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: After North Carolina's legislative districts were struck down last week for violating the state constitution, Republican legislators unveiled their first-draft proposal to fix their illegal gerrymander of the state Senate late on Tuesday.
Campaign Action
Shown at the top of this post (click here for a larger version), the GOP’s new map alters the 21 districts that were invalidated (out of 50 total) as a result of the court's ruling. Republicans contend they randomly selected the new map from a set of computer-generated proposals used as evidence at trial, but as we'll explain below, the proposed map was not truly chosen at random, and Republicans are likely only taking this approach to give themselves political cover.
The court's criteria mandate that any new maps make a "reasonable" effort to draw lines that "improve the compactness" of the legislature’s districts and split fewer precincts compared to the illegal versions. Mapmakers are allowed to consider preserving the integrity of municipalities and avoid pairing incumbents in the same districts, but they are prohibited from relying on election data or factoring partisan considerations into account—the very things a political gerrymander relies on.
Republicans therefore have produced no demographic or electoral statistics describing their new map, which is why we’ve calculated them ourselves. This spreadsheet includes demographic data drawn from the 2010 census, which is the legal basis for any redistricting plan, and the results of every partisan statewide election from 2008 to 2016 for every district.
Under this analysis, the GOP’s Senate proposal discriminates against Democratic voters less than the map that was struck down, but it still discriminates against them. One straightforward way to assess how much this legislative map does (or doesn't) favor one party is to sort each seat in each chamber by Donald Trump’s margin of victory over Hillary Clinton and see how the seat in the middle—known as the median seat—voted.
Because the state Senate has an even number of seats, we average the two middle seats to come up with the median point in the chamber. That median seat voted for Trump by a 54-44 margin, 6 points to the right of his 50-47 win statewide. In other words, to capture a bare majority in the Senate, Democrats would have to win seats that Trump carried by 10 points (at least), even though swingy North Carolina only voted for Trump by 4 (when rounded).
What’s more, the process by which this map was selected presents its own problems, which could lead to the court stepping in and drawing its own maps. Because this is now the third time courts have struck down legislative districts that Republicans drew this decade, the court's order mandated strict rules about where and how the remapping could be conducted. Specifically, the judges told Republicans that they were required to “conduct the entire remedial process in full public view” and make “any relevant computer screen visible to legislators and public observers.”
But the computer-generated maps from which the GOP cobbled together their proposal were not drawn “in full public view.” To the contrary: They were drawn by University of Michigan professor Jowei Chen, who simulated 2,000 district maps based on criteria similar to the court's own, half of which sought to protect incumbents and half of which didn't.
As an expert witness for the plaintiffs, Chen's maps and analysis were furnished as evidence of the GOP's extreme gerrymandering (and accepted as such by the court). They were not generated with the intent that legislators or the court would adopt one of them, especially since they didn’t take into account more subjective redistricting criteria, such as the preservation of communities of interest.
Furthermore, Republicans may very well be relying on Chen's maps to launder their partisan intent. That's because the GOP's legal team had access to the partisan statistics accompanying Chen's maps—the exact type of data the court forbade Republicans from using.
While none of Chen’s plans leaned as far toward the GOP as the party’s illegal gerrymanders did, some could provide Republicans with a significant unfair edge. Signs of the GOP's hidden intent became clearer on Monday, when attorneys representing Republican legislative leaders accidentally sent the forbidden partisan data to legislators, potentially tainting the entire process in the eyes of the court.
In addition, the computer-generated map selected on Tuesday used incumbency protection as one of its criteria, which could be problematic if the court ultimately determined this criterion was merely a pretext to grant the GOP undue partisan advantage. Notably, Senate Republicans’ counterparts in the state House have said they won’t seek to protect incumbents in any remedial plans they draw.
Given how things have played out so far, the map above is likely far from final. But the GOP's actions have created a real possibility that the court will step in and redraw some or all of the illegal districts itself.
Senate
● CO-Sen: On Wednesday, former U.S. Attorney John Walsh became the second notable Democrat to abandon Colorado's Senate race and endorse former Gov. John Hickenlooper, following former state Sen. Mike Johnston last week. A number of other prominent contenders are still running in the primary, though limited polling has shown Hickenlooper with wide leads for the right to take on Republican Sen. Cory Gardner next year.
● TX-Sen: Two new polls of the Democratic Senate primary unsurprisingly show that the field is little known, while around half of voters are undecided. One survey, from the University of Texas on behalf of the Texas Tribune, finds former Air Force helicopter pilot MJ Hegar leading the way with 11%, while state Sen. Royce West takes 5% and all other contenders are in the low single digits. A giant 66% of respondents say they haven't yet made up their minds—unsurprising in a state this large, six months away from the election.
A second poll, from Republican pollster Ragnar Research, is similar. Hegar is on top, just barely, with 12, while West and two other candidates, Houston City Councilor Amanda Edwards and nonprofit director Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, all sit at 10. Former Rep. Chris Bell is just behind at 9, and 49% are undecided. It's not clear whether the poll was conducted for a client of Ragnar's and, if so, who that client might be.
A third Texas poll, from Quinnipiac, didn't test the Senate primary but did ask about Republican Sen. John Cornyn's popularity. Cornyn's job approval rating stands at 41-34, which is actually worse than fellow Sen. Ted Cruz's 49-40 mark, suggesting that last year's close Senate race may not have been due to any unique vulnerabilities on Cruz's part.
Gubernatorial
● UT-Gov: Wealthy businessman Jeff Burningham, who has been running for governor in all but name since January, finally made his campaign official on Tuesday. Burningham joins Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox as the second notable Republican running to succeed Gov. Gary Herbert.
House
● CA-48: In case this whole "running for Congress" thing doesn't work out next year, Republican Michelle Steel already has a backup plan in place: run for state comptroller in 2022.
Steel, an Orange County supervisor, is currently challenging freshman Democratic Rep. Harley Rouda in California's 48th Congressional District, but as the Orange County Register notes, she has $21,000 stashed away in a campaign committee for a statewide bid for comptroller three years from now.
What's particularly interesting is that the most recent donation to that account came on May 2 of this year—a week after Steel launched her congressional bid. Generally speaking, if you want to convince voters you deserve to be elected to a particular office, it's probably a good idea to avoid telegraphing your intentions to run for some other post.
P.S. California has not elected a Republican as comptroller since 1970.
● KS-01: As expected, former Lt. Gov. Tracey Mann became the first Republican to announce a bid for Kansas' open 1st Congressional District on Wednesday. A couple of other Republicans are publicly weighing bids for this conservative district, which covers nearly all of the western part of the state and is being left open by GOP Rep. Roger Marshall, who is running for Senate.
● WI-07: Former Gov. Scott Walker has endorsed state Sen. Tom Tiffany in the expected special election for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District in the northwestern part of the state. So far, Tiffany is the only notable Republican to join the race, which will take place as a result of GOP Rep. Sean Duffy's impending resignation next week. (And if you did a double-take because you remembered that Walker's son Matt is also considering a bid for Congress, understandable! The junior Walker, however, is looking at the open 5th District in the Milwaukee suburbs.)