The Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, and Stephen Wolf, with additional contributions from the Daily Kos Elections team.
Subscribe to The Downballot, our weekly podcast
Leading Off
● VT-Gov: In a very unexpected development, WCAX reported on Friday that former Gov. Howard Dean is considering a comeback bid for the post he gave up more than two decades ago ahead of his 2004 presidential campaign.
The Democrat soon confirmed his interest to VTDigger, though he wasn't forthcoming about his plans. "I am considering running," he told reporter Paul Heintz in a text message. "You get to find out when everyone else (me included) does."
There are, however, some major potential obstacles for Dean, who is the longest-serving governor in state history. While Republican Gov. Phil Scott still has yet to say whether he'll seek a fifth two-year term ahead of the May 30 candidate filing deadline, Heintz writes that the incumbent is "widely expected" to run again.
Scott is a proven vote-getter in what's otherwise a solidly blue state, and he'd be difficult for anyone to beat, including Dean. And if the governor does defy conventional wisdom and retire, prominent local Democrats who want to succeed him may not be inclined to defer to Dean. But we have to stand by for a while before we get official word from Scott, who waited until the last possible day to kick off his last reelection effort in 2022.
Dean was also an electoral powerhouse long before he became a national figure—and long before Vermont became a reliably Democratic state. In 1982, the year Dean was first elected to the state House, Gov. Richard Snelling fended off a challenge from Democratic Lt. Gov. Madeleine Kunin as his party maintained control of both chambers of the legislature—a state of affairs that would be unthinkable today.
Kunin went on to become the state's first woman governor after she narrowly won the 1984 race to replace the retiring Snelling. Her victory came despite Ronald Reagan's 49-state landslide—the only Democrat who had ever carried the state's electoral votes was Lyndon Johnson in 1964—but her next opponent would help state the stage for Dean's rise.
In 1986, Lt. Gov. Peter Smith, a Republican, left his post behind to challenge Kunin, opening the door for Dean to seek a promotion. Smith failed to knock off Kunin, but Dean snagged the number-two spot by beating back Republican Susan Auld 53-44. (Governors and lieutenant governors are elected separately in Vermont.)
Dean had no trouble holding his new post two years later, and he won his third term with 58% of the vote in 1990 even as Snelling was reclaiming the governorship. (Smith, who had gone on to win Vermont's only U.S. House seat two years before, lost reelection that cycle in a rematch with an independent named Bernie Sanders.)
But less than a year into his second stint, Snelling died of a sudden heart attack at 64, and Dean ascended to the governorship. The new chief executive proved to be popular and won his first full term 75-23 as Bill Clinton began the first in what's now an unbroken string of Democratic victories in the state at the presidential level. Dean always won reelection by double digits, though Republicans held one of the two chambers of the legislature during much of his governorship.
The Democrat faced his toughest challenge following a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling that required the legislature to either legalize same-sex marriage or create a separate system of domestic partnerships―neither of which was available in any state. Dean said the first option "makes me uncomfortable, the same as anyone else" but supported a civil unions bill, a move that riled conservatives.
"Vermont is going to enact the most radical social legislation in the country," declared former state Rep. Ruth Dwyer, the Republican who was challenging Dean for the governorship in 2000 two years after losing to him 56-41. Dean retorted that the civil unions bill he signed "speaks to the heart of this state, and certainly to my heart," and he held off Dwyer 50-38 while Progressive Party candidate Anthony Pollina took 10%.
In 2002, Dean retired after more than a decade in office as he planned out what looked like a longshot 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. That year, Republican Jim Douglas reclaimed the governorship for the GOP.
Dean's ardent opposition to the Iraq War, though, would help him emerge as a major force in national party politics even though he ultimately wasn't able to beat John Kerry for the nod. (While many observers still snark that his infamous "Dean Scream" cost the Vermonter everything, that howl came after he took a disappointing third place in the Iowa caucuses.)
Dean's presidential campaign transformed into Democracy for America, which for a time became a prominent progressive organization. (It disbanded in 2022.) Dean, exhorting Democrats to pursue a "50-state strategy," went on to chair the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, a period that saw the party retake both chambers of Congress and later the White House.
However, it would also mark the pinnacle of his national influence. The incoming Obama administration wouldn't offer the outgoing chairman any major posts, something that his allies blamed on hostility from Rahm Emanuel, the 2006 DCCC chairman and soon-to-be White House chief of staff.
Dean has remained a presence in the national media since leaving the DNC, but he hasn't held any major roles in party politics over the ensuing years. While he responded to Donald Trump's 2016 win by launching a campaign to reclaim the committee's chairmanship, Dean dropped out less than a month later.
It therefore came as a considerable surprise when word broke that Dean was interested in taking on Scott. If Dean were to reclaim his old job after a 22-year absence, he'd have one of the largest gaps between governorships in American history. However, he'd still fall short of the record that West Virginia Republican Cecil Underwood set when he was elected governor in 1996, 36 years after he was first termed out of office.
Disclosure: David Nir, who volunteered for Dean's presidential campaign in 2003, edited this piece.
Senate
● MD-Sen: Rep. David Trone launched his first negative TV ad against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks on Saturday, a development that comes after Trone has spent nearly a year running only positive spots ahead of their May 14 Democratic primary. Trone's offensive comes just before in-person early voting begins on Thursday.
The congressman's commercial features multiple current and former elected officials in Prince George’s County arguing that, while Trone has a proven record in office, Alsobrooks doesn't.
"The U.S. Senate is not a place for training wheels," says County Council member Edward Burroughs, who later argues that Alsobrooks' tenure doesn't back up her image as a progressive.
State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy also makes an electability argument by insisting that Trone "is our best shot" to beat the likely Republican nominee, former Gov. Larry Hogan. All of the speakers in Trone's ad are Black (as is Alsobrooks), though B-roll of Trone shows him with white audiences.
Trone himself recently pitched himself as the strongest Democrat candidate against Hogan in another ad he launched last week, though that one did not mention Alsobrooks. A month ago, he said that "[v]oters don’t want to hear negative attacks," and he hasn't been on the receiving end of many during this campaign. The only advertising that's gone after Trone so far comes from a group called Fight Corporate Monopolies, but HuffPost's Daniel Marans says that the buy, which began earlier this month, was "in the high five digits."
Alsobrooks responded to this negative Trone's spot by arguing to the Baltimore Banner that it demonstrates she's winning even though every poll that's been released has shown Trone ahead. The most recent surveys we saw before the congressman's new ad went live, though, both finished collecting data almost three weeks ago.
The two Democrats are campaigning to succeed Sen. Ben Cardin, who has not taken sides. Cardin told the Washington Post's Meagan Flynn the day he announced his retirement last May that, in the reporter's words, he "did not intend to make an endorsement in the Democratic primary, but would reconsider if others felt it was important for party unity." It remains to be seen if the senator will feel the need to get involved now that the race for his seat has taken a negative turn.
● MI-Sen: Former Rep. Peter Meijer, whose recent fundraising haul would have been feeble for a House campaign, announced on Friday that he was abandoning his bid for the Senate even though he'd already filed signatures to qualify for the Aug. 6 Republican primary.
The GOP establishment has largely coalesced around another ex-congressman, Mike Rogers, in his bid to flip the seat held by retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow, though a few other hopefuls remain. They include Meijer's predecessor, former Rep. Justin Amash, as well as wealthy businessman Sandy Pensler and physician Sherry O'Donnell, a far-right activist and conspiracy theorist who lost a primary challenge to ultraconservative Rep. Tim Walberg 67-33 in 2022.
● WV-Sen: In case you weren't already aware that Don Blankenship, the ex-Republican ex-con who now purports to be running for Senate as a Democrat, is batshit crazy, please check out his new batch of TV ads, courtesy of Medium Buying. In case you're scared to click (you should be) because you don't want to alarm anyone who might be in earshot, here's a transcript of the first spot:
Blankenship: I'm Don Blankenship, candidate for the United States Senate, and I paid for this ad.
Narrator: Don Blankenship will tell you the honest truth!
RFK Jr.: Don Blankenship … he's the most honest CEO in America!
Narrator: Unfortunately, our government is not honest. Even the truth about the murders of Mr. Kennedy's dad and uncle are kept hidden. They even refused to keep Mr. Kennedy safe because he left the party. Your choice is simple: You could vote for more lies, or you could vote for …
RFK Jr.: Most honest CEO in America!
Blankenship: If they tell you I fell off the bed and hung myself, I didn't.
The old grainy footage of Kennedy, by the way, is from a strange public debate he and Blankenship staged in 2010 over the merits of mountaintop removal mining. Just months later, a fatal accident at a coal mine run by Blankenship led to the deaths of 29 miners, the worst such disaster on American soil in 40 years. The man Kennedy praised as "the most honest CEO in America" would later serve a year in federal prison for conspiring to violate federal mine safety rules.
Governors
● DE-Gov: State GOP chair Julianne Murray announced last week that she'd run to succeed termed-out Democratic Gov. John Carney. Murray lost to Carney 59-39 in 2020, then was defeated by Attorney General Kathy Jennings 54-46 two years later. Republicans haven't won the governor's mansion, known as Woodburn, since Gov. Mike Castle was reelected in 1988.
● MO-Gov: The conservative nonprofit Building America’s Future has released a survey from the Tyson Group giving Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft a 36-11 lead over Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe in the Aug. 6 GOP primary for governor, with state Sen. Bill Eigel at just 3%. A 40% plurality of respondents are undecided, while the balance is split between minor candidates.
There is no word on the sponsor's rooting interest in the contest to succeed the termed-out incumbent, Republican Mike Parson. Almost every poll we've seen has placed Ashcroft well ahead of Kehoe, though the lieutenant governor enjoys a huge financial advantage.
● WA-Gov: While Democratic state Sen. Mark Mullet has barely registered in the few polls we've seen this year of the Aug. 6 top-two primary for Washington's open governorship, his allies are hoping to change that.
A group called the Coalition for Pragmatic Leadership spent close to $500,000 on advertising over the last week, feature spots touting Mullet as a liberal who is "running to fix the real problems we have with skyrocketing costs, crime, and homelessness."
The Washington Observer notes that the organization's donors include developer George Rowley as well as McDonald’s and Marathon Petroleum. The ad does not mention Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who is the Democratic frontrunner, or retiring Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, but Mullet is calling them both out in his first TV ad.
"I'm the kind of Democrat who isn't afraid to say to Jay Inslee and Bob Ferguson, 'It's time for a change,'" says Mullet. Earlier in the same commercial, he touts himself as a Democrat "who wants to bring down housing costs, lower crime, and keep illegal drugs illegal."
That line is accompanied by a snippet of a 2021 KUOW article reporting that Ferguson "is urging legislators to move forward with drug decriminalization." Three years ago, the attorney general called for the state to do away with criminal drug penalties for the possession of "non-commercial" amounts.
Ferguson responded to Mullet's ad by emphasizing to the Observer his support for a 2023 bill signed by Inslee that increased both penalties for possession and funding for treatment programs. He also highlighted his efforts to obtain financial restitution from companies involved in the opioid crisis.
House
● AZ-03: Former Phoenix City Councilmember Yassamin Ansari has publicized an internal poll from Lake Research Partners that shows her beating her main opponent, former state Sen. Raquel Terán, 32-21 in the July 30 Democratic primary. Pediatrician Duane Wooten is far back with just 8%, while a 34% plurality are undecided.
This is the first poll we've seen all year of the contest to replace Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in this dark blue Phoenix-based seat. Ansari ended March with a wide $900,000 to $450,000 cash advantage over Terán, while Wooten had just over $10,000 to spend.
● FL-01: Shortly before Friday's filing deadline, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz drew a surprise primary challenger when Navy veteran Aaron Dimmock filed to run against the notorious far-right demagogue. Dimmock serves as the director of a leadership institute at the University of West Florida and appears to be a first-time candidate, but his LinkedIn profile still identified him as a Missouri resident working for the Missouri Leadership Academy when news of his candidacy first broke.
Gaetz was one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership last year, and McCarthy and his allies have reportedly been backing primary challengers against those renegades this year. Axios relays they're "expected to spend heavily" against Gaetz ahead of the Aug. 20 primary for this dark red seat in the Pensacola area.
● KS-02: Far-right state Sen. Dennis Pyle isn't ruling out a bid for Kansas' open 2nd Congressional District, telling the Kansas City Star, "I'm running for the Senate seat until I'm not." (Pyle was referring to his own Senate seat, which is up this fall.)
Pyle infuriated fellow Republicans when he ran for governor in 2022 as an independent, but the 20,452 votes he took were just slightly fewer than Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's 22,258 margin over Republican Derek Schmidt. Schmidt, a former state attorney general, kicked off a campaign for the 2nd District on Friday.
● MD-06: Former Commerce Department official April McClain Delaney is already airing a new TV ad touting her endorsement from Rep. Jamie Raskin, who gave his backing to McClain Delaney at an event on Saturday. The spot also mentions two other prominent members of Congress who are supporting McClain Delaney's bid for the open 6th District, Rep. Steny Hoyer and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.
● MI-08: Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley announced Friday that he was dropping out of the Aug. 6 primary to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee in Michigan's competitive 8th District. Neeley's departure turns the Democratic primary into a three-way contest between businessman Matt Collier, state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, and state Board of Education President Pamela Pugh.
On the Republican side, 2022 nominee Paul Junge has unveiled an internal poll from UpOne Insights that shows him leading state Board of Education member Nikki Snyder 42-8, with Some Dude Anthony Hudson and former Dow Chemical Company executive Mary Draves respectively clocking in at just 2% and 1%.
The memo, however, notes that Junge's three intra-party foes are almost completely unknown with more than three months still to go before the primary. Draves only launched her campaign this month, so it remains to be seen if she'll have access to the type of money needed to get her name out. Snyder, by contrast, had just $90,000 banked at the end of March after spending most of the cycle running for the Senate.
This survey from UpOne Insights, which is run by longtime GOP pollster Robert Blizzard, sampled 300 people, which is the bare minimum we require for inclusion in the Digest.
● MN-02: Delegates picked attorney Tayler Rahm 74-25 over former federal prosecutor Joe Teirab at Saturday's GOP convention in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional District, but Teirab reiterated that he'd continue on to the Aug. 13 primary. Both Republicans are hoping to take down Democratic Rep. Angie Craig in a suburban Twin Cities constituency that Joe Biden carried 53-45 in 2020.
Minnesota candidates often pledge to, in local parlance, "abide" by the endorsement and end their campaigns if someone else wins—a promise that Teirab previously made. But just days ahead of the convention, he said that he'd changed his mind because he believed Rahm, who has struggled to raise money, was too weak to beat Craig.
● MN-07: Attendees at Saturday's Republican convention in Minnesota's conservative 7th Congressional District declined to endorse Rep. Michelle Fischbach for reelection after she failed to secure the necessary 60% support following three rounds of voting.
Fischbach found herself on the outs thanks to an insurgent campaign by businessman Steve Boyd, who said afterward in a statement that delegates' decision to adjourn without issuing an endorsement, "while technically a stalemate, was really a victory for our grassroots campaign."
The two will now proceed to the Aug. 13 primary, where a vastly larger electorate will hold sway, but the sophomore congresswoman seemed to detect trouble ahead of the convention.
Fischbach had originally pledged to abide by its endorsement, which any incumbent should receive almost as a formality. Rep. Pete Stauber, for instance, easily secured the backing of delegates in the neighboring 8th District who'd gathered the same day.
But as we saw in Utah on Saturday, sometimes it's not automatic. And that put Fischbach in a bind, because sticking with her promise would have meant dropping her campaign for reelection. To avoid such an unthinkable outcome, Fischbach rescinded her pledge not long before the convention, blaming her about-face on Boyd's stated intention of forging on to the primary no matter what.
A victory by Boyd in August would, however, still be a major upset. As of the end of March, he'd raised under $100,000 and had just $23,000 in his campaign coffers. Fischbach, though, had banked a less-than-daunting $386,000, though her fundraising is sure to ramp up given the threat to her political future.
● NY-22: Utica University history professor Clemmie Harris has dropped his bid for New York's 22nd District, saying he'd fallen short of the necessary signatures following a challenge by a supporter of one of his opponents in the Democratic primary, Sarah Klee Hood. Klee Hood's campaign, however, said it was not involved in the effort to remove Harris from the ballot.
The race for the right to take on freshman GOP Rep. Brandon Williams is now a two-way battle between Klee Hood and state Sen. John Mannion. The two were fairly evenly matched in fundraising in the most recent quarter, but Mannion posted a 42-20 lead in an internal poll he commissioned late last month, and Klee Hood hasn't responded with contradictory numbers. (Harris was at just 9% in that survey.)
Judges
● WI Supreme Court: Court of Appeals Judge Pedro Colón, a liberal jurist who had been considering a bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, told WisPolitics on Friday that he would not run in next year's open-seat race.
Colón did, however, say he could seek a seat on the court in the future. Following the April contest for the spot held by retiring liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, two conservatives will be up for election in the ensuing two years: Rebecca Bradley in 2026 and Annette Ziegler in 2027.
Colón's move means that Dane County Circuit Judge Susan Crawford is the only progressive still weighing a bid. WisPolitics reports that she says she is "continuing to do her due diligence in exploring a run."
Mayors & County Leaders
● East Baton Rouge Parish, LA: Louisiana's conservative Supreme Court ruled on Friday that St. George, a wealthy and heavily white suburb southeast of Baton Rouge, could incorporate as a new city.
Residents of St. George had voted for incorporation by a 54-46 margin in a 2019 referendum, but lower courts had blocked it from going forward because of its potentially adverse effects on the finances of both Baton Rouge and St. George. By a 4-3 margin, however, the Supreme Court reversed those previous decisions and allowed incorporation to proceed.
The state capital of Baton Rouge, which consolidated its government with East Baton Rouge Parish following a 1947 referendum, oversees nearly all of the parish aside from a few small towns. According to data from the Census Bureau and VEST presented by Dave's Redistricting App, residents in the consolidated government's jurisdiction are 56% Black, 33% white, and heavily Democratic. By contrast, St. George's 81,000 residents are 67% white and just 18% Black, and the new municipality would be solidly Republican.
Supporters of incorporation originally sought to form their own school district, which would resegregate the parish's schools—an effort that remains ongoing. This push by conservative Southern whites to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of Black-run local governments is part of a movement that stretches back to the Jim Crow era. Recent decades have seen a nationwide increase in largely white communities seceding to form separate school districts.
Following incorporation, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry will appoint St. George's interim government until inaugural elections can be held. Local officials must now provide certain services that the city-parish government currently furnishes, but incorporation backers have said they plan to privatize many of these services. Yet even though St. George residents will continue to receive other services from the city-parish government and be able to vote in parish-wide elections, Baton Rouge will lose a critical part of its tax base.
Incorporation had been on hold after Parish Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, a Black Democrat who leads the consolidated government, sought to block the effort in court. Broome's lawsuit contended that incorporation violated state law because St. George couldn't balance its budget despite its supporters' claims. She also argued that Baton Rouge would have to impose severe budget cuts to key services and that the 2019 referendum process was improper.
A lower state court ruled against St. George, and an appeals court upheld that ruling last year. However, the Supreme Court's decision will now allow St. George to become the first new Louisiana city since 2005, when another heavily white and more affluent suburb northeast of Baton Rouge incorporated as the city of Central.
That same year marked a different milestone for East Baton Rouge Parish, when Democrat Kip Holden became its first Black mayor-president after ousting incumbent Bobby Simpson, a white Republican (Broome later succeeded Holden following elections in 2016). While the parish had long favored conservative white officials, it has become Democratic-leaning in recent decades as its Black population has grown.
But in light of these trends, these efforts at suburban secession bear all the hallmarks of a conservative white backlash.
● Wilmington, DE Mayor: Termed-out Gov. John Carney announced Monday that he'd run to succeed retiring Wilmington Mayor Mike Purzycki, a fellow Democrat, as leader of Delaware's largest city.
The winner of the Sept. 10 Democratic primary is all but assured victory in this dark blue municipality, but another prominent candidate was already seeking the nod. Former city Treasurer Velda Jones-Potter had kicked off a rematch against Purzycki last year after losing the primary to him 43-36 in 2020, and after the incumbent announced he wouldn't run for a third term in October, she was the only major contender left in the race.
Purzycki welcomed the idea of Carney replacing him, but not everyone was excited about the prospect of this majority Black city electing a second consecutive white mayor.
"If we’re looking for change in our city, if we’re looking for progress," Councilwoman Shané Darby told Delaware Public Radio, "we cannot keep the same cycle, the good old boys' system, of these old white men who keep running and taking positions." Darby instead touted Jones-Potter, who is also Black.
While Carney only announced his bid for mayor this week, he began raising money to succeed Purzycki last year. The governor ended 2023 with more than $100,000 banked compared to only $21,000 for Jones-Potter.
No matter how this campaign goes, though, Carney appears to have already achieved one historical distinction: As far as we can determine, he's the first sitting American governor—albeit a termed-out one—to run for mayor.
A few former state executives have run for mayor, but only after leaving the governorship. Most notably, Jerry Brown claimed the job in Oakland in 1998 during what proved to be just a little past the midpoint of the 28 years separating his two stints as governor of California. Meanwhile, fellow Democrat Jim McGreevey is currently competing in the 2025 race to lead Jersey City, a campaign that comes two decades after he resigned as governor of New Jersey.
Poll Pile
- TX-34: 1892 Polling (R) for the NRCC: Vicente Gonzalez (D-inc): 48, Mayra Flores (R): 45
Ad Roundup
Correction: This piece incorrectly identified Velda Jones-Potter as the current city treasurer of Wilmington, Delaware. She is the former city treasurer.
Campaign Action
