The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
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Leading Off
● NY Redistricting: New York's high court just ordered the state's redistricting commission to get back to work and draw up new districts map for 2024. Yet while Democrats have long been rooting for exactly this outcome, just how aggressive a new map they can push for is an open question.
In a new piece analyzing the 4-3 ruling from the state's Court of Appeals, Stephen Wolf explains how we got here, just a year-and-a-half after a similarly divided court sided with Republicans in a previous round of litigation.
Wolf also discusses what steps to expect next and why Democrats face potential limits on their ability to draw the lines however they please. One restraint involves a law passed a decade ago that could prevent Democrats from making major tweaks to any commission proposals. The other is judicial in nature: Would the court step back in to block a partisan gerrymander it sees as too one-sided?
Read Wolf's complete analysis here.
Senate
● OH-Sen: Rich guy Bernie Moreno has released a new internal from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates that finds him leading Secretary of State Frank LaRose 23-19 in the March Republican primary, with state Sen. Matt Dolan at 18%. The memo says that an unreleased March survey had LaRose beating Dolan 23-16 as Moreno grabbed just 6%, and it attributes the shift to Moreno's ad campaign.
This is the second poll this candidate has publicized this month. Moreno's survey from co/efficient showed him edging out LaRose 15-14 as Dolan took 13%.
House
● CA-20: Outgoing Rep. Kevin McCarthy has endorsed GOP Assemblyman Vince Fong in the race to succeed him even though there are serious questions about whether the former McCarthy district director can even run for this reliably red seat.
The assemblyman filed for reelection ahead of last week's deadline before announcing Monday that he'd changed his mind and would campaign for Congress. (California automatically extended the filing deadline from Dec. 8 to Dec. 13 in House and legislative races where an eligible incumbent did not run.)
The California secretary of state's office told Politico Monday that it's too late for Fong to get off the ballot for the legislature and "a person cannot run for more than one office in the same election." However, it put out a statement the following day saying, “Because of the unusual circumstances, we are carefully reviewing the issue. We’ll provide clarifying information as soon as possible.”
"This is an unprecedented situation," Fong consultant Ryan Gardiner acknowledged to the Bakersfield Californian Monday, though he argued the path ahead was still viable. "A lot of this is dependent on how the filing process goes at the county and the larger procedure that we're having to go through now," Gardiner said. "We feel confident he will be a candidate for Congress in the March election."
Another Republican, Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux, now says he's thinking about campaigning for Congress. And to complicate things even more, former GOP state Sen. Andy Vidak, who expressed interest in running to replace McCarthy, tells gvwire.com he's raising money to succeed Fong if filing reopens for his Assembly seat.
● IL-12: Former state Sen. Darren Bailey has publicized an endorsement from 15th District Rep. Mary Miller for his March GOP primary bid against Miller's colleague, incumbent Mike Bost. All three Republicans are aligned with the far right, but Miller has a considerably better relationship with Bailey than with the neighboring congressman.
Miller and her husband, state Rep. Chris Miller, both backed Bailey as he launched his campaign against Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker last cycle. "If Darren Bailey is governor of Illinois," Chris Miller told the audience at the kickoff event, "then there is a God in Heaven." (Darren Bailey is not the governor of Illinois.) Bost, for his part, sided with Rodney Davis over the victorious Mary Miller in last year's incumbent vs. incumbent primary.
● NJ-08: Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla announced Tuesday that he would take on freshman Rep. Rob Menendez, the son of indicted Sen. Bob Menendez, in the June 4 Democratic primary. The presence of Bhalla, who would be the second Sikh to ever serve in Congress, assures Menendez a credible intraparty challenger in this safely blue seat. However, as Jeff Singer explains in a new piece, Bhalla faces a difficult fight—and bad blood has already begun to flow.
● NY-03: Politico reports that Republican leaders in Nassau County and Queens "are expected" to announce Friday who their nominee will be for the Feb. 13 special election to replace expelled Rep. George Santos. Democrats nominated former Rep. Tom Suozzi last week.
● NY-16: Westchester County Executive George Latimer has picked up an endorsement from the Civil Service Employees Association, which Politico's Nick Reisman says is the "largest public workers union in the state," for his June Democratic primary challenge to Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
● Texas: Candidate filing closed Monday for Texas' March 5 party primaries, but state election authorities do not yet have a complete list of contenders. We'll be running down the list of candidates who are competing in each competitive contest in a future Digest.
Prosecutors & Sheriffs
● Cook County, IL State's Attorney: The Chicago Teachers Union, which has long been an influential force in local politics, has endorsed attorney Clayton Harris in the March Democratic primary. Harris, who already had the backing of the Cook County Democratic Party and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, faces former Illinois Appellate Court Justice Eileen O'Neill Burke in the nomination contest to succeed their fellow Democrat, retiring incumbent Kim Foxx.
Campaign Action
