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
● GA Supreme Court: Former Democratic Rep. John Barrow announced Monday that he'll challenge Georgia Supreme Court Justice Andrew Pinson, a move that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Greg Bluestein characterized as a "surprise."
The May 21 race, which will take place on the same day the state holds its downballot primaries, is officially nonpartisan, but Pinson and almost every other member of the nine-person body were appointed by Republican governors. The one exception is Justice John Ellington, who won a six-year term at the ballot box in 2018 with support from figures in both parties.
Barrow himself is trying to revive a once-promising political career almost a decade after leaving elected office. Barrow was elected to the U.S. House in 2004 as a moderate Democrat, and his crossover appeal was strong enough for him to win reelection four times despite repeated GOP attempts to gerrymander him out of his district.
But the 2014 red wave was too much for him to overcome, and Barrow decisively lost reelection to Republican Rick Allen. Barrow sought a comeback in 2018 when he ran for secretary of state, but he lost a tight 52-48 runoff to Republican Brad Raffensperger.
The former congressman soon launched a campaign to succeed retiring Justice Robert Benham, who was the state Supreme Court's last Democratic appointee. That election, though, was called off after Benham decided to resign rather than serve out his term, due to a Georgia law that allows newly appointed judges to spend at least six months on the bench before they have to face the voters.
Barrow sued to force an election to take place in 2020 but was unsuccessful, and Kemp's replacement pick, Carla Wong McMillian, went on to win a full term in 2022 without opposition.
Barrow launched his new effort by taking the court’s GOP majority to task for ruling in favor of Georgia's six-week abortion ban last year, though Pinson recused himself from the decision. (Only Ellington dissented.) "Today Georgia law takes away the right of women and their doctors to make these decisions for themselves," Barrow said. "Tomorrow it'll be family planning or IVF treatment. And Andrew Pinson has been in on that from the start."
Primary Night
● Primary Night: The 2024 downballot primaries begin Tuesday with what promises to be the year's biggest election night from now until November. Jeff Singer has our preview of a jumbo-sized evening covering the big races to watch in Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina, and Texas. And for even more, check out Bolts' look at Texas' key primaries for district attorney and sheriff.
However, while we'll know the winner of many of these contests on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, it may take a while longer to learn who will be advancing out of California's top-two primaries. A key reason why: The Golden State, which permanently adopted universal mail voting in 2021, allows ballots to be counted so long as they're postmarked by Election Day and received a week afterward.
And because there's a huge gulf in partisan preferences over when and how to vote, each batch of newly counted ballots can differ greatly from those counted just before or after. Those differences could make all the difference in contests where two candidates are locked in a tight race for the vital second spot in the November general election.
We'll be kicking off our first primary liveblog of the year at Daily Kos Elections when the first polls close at 7:30 PM ET in North Carolina and will continue deep into the night as all these races unfold. You can also keep up with our blow-by-blow coverage on X. See you then!
Senate
● MI-Sen: Actor Hill Harper received an endorsement on Friday from former Democratic Rep. Brenda Lawrence, who was one of the most prominent Black elected officials in the state during her four terms representing the Detroit area. Lawrence, who retired last cycle, said last January that she was considering running to succeed retiring Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow because she wanted to ensure there was a "strong African American" candidate, though she never again showed any obvious interest.
Lawrence's endorsement came two days after Harper blew past his self-imposed Feb. 28 deadline to file a revised financial disclosure form, a promise he made in November after he claimed in his original filing that he had no bank accounts and earned no income during the prior two years. A spokesperson for Harper, who self-funded $463,000 last year, told the Detroit News last week that "[t]he legal team is finalizing the disclosure and we will update you on the status." Harper is the underdog against Rep. Elissa Slotkin in the August Democratic primary, where limited polling has shown the congresswoman with enormous leads.
On the Republican side, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig endorsed former Rep. Mike Rogers on Monday, a move that comes about three weeks after Craig ended his own campaign for Senate. Earning support from the far-right Craig could make it easier for Rogers to win over hardliners, though the congressman—once a Donald Trump skeptic—has already been doing whatever he can to appeal to MAGA voters.
● NJ-Sen: Former financier Tammy Murphy defeated Rep. Andy Kim at the Bergen County Democratic Party's Tuesday convention, winning the organization's backing in a 64-36 vote among more than 1,100 delegates. The victory was Murphy's first at an open convention with a secret ballot and grants her preferred placement on ballots for the June 4 primary in Bergen County, the state's most populous.
As the New Jersey Globe's Joey Fox noted, though, party chair Paul Juliano "deserves much of the credit for Murphy's win." Juliano, who last year was appointed to run the Meadowlands sports complex by Murphy's husband, Gov. Phil Murphy, endorsed Murphy's Senate bid immediately after she launched her campaign in November and encouraged more than 100 other local leaders to follow suit.
At the time of Juliano's endorsement, the Globe's David Wildstein characterized the move as equivalent to the county party itself backing Murphy. Fox later wrote, "In an organization where the county committee almost always goes along with the choices of its leader, that's probably the end of the story for Kim." But Kim nonetheless chose to contest the endorsement, with Fox saying Tuesday night that he'd "put up an unexpectedly strong fight." But Murphy, he concluded was "the undisputed winner."
Kim enjoyed better news over the weekend when he prevailed by wide margins in secret ballot votes in Sussex and Warren counties. Wildstein previously described these two small counties in the northwestern corner of the state as "the North and South Dakota of New Jersey," due both to their diminutive size and their maverick politics. (As Wildstein pointed out, they were the only two counties in the Garden State to back Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016.)
Murphy, meanwhile, locked down the so-called "county line" in Union County, where she'd previously been endorsed by the party chair, Nicholas Scutari—who also happens to be president of the state Senate. There, a small "screening committee" ratified Scutari's choice on a 19-2 vote.
Like in Bergen, Murphy will receive a preferential slot on the primary ballot in Union, while Kim will enjoy the same treatment in Warren. Sussex, though, is an exception: It's one of just two Jersey counties, along with Salem, that doesn't use the "line" system. Instead, these two counties use the "office block" ballot found in every other state. Under this system, candidates are grouped based on the office they are seeking, not on whether they have been endorsed by a political party.
House
● CO-04: As Rep. Lauren Boebert tries to convince Republican primary voters in a district she's never represented that they should return her to Congress, she just earned the endorsement of a man who can probably best help her make that case, Donald Trump. Boebert enjoys a wide financial lead over her intra-party opponents ahead of Colorado's June 25 nomination contest, but her top rivals all have far deeper ties than she does to the 4th District, which she's now seeking after serving the 3rd District for three terms.
● DE-AL: State Treasurer Colleen Davis, who ended her own bid for Delaware's open congressional seat last week, has endorsed state Sen. Sarah McBride in the September Democratic primary. McBride faces Eugene Young, the director of the state's Housing Authority, in the race to succeed Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is running for Senate.
● NE-02, NE-Sen-B: Businessman Dan Frei learned just before candidate filing closed Friday that he'll be the only candidate challenging Rep. Don Bacon in the May 14 Republican primary, though he still has a tough task ahead of him. A second contender, Michael Connely, announced that he'd instead run against Rep. Mike Flood in the 1st District even as he acknowledged to the Nebraska Examiner that he'd be just a "speed bump" for Flood.
Democrats, though, are hoping that Frei, who came shockingly close to beating then-Rep. Lee Terry in the 2014 primary, can send Bacon careering off course in the swingy 2nd District. Democratic state Sen. Tony Vargas, who lost to Bacon 51-49 last cycle, has no intra-party opposition in his rematch campaign for an Omaha-based seat that Joe Biden took 52-46 in 2020. (Vargas filed last month because of a unique state law requiring elected officials running for office to file by Feb. 15, even if they're seeking a different post than the one they currently hold.)
Bacon is the only member of the state's all-GOP congressional delegation who looks like he'll have anything to worry about in this year's primaries or general elections. While wealthy agribusinessman Charles Herbster expressed interest last year in waging a primary campaign against appointed Sen. Pete Ricketts, Herbster did not put his name forward. You can find a list of people who did file here.
● NJ-09: The New Jersey Globe's David Wildstein reports that Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah plans to launch a challenge later this week against longtime Rep. Bill Pascrell in the June 4 Democratic primary. Pascrell recently earned the support of party leaders in all three counties that make up the solidly blue 9th District, and two other potential opponents, Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter and Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh, both previously declined bids. Prospect Park is a small community of 6,300 in Passaic County.
● NV-03: Music composer and sound designer Marty O'Donnell has joined the Republican primary to take on Democratic Rep. Susie Lee for Nevada's swing 3rd Congressional District in the Las Vegas area.
While O'Donnell is far from a household name, one of the many projects he's worked on is quite famous: He helped compose the soundtracks for several of the "Halo" games, which are part of one of the best-selling video game franchises in history (a big-budget TV show based on the series is now streaming).
O'Donnell's musical success has apparently made him rich enough to self-fund "significant money," according to the Nevada Independent's Tabitha Mueller. While O'Donnell has not run for office before, Mueller notes that the consultants who helped Republican Joe Lombardo win the 2022 gubernatorial race are running O'Donnell's campaign.
O'Donnell joins a GOP primary that includes former state Treasurer Dan Schwartz, former state Sen. Elizabeth Helgelien, and conservative columnist Drew Johnson. However, national Republicans have struggled to find a strong challenger against Lee in this competitive district, which Joe Biden carried 52-46. Helgelien and Johnson have both raised little from donors, and although Schwartz promised to self-fund $1 million when he joined the race in January, he has a poor electoral track record.
● OH-09: J.R. Majewski's on-again, off-again relationship with being a candidate for public office is off again—at least, as of this writing. Majewski tweeted on Saturday that he was "suspending his campaign" for Congress, three days after he said he'd remain in the race, which was one day after he said he was thinking about quitting the race, which was five months after he returned to the race, which was six weeks after he threatened to rejoin the race, which was two months after he dropped out of the race, which was six weeks after he joined the race for a rematch against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur.
Fear not, Majewski fans: In his tweet, the erstwhile contender promised, "The best is yet to come." Until it does, though, the GOP contest is now a one-on-one battle between former state Rep. Craig Riedel and state Rep. Derek Merrin, who launched a late bid at the behest of establishment Republicans after Riedel offered mild criticisms of Donald Trump. Majewski's name will remain on the ballot, though, as early voting is already underway in the March 19 primary.
● TX-18: Just days before Tuesday's primary, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee earned endorsements from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Jackson Lee faces a stiff challenge from former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards, though the congresswoman did get some other welcome news recently when a third minor candidate, businessman Robert Slater, dropped out and threw his support to her.
● WI-08: State Sen. Andre Jacque has joined the race for Wisconsin's open 8th Congressional District, setting up a battle in the GOP primary with former state Sen. Roger Roth. Jacque launched his campaign by promoting himself as an ardent foe of so-called "Republicans in Name Only," saying that his email address was once "wiRINOhunter."
Jacque and Roth, though, may not have the August primary to themselves as they campaign for this conservative seat in the northeastern corner of the state. Political consultant Alex Bruesewitz has repeatedly expressed interest, though Spectrum News reported last month that he lives in Florida. Brown County Director of Administration Chad Weininger, who lost last year's race for mayor of Green Bay, has also talked about getting in.
● WI Redistricting: The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected a request by Democrats to revisit the state's congressional map on Friday, ensuring that the current lines, which favor Republicans, will be used again this year.
The court did not provide an explanation of its reasoning in a terse order. However, newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz said she did not take part in the decision because she had yet to join the bench when the lawsuit was first filed. Consequently, it's possible a new challenge could be brought in the future.
As a result of this ruling, the congressional battlefield for 2024 appears to be set, barring unlikely decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court regarding a case out of South Carolina, federal courts in a case involving Louisiana, or the Florida Supreme Court, which could revive a challenge to the state's map. Five states in total will use new House maps this fall: Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, New York, and North Carolina.
Attorneys General
● NC-AG: Campaign finance filings released last week show that the Republican Attorneys General Association is the sole funder of a super PAC called And Justice for All, which the News & Observer reports has spent around $1 million to promote Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry in Tuesday's Democratic primary. Rep. Jeff Jackson, who is the Democratic frontrunner, warned last month that Republicans were meddling in the primary "just to beat me." The nominee will go up against far-right Rep. Dan Bishop, who has no primary opposition.
Mayors & County Leaders
● San Francisco, CA Mayor: The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin has been telling people he plans to challenge Mayor London Breed in November's instant-runoff election. Peskin, however, was non-committal. "I have not declared that I am running for mayor," he informed the paper, "and I don’t have any immediate plans to do so." Peskin is one of the more prominent progressives in local politics, while Breed and her three major declared foes all hail from the city's moderate faction. The filing deadline is June 11.
Prosecutors & Sheriffs
● Alameda County, CA District Attorney: The campaign seeking to recall District Attorney Pamela Price announced Monday that it turned in about 123,400 signatures, which recall expert Joshua Spivak says is likely enough to put an election on the ballot.
The group behind the effort, Save Alameda for Everyone, needs election officials to verify that about 73,200 of the petitions are valid—a figure that represents 15% of the number of votes cast in the county in the 2022 race for governor. Spivak says that most of the recall campaigns waged in California since 2011 have "had a signature verification rate above 80%." Since SAFE only needs 59% of its petitions to be accepted, that should be enough.
Election officials have a total of 10 days to verify the signatures, though if SAFE falls short, it would get another 10 days to collect more. If Price's detractors ultimately hit their target, it would be up to the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to schedule a recall election.
Complicating things is the presence of Measure B on Tuesday's ballot, a proposed amendment to the county's charter that would change how recalls are conducted. Under the current rules, voters are presented with a "yes" or "no" question asking if they want to remove the incumbent; at the same time, they're also asked to choose who the incumbent's successor should be. (The results of the second question would only matter if a majority voted for the recall.)
However, Measure B would eliminate that second question and empower the Board of Supervisors to replace a recalled official, though it's not certain whether these new rules would come into play in time for a potential Price recall.
Price was elected in 2022 as district attorney for this dark blue East Bay county, which is home to Oakland and Berkley, by campaigning as a criminal justice reformer. Her critics, though, quickly began arguing that she's done a poor job combatting violent crime. Price’s team, meanwhile, is saying that her ouster would "undermine the results of a free and fair election" and "jeopardize the historic progress achieved in recent years."
● Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff: Maricopa County Sheriff Russ Skinner just announced that he'd run for a full term to his current post as a Democrat even though he was a lifelong registered Republican until late last year.
Skinner was the top deputy to the previous sheriff, Democrat Paul Penzone, but switched his registration the day after his boss announced his resignation. State law required the GOP-controlled Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to pick a member of Penzone's party, but critics argued Skinner's move allowed the board to circumvent this requirement.
"I'm not tied to my political affiliation," Skinner told 12 News' Brahm Resnik over the weekend. "I'm a law enforcement professional. That's not going to change how I do my job." When Resnik asked the sheriff if he voted for Donald Trump in 2020, he replied, "I don't recall. It's possible."
The July 30 Democratic primary already included the two other finalists for the appointment: former Phoenix police officer Tyler Kamp and Apache Junction police commander Jeffrey Kirkham. Both challengers also registered as Democrats after Penzone announced his departure, but the local Democratic Party supported Kamp's appointment.
Four Republicans are also running, including 2020 nominee Jerry Sheridan, who lost to Penzone 56-44, and 2020 primary loser Mike Crawford. Candidate filing closes on April 1.
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Correction: This story incorrectly said that Justice Andrew Pinson was part of the majority that ruled in favor of Georgia's six-week abortion ban last year. Pinson recused himself
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