Morning Digest: Seriously, are any GOP Senate recruits actually from the states they're running in?

Republican Eric Hovde, candidate for Wisconsin's U.S. Senate seat

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

Dave McCormick, Sam Brown, Tim Sheehy, Nella Domenici, Mike Rogers, and now Eric Hovde. What do they have in common? Well, they're all Republican Senate candidates … and they all have deep ties to states other than the ones they're running in. Hovde, who joined the transplant brigade on Tuesday, owns a multi-million home in sunny Southern California and won't even say how much time he's spent in Wisconsin—but he is rich. Jeff Singer explains why this latest GOP recruit might, like his brethren, struggle to prove his bona fides as he seeks to flip a Democratic seat.

He came into office as a self-professed "radical" but has since earned a reputation as a collaborative deal-maker. Now Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is looking to add "governor" to his unlikely resume. Singer recounts Baraka's unusual career—which includes an appearance on a celebrated R&B album—and handicaps the large and growing field of Democrats seeking to become New Jersey's next chief executive in 2025.

It seems like the on-again, off-again brush war between Donald Trump and the Club for Growth is off again … maybe? In one congressional race in North Carolina, a rival conservative group is savaging the Club's preferred candidate by reminding folks of past hostilities between Trump and the Club. Yet in another House contest down in Texas, the two erstwhile enemies are behaving like nominal allies. But in Trumpworld, the enemy of your enemy is probably still your enemy. Make sure to stick around for Singer's kicker, because it's unlikely either side has forgotten this … slight.

House

● CA-20, IL-12, NC-14: Donald Trump on Tuesday endorsed a trio of Republican candidates for the U.S. House: California Assemblyman Vince Fong, Illinois Rep. Mike Bost, and North Carolina state House Speaker Tim Moore. 

Fong, who is running to succeed former Rep. Kevin McCarthy in his state's 20th District, probably needs the most help, as he's going up against a crowded field of opponents in the March 5 top-two primary as well as the March 19 special election for the remainder of McCarthy's term. Moore, by contrast, only faces underfunded opponents in the GOP primary for North Carolina's 14th District, which is also on March 5.

Bost, who is fighting for renomination on March 19 in Illinois' 12th District, probably is located somewhere between these two poles. The congressman faces a well-known challenger in former state Sen. Darren Bailey, who was the party's 2022 nominee for governor. Bost, though, ended 2023 with a massive $1.4 million to $117,000 cash on hand advantage, and there's been no serious outside spending to help the challenger overcome that gap.

● FL-13: Democratic Rep. Kathy Castor has endorsed Whitney Fox, a former local transit official, in her bid to oust first-term Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna. Since 2007, Castor has represented Florida's Tampa-based 14th District, which is adjacent to the 13th District that Fox is seeking in the St. Petersburg area.

Fox is the only Democrat to report raising substantial sums in 2023, taking in $199,000 in the fourth quarter of the year and finishing December with $151,000 in the bank. That haul outstripped Luna's $151,000 take, though the incumbent had a larger $550,000 on hand. 

However, another notable Democrat, former Department of Health and Human Services official Sabrina Bousbar, entered the race in late January after the new quarter began. The 13th District, which Republicans redrew after the most recent census to make it redder, favored Donald Trump 53-46. Florida's primary is on Aug. 20.

● MT-02: State school superintendent Elsie Arntzen announced earlier this month that she'd seek the GOP nod for Montana's 2nd District. Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale has not yet announced if he'll seek reelection after pulling the plug on his fledgling Senate campaign last week, and Arntzen does not appear to have directly addressed whether she's willing to oppose him. Indeed, a spokesperson told the Harve Daily News on Sunday that, while his boss was "all in," he needed to check if that meant she'd run against Rosendale.

● NJ-08: A new poll for Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla finds a very different state of play in New Jersey's 8th Congressional District compared with a recent survey from Rep. Rob Menendez of the state's June 4 Democratic primary. Bhalla's internal, conducted by GQR, puts Menendez up just 44-41, a far cry from Menendez's 46-24 lead in the incumbent's polling from TargetSmart.

One difference between the two surveys, however, is that Menendez also tested an underfunded third candidate, businessman Kyle Jasey, who took just 6%; Bhalla's poll didn't include him. A memo from GQR's Anna Greenberg further argues that her firm sampled likely voters and claims that the congressman's poll only surveyed registered voters.

But Menendez's pollster, Ben Lazarus, pushed back on that characterization in remarks to the Hudson County View's John Heinis. Lazarus says that respondents were "screened for their likelihood to vote in the primary" and called Greenberg's assessment of TargetSmart's sample "completely inaccurate."

● OR-05: Lynn Peterson, who is president of the Portland area's unusual Metro Council, dropped out of the Democratic primary for Oregon's competitive 5th Congressional District on Tuesday and gave her backing to state Rep. Janelle Bynum. Peterson had struggled to raise money despite being the first Democrat to launch a challenge last June, and her path to the nomination grew narrower after the DCCC added Bynum to its Red to Blue program for top candidates last month.

Peterson's departure sets up what's now a one-on-one May 12 matchup between Bynum and attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner, the Democrats' nominee in 2022, for the right to take on first-term Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Another Democrat, tech executive Matthew Davie, filed FEC paperwork in January, but he still does not appear to have said anything publicly about running. The filing deadline is March 12.

● TN-07: Former state Rep. Brandon Ogles over the weekend became the first notable Republican to announce a campaign to succeed Rep. Mark Green, a hardliner who unexpectedly decided to retire from the 7th District last week. Ogles is the cousin of Rep. Andy Ogles, who has spent most of his first term representing the neighboring 5th District fending off questions about whether he fabricated large parts of his life story.

Brandon Ogles may have more to worry about from his old association with a different Tennessee Republican, though. The Nashville Scene notes that Ogles was close to Glen Casada, who resigned as state House speaker in 2019 after the news broke that he'd exchanged racist and sexist text messages with his top aide. When Casada finally announced two years later that he wouldn't seek reelection, Ogles reacted by praising him as a "strong conservative voice [that] will be greatly missed." 

Casada is set to go on trial for corruption in another matter on Nov. 6, which is well after the Aug. 1 primary to replace Green and one day after the general election.

● WA-05: State Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber, who holds the title of Republican floor leader, announced Tuesday that she was joining the August top-two primary to succeed retiring Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Maycumber, who has served in the legislature since 2017, launched her effort with endorsements from state Rep. Mary Dye and Spokane County Board of Commissioners Chair Mary Kuney, who had each expressed interest in running themselves.

Prosecutors & Sheriffs

● Harris County, TX District Attorney: The University of Houston has released the first poll we've seen of the March 5 Democratic primary for Harris County district attorney, and it shows former prosecutor Sean Teare decisively beating incumbent Kim Ogg 59-21. The winner will take on attorney Dan Simons, who has the GOP side to himself, in the general election to become the top prosecutor in America's third-most populous county.

Ogg made history in 2016 when she became both the first gay person elected to this post and the first Democrat to serve as district attorney in nearly four decades, but she's long had a fraught relationship with influential party figures.

The leadership of the Harris County Democratic Party voted in December to condemn Ogg for what it said was her failure to represent the party's values, and she's drawn more unfavorable headlines since then. Arguably the worst was an early February Houston Chronicle story titled, "Thousands of Houstonians are sent to jail with no legal basis under DA Ogg, judges say."

Teare has also faulted Ogg for a huge backlog of criminal cases and for overcrowding at the local prison. "These are things that are pretty easily fixable," he told the Texas Tribune, "but you've got someone in that office right now that has no interest in fixing anything."

Legislatures

● LA Redistricting: Louisiana Republicans have appealed a recent lower court ruling striking down the state's legislative maps for discriminating against Black voters to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mayors & County Leaders

● Bridgeport, CT Mayor: Gov. Ned Lamont on Tuesday endorsed Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim a week before his Feb. 27 general election showdown against former city official John Gomes, a fellow Democrat who is running under the banner of the state Independent Party.

Lamont himself beat Ganim 81-19 in the gubernatorial primary in 2018, and he remained neutral during the first three matchups that took place over the last six months between the incumbent and Gomes. (Yes, three. We have the backstory here.)

The governor, though, seemed to accept Ganim's 56-44 victory in the Democratic primary over Gomes last month as definitive even before he took sides this week: Following the latest election, a spokesperson for Lamont said he was "ready to turn the page," though that wasn't enough to convince Gomes to drop out of the general election.

Ad Roundup

• MT-Sen: More Jobs, Less Government - pro-Tim Sheehy (R)

• ND-Gov: Tammy Miller (R) 

• AL-01: Jerry Carl (R-inc) - anti-Barry Moore (R-inc)