe Kent (R): $245,000 raised, $392,000 cash on hand

Senate

FL-Sen: Politico reports that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the DSCC are trying to recruit former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell to take on GOP incumbent Rick Scott, but another Democrat appears ready to launch his campaign before she makes up her mind.

Navy veteran Phil Ehr, who raised $2 million for his 2020 bid against the nationally infamous Rep. Matt Gaetz in the safely red 1st District, confirms he's interested and will decide in the coming weeks. An unnamed source, though, says that Ehr, who lost to Gaetz 65-34 as Trump was taking the old 1st by a similar 66-32 margin, is planning to get in "soon."

MI-Sen: The Daily Beast's Ursula Perano reports that, while actor Hill Harper says he's lived in Michigan for the last seven years, the new Democratic candidate's residency "may be more complicated." Perano uncovered a 2020 Seattle Times article saying that Harper moved to that city during the first season of production for his show, The Good Doctor, so his son could attend school there. (That season aired in 2017 and 2018.) That same story said that "Harper commutes from Seattle to the show’s set in Vancouver, British Columbia."

Perano also found a pair of websites used to book the actor for speaking engagements, both of which appear to have been in use in recent years: One said that Harper would be traveling from California, where he also owns a condo, while the other said he'd be coming from Seattle. "Hill Harper began spending time in Michigan because of work, but quickly realized the greatest people in the world live in Michigan and decided to move there full time," his campaign told the Daily Beast for the story, "Ever since moving to Michigan in 2016, he’s voted as a Michigander, paid taxes to the state, and runs a small business in Detroit."

Governors

IN-Gov: Howey Politics relays that there are still "rumors" that state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers is considering seeking the GOP nod to succeed his boss, termed-out Gov. Eric Holcomb and would likely self-fund. There is no other information about Chambers' interest.

MO-Gov: Businessman Mike Hamra, whose eponymous company operates almost 200 restaurants nationwide, tells the St. Louis Business Journal he's "seriously considering" seeking the Democratic nod and will "likely to have a final decision later in the fall." Hamra made his interest known days after state House Minority Leader Crystal Quade launched her own bid to lead what's become a tough state for Democrats.

MS-Gov: Republican incumbent Tate Reeves is airing a transphobic new TV ad where the governor, after praising his daughter for working to earn a soccer scholarship, declares, "Now, political radicals are trying to ruin women's sports, letting biological men get the opportunities meant for women." Reeves, as Mississippi Today notes, signed a 2021 law banning trans athletes from women's sports even though the bill's sponsor acknowledged she didn't know of this happening in the state.

House

AK-AL: Businessman Nick Begich on Thursday became the first notable Republican to announce a campaign against Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, who twice beat him last year for Alaska's only House seat. But Begich is unlikely to have the top-four primary to himself, especially since many Republicans made it clear last fall that they still harbor a grudge over how he acquitted himself during the final months of longtime Rep. Don Young's life.

Begich, who is the rare Republican member of Alaska's most prominent Democratic family (his grandfather and namesake was Young's immediate predecessor, while his uncle Mark Begich served one term in the U.S. Senate), was initially a Young supporter, and he even co-chaired the congressman's 2020 campaign. But, as the Anchorage Daily News' Iris Samuels reported in April of 2022, Begich spent about a month working in the congressman's office the next year—at Young's invitation—only to launch a bid against Young soon afterward. "It was just such an invasion of our goodwill and the Congressman's goodwill," one unnamed staffer later told Insider's Bryan Metzger, adding, "We were completely hoodwinked and betrayed."    

Young, who'd represented the state in the House since 1973, died before that faceoff could occur, and Begich was one of the 48 candidates who filed to run in a special election that featured America's first-ever top-four primary. But after Begich advanced to the general against former GOP Gov. Sarah Palin and Peltola (a fourth finisher, independent Al Gross, dropped out), it looked likely that one of the two Republicans would prevail in a state Donald Trump took 53-43 in 2020.

Begich and Palin, though, instead went negative on one another while ignoring Peltola (that is, when they weren't smiling in selfies with her), which helped give the Democrat the opening she needed. Begich was only too happy to portray Palin as a disastrous governor who only cared about being a celebrity, while Palin hit back by castigating Begich for supporting his Democratic relatives.

An unscathed Peltola went into ranked-choice tabulations with 40% of first-choice votes, with Palin edging out Begich 31-28 for second. But following the fratricidal GOP campaign, Begich's backers only went for Palin by a 50-29 margin as a crucial 21% didn’t express a preference for either finalist. As a result, Peltola pulled off 51-49 upset.

All three candidates, plus Libertarian Chris Bye, competed again in November for a full two-year term, but things went even worse for the GOP this time. Begich and his allies pointed to data from the Alaska Division of Elections saying that he'd have defeated Peltola 52-48 had he come in second place in the special election to make his case that conservatives should choose him over Palin. But several of Young's former staffers not only endorsed Peltola, who had enjoyed a close relationship with the late congressman for decades, they also vocally aired their grievances against Begich for what they saw as his duplicity.

One particular incensed Young aide was a former communications director, Zack Brown, who posted a picture of Begich's congressional intern badge in a since-deleted tweet. "Begich was planning on primarying Young all along," he wrote. "He used DY & staff to secure inside info." Brown followed up, "According to FEC docs, he claimed campaign expenses BEFORE he came on as an INTERN in Don Young's office. He KNEW he was going to primary Young before he joined our office, but used the Congressman and staff for his own ends anyway. Disgraceful."

Peltola this time almost took a majority of first-choice ballots, scoring 49% of them as Palin once again staggered into second place, beating out Begich 26-23. Peltola then crushed Palin in a 55-45 drubbing after the instant-runoff process was finished. To add insult to injury for Begich, election data showed he would have lost by a slightly larger margin than Palin this time―just under 11 points―had he taken second.

Republicans are likely to make a priority of beating Peltola, who represents the reddest Democratic-held seat in the chamber, but it remains to be seen who else will join Begich in the top-four. The Anchorage Daily News writes that Palin, who rather prematurely named her congressional chief of staff the day after the November election [i]In anticipation of an announcement of victory," hasn't shown any sign she's thinking of trying a third time, though that hardly means she won't surprise everyone like she did when she decided to run last year.

MD-06: Hagerstown Mayor Tekesha Martinez on Wednesday joined the busy primary to succeed her fellow Democrat, Senate candidate David Trone, for a seat based in western Maryland and the northwestern D.C. exurbs. Martinez, who was elected to the city council in 2020, became this northwestern Maryland community's first Black mayor in February after her colleagues appointed her to fill the vacant post. She joins Dels. Lesley Lopez and Joe Vogel, as well as think tank founder Destiny Drake West, in seeking the Democratic nod for this 54-44 Biden constituency.

NJ-07: Former state Sen. Ray Lesniak tells the New Jersey Globe he's "still waiting until this November" before deciding whether to seek the Democratic nod to take on GOP Rep. Tom Kean Jr.

NY-22: New York State United Teachers, which is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association, has endorsed Democratic state Sen. John Mannion's bid to take on GOP Rep. Brandon Williams. Mannion is a former public school teacher, and City & State says the labor group has enthusiastically backed him in past races.

RI-01: Lincoln Town Councilor Pamela Azar at some point quietly ended her campaign for the Democratic nod and endorsed one of her many former rivals, state Sen. Ana Quezada.

TX-34: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has endorsed former GOP Rep. Mayra Flores in her rematch effort with Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez.

UT-02: State election officials confirmed this week that both former RNC member Bruce Hough and former state Rep. Becky Edwards have turned in enough valid signatures to make the Sept. 5 special Republican primary to succeed outgoing Rep. Chris Stewart. The pair will face Celeste Maloy, a former Stewart aide who qualified for the ballot by winning last month's party convention. The winner will be favored on Nov. 7 against Democratic state Sen. Kathleen Riebe in this gerrymandered 57-40 Trump seat.

WI-03: Both state Rep. Katrina Shankland and former La Crosse County Board chair Tara Johnson tell the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that they're interested in joining the Democratic primary to take on GOP Rep. Derrick Van Orden.

Mayors and County Leaders

Houston, TX Mayor: Former Republican City Councilmember Jack Christie tells the Houston Chronicle he's considering entering the Nov. 7 nonpartisan primary to succeed termed-out Democratic Mayor Sylvester Turner, though he said he was still "far from signing up." Attorney Tony Buzbee, an independent who lost the 2019 runoff to Turner 56-44 after spending $12 million, likewise says he hasn't ruled out another campaign even though he's representing Attorney General Ken Paxton at the Republican's upcoming impeachment trial. The filing deadline is Aug. 21, weeks before Paxton's Sept. 5 trial starts.

Indianapolis, IN Mayor: Democratic incumbent Joe Hogsett has gone on TV well ahead of the Nov. 7 general with a spot hitting his wealthy foe, Republican Jefferson Shreve, that utilizes footage from the ads Shreve ran during his failed 2016 state Senate bid. "Jefferson Shreve will fight for the right to life," says Shreve's old narrator, "and our Second Amendment rights." Indianapolis backed Joe Biden 63-34, but Republicans are hoping Shreve's resources will help him argue that change is needed after Hogsett's two terms.

Nashville, TN Mayor: The Nashville Scene reports that a conservative group called Save Nashville PAC is spending $150,000 on TV ad campaign to help the one notable Republican in the race, party strategist Alice Rolli, advance past the Aug. 3 nonpartisan primary. The messaging, unsurprisingly, invokes the specter of crime in big cities … other big cities, that is. "How many once-great cities around the U.S. are now complete disasters?" asks the narrator, "Is Nashville next? Alice Rolli will protect Nashville and keep it a clean, safe city."

The offensive comes at a time when two wealthy Democrats, former AllianceBernstein executive Jim Gingrich and former economic development chief Matt Wiltshire, continue to dominate the airwaves in the contest to succeed retiring Democratic Mayor John Cooper. AdImpact relays that Gingrich and his allies have outspent Wiltshire's side $1.6 million to $1.2 million in advertising, while Democratic Metro Council member Freddie O'Connell is far back with just $190,000.

A firm called Music City Research, though, has released a survey showing that, despite being heavily outspent, O'Connell leads with 22% as Wiltshire outpaces Rolli 17-13 for the second spot in the likely Sept. 14 runoff. The pollster is affiliated with Harpeth Strategies, which is run by one of O'Connell's supporters, fellow Metro Council member Dave Rosenberg. Rosenberg tells us this poll was conducted for a "private entity and not a mayoral campaign or an organization associated with a mayoral campaign." He added that, as far as he is aware, the sponsor is not backing or opposing anyone.

The last poll we saw was over a month ago, and it showed a far more unsettled race. The Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, working for real estate development group NAIOP Nashville, had O'Connell at 10% as two Democratic members of the state Senate, Jeff Yarbro and Heidi Campbell, respectively took 9% and 8%.

Morning Digest: Democrats and Republicans unite to elect an independent as speaker … in Pennsylvania

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

Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast

Leading Off

PA State House: In a pair of true surprises, moderate Democrat Mark Rozzi was elected speaker of the Pennsylvania state House Tuesday just before he announced that he’d lead the chamber as an independent.

Rozzi, who will be the first non-aligned speaker in the history of the body, defeated Republican state Rep. Carl Metzgar 115-85 after Democratic leader Joanna McClinton threw her support behind him rather than submit her own name. Following that endorsement, the entire Democratic caucus supported Rozzi, while 16 Republicans crossed over to back him. Rozzi’s win comes after two months of uncertainty about which party would lead the chamber, though few observers guessed that the answer would be neither.

Democrats, including Rozzi, won 102 of the 203 seats in the House on Nov. 8, which appeared to set them up for their first majority since the 2010 GOP wave. However, Democrats could only claim 99 members because state Rep. Tony DeLuca was re-elected a month after he died, while fellow Pittsburgh-area Democrats Summer Lee and Austin Davis resigned weeks later to prepare to assume their new roles as congresswoman and lieutenant governor, respectively. Republicans therefore began Tuesday with a 101 to 99 advantage, but no one knew if that would be enough for the party to elect a speaker.

Indeed, a deadlock appeared certain after one Republican joined the Democratic caucus in voting to adjourn during the middle of the day―a tied vote that failed because the remaining 100 Republicans were opposed. Unexpectedly, though, multiple Republicans and Democrats soon nominated Rozzi, whose name hadn’t previously been seriously mentioned. Rozzi prevailed with the support of all of the Democrats and a minority of Republicans, including Bryan Cutler, who had been speaker going into November’s elections.

So, what happens next? First, there will almost certainly be a vacant GOP-held seat before long, as state Rep. Lynda Schlegel Culver is the favorite to win the Jan. 31 special election for a dark red state Senate district. Culver’s 108th House District supported Donald Trump 65-33 in 2020, but her absence could deny her party a crucial vote in the closely divided lower chamber until a special election could take place. PennLive.com says such a race likely wouldn’t take place before May 16, which is the same date as Pennsylvania's regular statewide primary.

As for the three vacant Democratic constituencies, both parties agree that a Feb. 7 special will go forward in DeLuca’s HD-32, which went for Joe Biden 62-36. In Pennsylvania special elections, the parties, rather than voters, choose nominees: Democrats have selected local party official Joe McAndrew, while Republicans are fielding pastor Clay Walker.

There’s no agreement, however, about when the contests for Lee’s and Davis’ constituencies will take place. That’s because legislative special elections are scheduled by the leader of the chamber with the vacant seat, but there was no speaker between late November, when the last session ended, and Tuesday. That duty, as a result, fell to the majority leader, and both McClinton and Cutler claimed that title in December, issuing dueling writs of election: McClinton set these two specials to also take place on Feb. 7, while Cutler picked May 16.

Cutler filed a lawsuit to block McClinton’s schedule, but the Pennsylvania Department of State is going forward with February specials right now. There’s no question that Democrats will hold Lee’s HD-34, which Biden took 80-19, but the president pulled off a smaller 58-41 win in Davis’ HD-35.

Democrats in the former district have picked Swissvale Borough Council President Abigail Salisbury, who will go up against kickboxing instructor Robert Pagane. The Democratic nominee to succeed Davis is Matt Gergely, who serves as finance director for the community of McKeesport. Local Republicans are running Don Nevills, who lost to Davis 66-34 in November; Nevills himself has said in his social media posts that the special will be Feb. 7.

P.S. Rozzi’s win makes this the second time in the 21st century that Pennsylvania Democrats successfully maneuvered to stop Republicans from taking the speakership. In 2006, Democrats likewise won a 102-101 majority, but one of their members, Thomas Caltagirone, soon announced he’d cross party lines to keep Republican John Perzel on as speaker instead of electing Democrat Bill DeWeese. DeWeese, who was speaker in 1994 when Democrats last controlled the chamber, ended up nominating Republican Dennis O'Brien rather than put his name forward; O’Brien ultimately won 105-97.

Democrats secured a workable majority the following year, and Keith McCall became the party’s first, and to date only, speaker since DeWeese. In a strange twist, DeWeese and Perzel went on to become cellmates after being convicted in separate corruption cases. Incidentally, one House Democrat heavily involved in the plan to make O'Brien speaker was Josh Shapiro, now the governor-elect of Pennsylvania.

Senate

AZ-Sen: Doug Ducey, whose tenure as governor ended on Monday, said before Christmas he was "not running for the United States Senate" and that "it's not something I'm considering." And just like two years ago, Ducey's fellow Republicans are not taking this seemingly unequivocal statement as final: Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, who is another Republican on Donald Trump's shit list, instead told The Hill, "I hope that he'll get in."

Former state Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, who narrowly lost last year's primary to succeed Ducey, may be more interested in campaigning for the Senate seat held by Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema. Vox's Christian Paz writes that Taylor Robson "told me she is not ruling out running for statewide office again," though it's not clear if the former regent said anything about the Senate in particular.

On the Democratic side, Rep. Ruben Gallego released late-December numbers from Public Policy Polling showing a tight race whether or not Sinema runs. The survey found Republican Kari Lake, who continues to deny her loss to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs, edging out Gallego 41-40, with Sinema grabbing 13%. When the incumbent is left out, however, it's Gallego who leads Lake 48-47. The congressman has made it clear he's likely to run, while NBC reported last month that Lake is trying to recruit Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb rather than campaign herself.

The poll was conducted days before The Daily Beast's Sam Brodey reported that Sinema's office had a 37-page guide for staffers that includes tasks that "appear to go right up to the line of what Senate ethics rules allow, if not over." Among other things, Brodey writes that Sinema requires her subordinates perform personal tasks for her, including arranging massages and buying groceries on their own dime, which she later reimburses them for.

The Senate's ethics handbook, though, specifies that "staff are compensated for the purpose of assisting Senators in their official legislative and representational duties, and not for the purpose of performing personal or other non-official activities for themselves or on behalf of others." Sinema's spokesperson told Brodey that "the alleged information—sourced from anonymous quotes and a purported document I can't verify—is not in line with official guidance from Sen. Sinema's office and does not represent official policies of Sen. Sinema's office."

IN-Sen, IN-Gov: Bellwether Research released mid-December numbers before Christmas for the 2024 GOP primaries for the Senate and governor: The firm previously worked for former Gov. Mitch Daniels, who is a prospective Senate candidate, but a Daniels consultant tells Politico's Adam Wren that this survey was done without his knowledge.

The firm tested out hypothetical Senate scenarios with and without Daniels, who just completed his tenure as president of Purdue University. We'll start with the former matchup:

former Purdue University President Mitch Daniels: 32

Rep. Jim Banks: 10

former Rep. Trey Hollingsworth: 9

Rep. Victoria Spartz: 7

Attorney General Todd Rokita: 7

Someone Else: 6

In the Daniels-free scenario, Rokita leads Banks 16-14 as Spartz and Hollingsworth grab 12% and 11%, respectively.

Spartz herself quickly publicized her own numbers from Response:AI that put Daniels in front with 35% as she and Banks deadlocked 14-14 for second. That survey placed Hollingsworth at 6% while two people who were not tested by Bellwether, 2022 House nominee Jennifer-Ruth Green and disgraced former Attorney General Curtis Hill, took 4% and 2%. Wren recently named Hill, whom we hadn't heard mentioned for Senate, as a possible candidate, though there's been no sign yet that he's thinking about campaigning.

None of the other Republicans tested in either poll are currently running for the Senate either, and Daniels' ultimate decision may deter some of them from getting in. Indeed, an unnamed person close to Spartz told Politico that she may decide not to go up against the former governor: The congresswoman, writes Wren, "declined to comment on that question, but told POLITICO she is seeking a meeting with Daniels before making her decision."

A Banks ally, though, insists his man "won't make his decision based on what others do and I think the poll numbers released by Daniels and Spartz will only embolden him to run."

Bellwether also posted numbers for the GOP race to succeed termed-out Gov. Eric Holcomb:

Sen. Mike Braun: 25

Attorney General Todd Rokita: 9

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch: 7

former Rep. Trey Hollingsworth: 6

Businessman Eric Doden: 3

Someone Else: 9

Braun, Crouch, and Doden are currently running.

Governors

KY-Gov: State Rep. Savannah Maddox announced days before Christmas that she was dropping out of the packed May Republican primary to face Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear.

An unnamed GOP source soon told the Lexington Herald Leader they believed Maddox's departure means that Papa John's founder John Schnatter "could get in the race, since he's got the resources and with Savannah not in the race it could open up a lane." Schnatter, who resigned as board chairman in 2018 after news broke that he'd used racist language, has not taken any obvious steps toward running ahead of Friday's filing deadline.

Self-funder Kelly Craft, meanwhile, is not waiting until the field fully takes shape to go up with the first TV campaign ad of the contest, which the paper says ran for $114,000 from Dec. 27 to Jan. 3. Craft uses the message to tout her roots growing up on a farm in Barren County in the south-central party of the state, and she goes on to tout how she went on to become ambassador to the United Nations. The ad shows photos of Craft with Donald Trump, who is supporting Attorney General Daniel Cameron for the GOP nod.  

MS-Gov: The Daily Journal reported before Christmas that Secretary of State Michael Watson is indeed considering taking on Gov. Tate Reeves in this August's Republican primary. Watson and other potential contenders have until the Feb. 1 filing deadline to make up their minds, but there's one name we can already cross off. While former state Rep. Robert Foster, who took third in 2019, reportedly was thinking about another campaign over the summer, he announced last week that he'd instead run for a seat on the DeSoto County Board of Supervisors.

NC-Gov, NC-??: The conservative Washington Examiner relayed in mid-December that former Rep. Mark Walker is considering seeking the Republican nomination for governor or to return to the House after his party crafts a new gerrymander. Walker last cycle campaigned for the Senate even though Donald Trump tried to persuade him to drop down and run for the lower chamber, but he earned just 9% of the primary vote for his stubbornness.

House

MD-05: Veteran Rep. Steny Hoyer told CNN Sunday that he hadn't ruled out seeking re-election in 2024 even though he's no longer part of the Democratic leadership. "I may. I may," the incumbent said about waging another run.

MD-08: Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin said last week that he'd "been diagnosed with Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma, which is a serious but curable form of cancer." Raskin added that he was "about to embark on a course of chemo-immunotherapy on an outpatient basis," and that "[p]rognosis for most people in my situation is excellent after four months of treatment." The congressman also said he planned to keep working during this time, and he was present Tuesday for the opening of the 118th Congress.  

NY-03: At this point in the George Santos saga, his entirely fictional life story is almost beside the point: When he's called on any of his lies, he just lies some more—it's pathological. But that same reckless behavior is also why the new Republican congressman-to-be is in serious legal jeopardy, at the local, state, federal, and, amazingly, international levels. And because of that, he's exceedingly unlikely to serve out a full term. So what happens if he resigns?

In short, there would be a special election, but in a break with past practice, we'd immediately know when it would take place—and it would happen quickly. Governors in New York previously had wide latitude over when to call elections to fill vacant posts, both for Congress and state legislature, and disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo notoriously abused this power, frequently delaying specials when it suited him.

But in 2021, as state law expert Quinn Yeargain explains, lawmakers finally passed legislation to correct this problem, which Cuomo signed shortly before resigning. Now, Gov. Kathy Hochul would be required to call a special election within 10 days of Santos' seat becoming vacant, and that election would have to take place 70 to 80 days afterward. This law has already come into play multiple times, including for two congressional special elections that took place last year.

One thing hasn't changed, though: There still would be no primaries. Instead, as per usual, nominations for Democrats and Republicans alike would be decided by small groups of party insiders. The actual election would, however, be hotly contested. While Joe Biden would have carried New York's 3rd District, which is based on the North Shore of Long Island, by a 54-45 margin, according to our calculations, Republican Lee Zeldin almost certainly won it in last year's race for governor. Santos dispatched Democrat Robert Zimmerman 52-44 after Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi left the seat open to pursue his own unsuccessful gubernatorial bid.

NY-17: Former Rep. Mondaire Jones told NY1 before Christmas that he was not ruling out seeking the Democratic nomination to take on the new Republican incumbent, Mike Lawler. Jones unsuccessfully decided to run in New York City last year in order to avoid a primary against DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney, who himself went on to lose to Lawler, but he made it clear a future campaign would take place in the area he'd represented. "I've also learned my lesson, and that is home for me is in the Hudson Valley," Jones said.

VA-04: Jennifer McClellan beat her fellow state senator, conservative Joe Morrissey, in an 85-14 landslide to win the Democratic nomination in the Dec. 19 firehouse primary to succeed the late Rep. Donald McEachin. McClellan should have no trouble defeating Republican nominee Leon Benjamin, who badly lost to McEachin in 2020 and 2022, in the Feb. 21 special election for this 67-32 Biden seat; McClellan's win would make her the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress.

WA-03: Democrats will still have election conspiracy theorist Joe Kent to kick around this cycle, as the 2022 GOP nominee declared before Christmas, "I'm running again in 2024."

DCCC: House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries announced ahead of Christmas that the new DCCC chair would be Rep. Suzan DelBene, who represents a Washington seat that Joe Biden carried 64-33. Jeffries' decision came weeks after House Democrats voted 166-38 to give the caucus' leader the opportunity to select the head of the DCCC rather than have the chair be elected by the full body. The new rule still requires members approve the choice, and they ratified DelBene two days after she was picked.

Attorneys General and Secretaries of State

AZ-AG: Democrat Kris Mayes' narrow win over election denier Abe Hamadeh was affirmed after a recount concluded last week, and Mayes was sworn in as attorney general on Monday. The Democrat's margin dropped from 511 to 280 votes; most of this difference came from dark red Pinal County, which said it had initially failed to count over 500 ballots because of "human error." Hamadeh characteristically refused to accept his defeat and announced Tuesday he was "filing a 'Motion for New Trial.'"

Judges

NY Court of Appeals: Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul nominated Hector LaSalle, an appeals court judge, to fill the vacant post of chief judge on New York's highest court just before the holidays, but her decision was immediately met with fierce resistance by state senators in her own party, 14 of whom have already publicly come out against the choice.

LaSalle, who was named to the Appellate Division by disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014, has compiled what City & State described as one of the "most conservative" records of any appellate judge in the state. Progressives have raised serious alarms over his hostility toward criminal defendants, labor unions, and especially reproductive rights: A group of law professors have pointed to a 2017 decision LaSalle signed on to that helped shield a network of so-called "crisis pregnancy centers" (which try to dissuade women from getting abortions) from an investigation by the state attorney general.

At stake is more than LaSalle's promotion, though: The seven-member top court, known as the Court of Appeals, has for several years been in the grips of a reactionary four-judge majority that has ruled against victims of police misconduct, workers seeking compensation for injuries on the job, and tenants who'd been overcharged by their landlords. Most notoriously, this quartet—all appointed by Cuomo—struck down new congressional and legislative maps passed by Democratic lawmakers last year on extremely questionable grounds and ordered that a Republican judge in upstate New York redraw them.

Leading this coalition was Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, who unexpectedly announced her resignation last year. That vacancy has given Hochul the chance to reshape the court, but instead she's tapped someone who appears poised to continue DiFiore's legacy. But while judicial confirmations in New York are normally sleepy affairs, a large number of senators—who'd be responsible for voting on LaSalle's nomination—immediately denounced the choice.

That chorus of opposition hit a crucial threshold shortly before the New Year when state Sen. Mike Gianaris, a member of leadership, became the 11th Democrat to say he would vote against LaSalle. With 42 Democrats in the 63-member upper chamber but only 28 still open to Hochul's pick, the governor would now have to rely on the support of Republicans to confirm LaSalle. None, however, have yet come out in favor.

There's no definite timeline for confirmation hearings or a vote on LaSalle's nomination, but if Hochul were to withdraw his name, she'd be able to choose from a list of six other candidates vetted by the state's Commission on Judicial Nomination. A coalition of progressive groups previously endorsed three individuals on that list while calling three others, including LaSalle, "unacceptable" (a seventh option was unrated). If instead LaSalle were voted down by the Senate, the entire process would start over again, with the commission once again reviewing potential candidates.

WI Supreme Court: Judge Everett Mitchell, a progressive candidate for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court this spring, was accused by his then-wife of sexual assault during their 2010 divorce proceeding, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Dan Bice reported on Tuesday. Mitchell was never charged with any wrongdoing and has denied the allegations, while his ex-wife, Merrin Guice Gill said her former spouse "should be evaluated on the work he has done and the work he is doing as a judge" rather than on her past accusations.

However, Guice Gill "declined to say whether she stood by the abuse allegations," telling Bice, "I'm not going to respond to that." During her divorce, Bice writes that she told the court that Mitchell had "undressed her and had sex with her without consent shortly after she took a sleeping pill" in 2007 and also provided documents showing she had informed both her therapist and a police officer about the alleged incident shortly afterwards. The accusations came up when she contacted police about a possible custody dispute involving the couple's daughter, but she declined to press charges, saying that she "was only concerned with her daughter's whereabouts."

Mitchell is one of two liberals seeking a spot on the Supreme Court, along with Judge Janet Protasiewicz. Two conservatives are also running, former Justice Dan Kelly and Judge Jennifer Dorow. All candidates will appear together on an officially nonpartisan primary ballot on Feb. 21, with the top two vote-getters advancing to an April 4 general election. The seat in question is being vacated by conservative Justice Pat Roggensack; should progressives win, they'd take control of the court from the current 4-3 conservative majority.

Legislatures

AK State House: A judge ruled ahead of Christmas that far-right state Rep. David Eastman's membership in the Oath Keepers does not preclude him from serving in elected office even though the state constitution prevents anyone from holding office who "advocates, or who aids or belongs to any party or association which advocates the overthrow by force or violence of the United States."

Goriune Dudukgian, the attorney representing an Eastman constituent who sued to block him from holding office, said Tuesday his camp would not appeal. No one has formed a majority coalition in the Alaska State House in the almost two months since the election.

NY State Senate: Democrats learned ahead of Christmas that they'd maintained a two-thirds supermajority in the upper chamber after a judge ruled that incumbent John Mannion had fended off Republican Rebecca Shiroff by 10 votes in his Syracuse-based seat. Shiroff conceded the contest, and Mannion's term began New Year's Day.

OH State House: While Democrats are deep in the minority in the Ohio state House, the caucus joined with enough GOP members on Tuesday to elect Republican Jason Stephens as speaker over Derek Merrin, who began the day as the heavy favorite to lead the chamber. Cleveland.com's Jeremy Pelzer writes, "Stephens, while conservative, is not considered to be as far to the right as Merrin."

The GOP enjoys a 67-32 majority, so a Merrin speakership appeared likely after he won November's caucus vote against Stephens. Pelzer writes that in the ensuing weeks there were "rumblings since then about some sort of challenge to Merrin," but that "the insurgency to lift him to the speaker's chair only picked up speed starting a few days ago."

Indeed, Minority Leader Allison Russo says Democrats decided just two hours before the vote to cast their lot in with Stephens. Another 22 Republicans joined them, however, which left Merrin with only 43 votes. Russo, whose caucus supplied most of the support for the new speaker, declared that there was "no grand deal," but "there were lots of discussions about things and areas of agreement on issues." She also relays that Merrin spoke to her about getting Democratic support, which very much did not end up happening.

This is the second time in the last few years that the Democratic minority has played a key role in helping a Republican win the gavel over the candidate favored by most of the GOP caucus, though Merrin himself was on the other side of that vote. In 2019, he was one of the 26 Republicans who joined that same number of Democrats in supporting Larry Householder over Speaker Ryan Smith. Unlike four years ago, though, Smith got the backing of 11 Democrats as well as 34 GOP members.

Stephens, for his part, was appointed to the chamber later that year to succeed none other than Smith, who resigned to become president of the University of Rio Grande and Rio Grande Community College. The victorious Householder, though, was removed as speaker in 2020 after being arrested on federal corruption charges; Householder's colleagues expelled him the following year, though Merrin voted to keep him in office.

WI State Senate: Former state Sen. Randy Hopper ended his brief comeback campaign days after Christmas and endorsed state Rep. Dan Knodl in the Feb. 21 Republican special election primary.

Mayors and County Leaders

Chicago, IL Mayor: The Chicago Electoral Board in late December removed two minor contenders, police officer Frederick Collins and freelance consultant Johnny Logalbo, from the Feb. 28 nonpartisan primary ballot after determining that they didn't have enough valid signatures to advance. However, challenges were dropped against activist Ja'Mal Green, Alderman Roderick Sawyer, and wealthy perennial candidate Willie Wilson, so they will be competing in what is now a nine-person race.

Prosecutors and Sheriffs

Philadelphia, PA District Attorney: Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court ruled Friday that state House Republicans failed to demonstrate any of the legally required standards for "misbehavior in office" when they voted to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner in November. The order, though, did not say if Krasner's trial before the state Senate, which is scheduled for Jan. 18, must be called off.

Obituaries

Lincoln Almond: Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Almond, a Republican who served from 1995 to 2003, died Tuesday at the age of 86. Almond, who made his name as the state's U.S. attorney, badly lost the 1978 general election to Democratic incumbent Joseph Garrahy, but he prevailed 16 years later by defeating state Sen. Myrth York in a close contest. You can find much more at WPRI's obituary.

Grab Bag

Where Are They Now?: Former Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III was chosen before Christmas to serve as the State Department's special envoy for economic affairs for Northern Ireland. Kennedy, who is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, was elected to the House in 2012 and left to unsuccessfully challenge Sen. Ed Markey in the 2020 Democratic primary.