The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Carolyn Fiddler, and Matt Booker, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Leading Off
● NC Redistricting: North Carolina Republican legislators passed a new congressional map on Friday, but plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over the lines are challenging it in state court. That's created an awkward situation in the Tar Heel State where the state's U.S. House members, as well as potential congressional candidates, are looking at running for what Daily Kos Elections calls Schrödinger's seats: No one knows if they will exist in November, or if there will be completely different districts in their place.
Campaign Action
Still, for now at least, candidates are making noises about running under the legislature's new congressional map, which you can see here. Below is a rundown of developments for several seats. Note that we use the congressional district numbers for the new (and possibly) temporary map.
● NC-02: The new 2nd District in the Raleigh area backed Hillary Clinton 60-36, and GOP Rep. George Holding doesn't sound like he's looking to try to fight for another seat. Holding said last week, "I never came here to make a career out of being in Congress. There are plenty of other things to do."
● NC-06: Democrat Kathy Manning, who lost an expensive 2018 contest against GOP Rep. Ted Budd 54-46, said Friday she was considering seeking the new 6th District in the Greensboro area. This seat backed Clinton 59-38.
● NC-10, NC-13: The new map makes the aforementioned 6th District an extremely tough seat for the GOP, so it's exceedingly unlikely that Republican Rep. Mark Walker would run there. However, he's not ruling out taking on two GOP colleagues, Reps. Patrick McHenry in the 10th District or Ted Budd in the 13th District, in order to stay in Congress. The new 10th District in the Winston-Salem area backed Donald Trump 68-30, while the new 13th District south of Greensboro supported him by a similar 67-31.
Election Result Recaps
● Aurora, CO Mayor: Democrat Omar Montgomery conceded defeat in the five-way Nov. 5 mayoral race on Monday after final results showed him losing to Republican Mike Coffman by 215 votes. Coffman, who lost re-election in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District last year, initially led by 38-33 on election night, but the gap narrowed to 35.7-35.5 as more ballots were counted. Unfortunately, there still weren’t quite enough votes left to put Montgomery over the top.
However, the late-counted ballots did give progressives some surprisingly good news in races for what was a GOP-dominated City Council. While on election night it appeared that the body’s ideological composition would not change, progressives ended up unseating two conservative incumbents. The new Council will be made up of five Democrats, four Republicans, and one independent who often votes with the Democrats, though Coffman will be able to break any ties.
Senate
● MS-Sen: Businessman Gerard Gibert recently told the Clarion-Ledger that it was "highly unlikely" that he would challenge Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in the GOP primary, though he declined to rule it out. However, state Sen. and 2018 candidate Chris McDaniel and 2019 gubernatorial candidate Bill Waller Jr. said no to running against the incumbent. No notable Republicans have announced bids against Hyde-Smith, though former Miss America Organization president Josh Randle recently formed an exploratory committee.
Gubernatorial
● UT-Gov: Utah Policy reports the businessman Spence Eccles has told his friends and family that he will stay out of the GOP primary, though there’s no quote from Eccles.
House
● CA-22, CA-53, CA-25: The California Democratic Party held its convention over the weekend and made a few notable endorsements.
In the contest to take on GOP Rep. Devin Nunes in the 22nd District, the party supported former healthcare administrator Bobby Bliatout over financial advisor Phil Arballo. The party also endorsed San Diego City Council president Georgette Gómez in the crowded contest to succeed retiring Rep. Susan Davis in the safely blue 53rd District. The party did delay on taking sides in the special election to replace former Rep. Katie Hill, though, and said it would begin the process by calling for local endorsing caucuses in the 25th District soon.
And what exactly does the party's seal of approval actually mean? Endorsees are listed by name on the sample ballot that gets sent out to all voters in the March top-two primary, which, for the lucky beneficiaries, is almost like having someone else pay for a mailer to every voter in their district. (These same candidates can, of course, also include information about their endorsement in their own literature and advertisements.)
In expensive contests this can be a real boon, though candidates who fail to earn the party's endorsement certainly can and do win primaries regardless. Last year, for instance, the state party endorsed law professor Dave Min in the 45th District and neuroscientist Hans Keirstead in the 48th District, respectively. Min and Keirstead lost the top-two primary to fellow Democrat Katie Porter and Harley Rouda, who went on to unseat Republican incumbents that fall.
● IN-01: State Rep. Mara Candelaria Reardon said Thursday that she expects to announce this week whether she'll seek the Democratic nod for this open seat.
● KS-02: Democrats currently don't have a candidate against freshman Rep. Steve Watkins in this 56-37 Trump seat, and only one local politician is currently showing any interest in running. Topeka Mayor Michelle De La Isla told the Wichita Eagle, "Let's put it this way, I am being approached with the issue. I haven't made a decision yet." The filing deadline is at the start of June.
Right now, though, Watkins has much more to worry about in the August GOP primary. State Treasurer Jake LaTurner announced during the fall that he would drop out of the Senate race and run here instead, and he ended September with a $527,000 to $384,000 cash-on-hand lead over Watkins. LaTurner has pointed to Watkins' narrow 48-47 win in last year's general election and his weak fundraising to argue that the incumbent is jeopardizing Team Red's hold over what should be a safe seat.
● MD-07: Del. Terri Hill announced Monday that she was joining the February special Democratic primary. While most of the Democratic field is from Baltimore City, Hill lives in Howard County. Hill's seat in the legislature also includes some of Baltimore and Howard Counties, but none of Baltimore City. (Baltimore City is not part of Baltimore County.) Baltimore City makes up 52% of this district while Baltimore County is 26% and the balance is in Howard County.
● NY-02: 2018 Democratic nominee Liuba Grechen Shirley said Monday that she would not run for this competitive open seat. Babylon Town Councilor Jackie Gordon joined the race months before longtime GOP Rep. Peter King announced his retirement last week, and she's still the only notable Democratic primary candidate.
● NY-17: Democrat Evelyn Farkas, who served in the Department of Defense during the Obama administration, announced Monday that she would run for this reliably blue open seat in the Westchester County area. Farkas left the DoD in late 2015, and she went on to become a National Security Contributor on NBC and MSNBC.
Farkas used one of her TV appearances in 2017 to relay that she'd told her former colleagues and Capitol Hill staffers to "get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can before President Obama leaves the administration," explaining, "I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who left."
Farkas had continued by saying she was worried that, if Donald Trump's new team "found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump staff, dealing with Russians," they would "try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence." Prominent conservatives, including Sean Hannity, then mendaciously argued that Farkas had somehow admitted that the Obama White House had spied on Trump's campaign.
Farkas joins what has become a crowded Democratic primary to succeed retiring Rep. Nita Lowey. Also in the running are Assemblyman David Buchwald, state Sen. David Carlucci, former NARAL board chair Allison Fine, and attorney Mondaire Jones.
● NY-21: GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik infuriated progressives nationwide with her antics during last week's impeachment hearings, but while she successfully curried favor with Donald Trump, she also gave a massive fundraising boost to her opponent.
Stefanik sought to violate House Intelligence Committee rules by asking questions during time reserved for the committee's chair, Democrat Adam Schiff, and its top-ranking Republican, Devin Nunes. She then hopped on Twitter to lie about why she'd been cut off, falsely claiming that Schiff "REFUSES to let duly elected Members of Congress ask questions to the witness, simply because we are Republicans."
Progressives responded by opening their wallets in a big way for Democrat Tedra Cobb, who announced Sunday that she'd raised $1 million in just three days. The congresswoman's campaign, by contrast, has declined to say how much it brought in over the weekend. Stefanik had a $1.3 million to $508,000 cash-on-hand lead over Cobb at the end of September, though that gap may have tightened.
This is the second consecutive matchup between Cobb and Stefanik, who won last year's race 56-42. While Cobb raised a credible $1.5 million for that contest, Stefanik's rural district in the farthest upstate reaches of New York insulated her: New York's 21st swung from 52-46 for Barack Obama to 54-40 Trump, and Republican gubernatorial nominee Marc Molinaro also defeated Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo by a wide 59-35 margin there in 2018.
● VA-07: On Monday, two weeks after he won re-election in his reliably red seat, GOP Del. John McGuire announced that he would challenge freshman Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger. McGuire is a retired Navy SEAL who first won a spot in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017.
● House: The conservative American Action Network is spending a total of $7 million on TV and digital ads in 37 House seats attacking Democrats over impeachment. Politico has the total size-of-the-buy for several of those seats, including the number of gross ratings points (a term we explain here). You can also find one of those ads, which goes after Democratic Rep. Joe Cunningham in South Carolina's 1st District, here.
Legislative
● TX State House: Gov. Greg Abbott has scheduled Jan. 28 runoffs for three special elections for the state House, including in HD-28. This suburban Houston seat, which was vacated by Republican John Zerwas, backed Donald Trump 53-43 and supported GOP Sen. Ted Cruz by a smaller 51-48 spread last year.
The district hosted an all-party primary on Nov. 5 and Eliz Markowitz, the lone Democrat in the race, took first with 39%, while Republican Gary Gates earned second with 28%. Overall, the six Republican candidates outpaced Markowitz 61-39. That's a tough deficit for Markowitz to overcome, but January turnout could be more favorable to her than it was this month.
Markowitz may also benefit from increased scrutiny of Gates now that he's the one Republican competing here. Back in 2016, when he was seeking the GOP nod for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission, elements of Gates' checkered past were brought to the surface. In 2000, Child Protective Services removed his 13 children from his home, saying they were in "immediate danger."
Soon after, a judge returned the kids and the case was dropped, but not before serious accusations were levied against Gates, including allegations that he made his children miss meals as a form of punishment. Gates went on to lose his primary by a narrow 51-49.
● VA State House: Republican Del. Chris Stolle formally requested a recount on Monday after Virginia's Board of Elections certified the results of this month's elections, which left him trailing Democrat Nancy Guy by 27 votes in the 83rd State House District. It may be a while before we have final results, though: In 2017, a similar recount did not conclude until late December.
If Guy holds on to her lead, that would give Democrats a net gain of six seats and a 55-45 majority in the lower chamber, along with their 21-19 advantage in the Senate.
Other Races
● Orange County, CA Board of Supervisors: Former Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez announced on Saturday that she would end her campaign against Republican incumbent Don Wagner, who defeated her 42-37 for this seat in the March special election. Democrats may already have another candidate soon, though, since Orange County Fairgrounds board member Ashleigh Aitken said Friday that she'd run for this office if Sanchez didn't. Aitken campaigned for mayor of Anaheim last year and lost to Republican Harry Sidhu in a tight 32.5-31.9 contest.
Orange County has rapidly been moving to the left in recent years, and last year, Democrats won their first seat on the five-member Board of Supervisors since 2006. Both Wagner and fellow GOP Supervisor Andrew Do are up for re-election next year, and Democrats need to defeat them both to take their first majority on the body in living memory.
Grab Bag
● International Digest: We regret to inform you that, after nearly four years and 42 issues, this is the final edition of the Daily Kos International Elections Digest. We will continue to cover major overseas elections in our flagship newsletter, the Morning Digest.
After nearly a year of uncertainty over Brexit and an exodus of 21 Conservative MPs from the party that caused hardline Prime Minister Boris Johnson to lose his parliamentary majority, the U.K. will finally hold an election on Dec. 12 that could seal the fate of how the country leaves the European Union. Meanwhile, Canada's Liberals defeated the Conservatives to win another term in government, Spain's left failed to gain a majority in early elections and will still have to form a potentially unwieldy coalition, and Tunisia has chosen its second democratically elected president. Read about these stories and more in the November edition of the International Digest.