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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The Daily Kos Elections team will be taking Friday off for Memorial Day weekend. The Morning Digest will return on Wednesday. Have a great holiday!
Leading Off
● SC Redistricting: The Supreme Court's right-wing majority upheld South Carolina's congressional map in a 6-3 decision along ideological lines issued Thursday, reversing a lower court ruling that found Republicans had violated the Constitution by racially gerrymandering the 1st District to protect Rep. Nancy Mace, a white Republican.
The majority ruled that politics—not race—was the predominant factor in the GOP's gerrymander, which shifted Black voters from the 1st District to the neighboring 6th to ensure conservative white voters would still dominate in the 1st.
This latest decision all but eliminates one of the few remaining tools that voters of color had left to challenge racism in redistricting. Because the court's Republican-appointed majority ruled in 2019 that federal courts cannot adjudicate partisan gerrymandering challenges, allowing Republican mapmakers to claim partisan motives as a defense against racial gerrymandering only entrenches both kinds of gerrymanders.
Last year, a federal district court struck down the 1st District, ruling that Republicans had intentionally discriminated against Black voters. The three-judge panel concluded that legislators had violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause by packing too many Black voters into the 6th District, illegally letting race predominate in the mapmaking process in the absence of any compelling government interest to do so.
As shown on this map, the 1st District includes parts of the Charleston area and coastal South Carolina (click here for an interactive version). It saw multiple competitive elections under the previous decade's map: Democrat Joe Cunningham won a 51-49 upset in 2018 before losing by that same margin to Mace in 2020.
However, the GOP's new gerrymander, passed after the most recent census in 2020, insulated Mace from future challenges by extending Donald Trump's margin of victory from 52-46 to 53-45. Mace, in part thanks to this new map, comfortably won reelection 56-42 last year.
Republicans took advantage of the fact that voting patterns in much of the South are heavily polarized along racial lines: Black voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats and white voters heavily favor Republicans. Mapmakers looking to protect Mace therefore moved Black voters from her district into the 6th, a dark blue seat that already had a Black majority and has long elected Rep. Jim Clyburn, a Black Democrat.
But the Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by far-right Justice Samuel Alito, rejected as "clearly erroneous" the district court's determination that race had illegally predominated, departing from a longstanding norm of deference towards findings of fact by trial courts. In doing so, Alito significantly increased the burden on plaintiffs to prove claims of illegal racial gerrymandering by holding that legislators draw maps with a "presumption" of "good faith."
Absent "smoking gun" evidence of intentional discrimination, as election law expert Rick Hasen put it, Alito's decision will require plaintiffs to produce an alternative map to show how mapmakers could achieve their partisan ends without illegally relying on race. This new requirement, found nowhere in legal precedent, consequently puts the burden on plaintiffs to help draw a new gerrymander for state officials, all but negating the purpose of filing a lawsuit in the first place.
Not only will this ruling undermine the cause of Black representation in South Carolina, it will likely reverberate far beyond the state. Alito's decision will blunt the ability of racial gerrymandering lawsuits to have a significant partisan impact, and because race and party are so heavily intertwined in the South, it diminishes the likelihood of increased representation for voters of color throughout the region.
Election Night
● Primary Night: Texas state House Speaker Dade Phelan isn't getting a break for the Memorial Day holiday as he fights to avoid becoming the third Republican legislative leader to get tossed by primary voters in as many weeks.
West Virginia Senate President Craig Blair was ousted on May 14, while his counterpart in Idaho, Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder, met the same fate this week. To make things even tougher for Phelan, Donald Trump himself wants to see a new speaker in the Texas House.
Jeff Singer looks at the travails facing Phelan in our preview of Tuesday's primary runoffs in the Lone Star State. We'll also be watching a trio of GOP runoffs for U.S. House seats, including the expensive battle between Rep. Tony Gonzales and "gunfluencer" Brandon Herrera. Herrera is the underdog, but the far-right Freedom Caucus, whose members Gonzales has called "real scumbags," would be delighted to see the incumbent gone.
Polls close at 8 PM ET/7 PM local time on Tuesday in most of Texas and an hour later in the small portion of the state located in the Mountain Time Zone. We'll have an open thread to discuss the results at Daily Kos Elections.
House
● CA-41: Democrat Will Rollins has publicized an early May internal poll from David Binder Research that gives him a narrow 45-44 edge in his rematch against GOP Rep. Ken Calvert, who defeated him 52-48 last cycle.
The memo for this survey, which is the first we've seen of this contest, did not include data on respondents' preferences in the presidential election. Donald Trump carried California's 41st District, which stretches from the southern Riverside suburbs east to Palm Springs, 50-49 in 2020.
● LA-05, LA-06: The Louisiana Republican Party followed Speaker Mike Johnson's lead this week by endorsing Reps. Julia Letlow and Garret Graves for separate districts even though Graves hasn't ruled out a challenge to his colleague in the revamped 5th District.
NOLA.com's Tyler Bridges says that Letlow's team successfully urged party leaders to take this step as part of her effort to deter Graves from taking her on in the November all-party primary.
Other Pelican State Republicans are being even more overt as they try to convince Graves to defend the 6th District even though it's now become blue turf. "[I]f he runs in that district—in his own district—he'll find a tremendous amount of help from me and from other Republicans in the state," Rep. Clay Higgins, who holds the 3rd District, told Politico.
The new version of the 6th favored Joe Biden 59-39, but Higgins argued it would be "very intellectually unsound to just presume that Garret Graves as the incumbent would not win in his own district just because it's been technically drawn to be a Black-majority district." (There's nothing technical about it: The new district has a 54% Black majority among its voting-age population.)
Higgins also insisted that Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, who served in Congress from 1993 to 1997, could lose in the 6th because of the long gap since he last ran for federal office.
So far, however, even other Democrats who covet a spot in Congress aren't acting like Fields is beatable: The state senator hasn't attracted any serious intra-party opposition in the four months since he launched his comeback campaign. There is, however, still time for that to change before the July 19 filing deadline.
Higgins also issued a warning to Graves if he doesn't take one for the team. "Whereas if he determines to run against a colleague, and I could be one of those," he told Politico, "he'll find that to be a very rocky path."
There's little reason to think that Graves, who said last week he'd run for "a district anchored in the Capital Region," would take on Higgins, whose constituency is based to the south in Acadiana, though any other option would also set him up for a "very rocky path." When Politico asked Graves Tuesday when he'd decide where to run, the congressman offered up only a "soon."
● NJ-10: New Jersey Secretary of State Tahesha Way has allowed two candidates whose nominating petitions were challenged to run in the upcoming special election for New Jersey's vacant 10th Congressional District. Her decision brings to a conclusion what the New Jersey Globe's Joey Fox called a "lengthy and convoluted ballot access saga"—at least for now.
Two different Democrats, Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver and former East Orange City Councilwoman Brittany Claybrooks, had their eligibility for the July 16 primary called into question, leading to repeated back-and-forths between Way and the administrative law judges who were each adjudicating those challenges. Ultimately, Way accepted the judges' ruling that both Claybrooks and McIver should appear on the ballot.
As Fox notes, though, Way's conclusions could be challenged in a lawsuit, though there's no word yet as to whether one might be forthcoming. If her decision stands, McIver and Claybrooks would participate in a primary that also includes New Jersey Redevelopment Authority COO Darryl Godfrey; Linden Mayor Derek Armstead; Hudson County Commissioner Jerry Walker; and Shana Melius, a former staffer to Rep. Donald Payne, whose death last month triggered the special election for the safely blue 10th District.
● NY-16: AIPAC's investment in next month's Democratic primary for New York's 16th Congressional District has skyrocketed, reports Business Insider's Bryan Metzger, and now stands at just shy of $6 million. When the group's affiliated United Democracy Project began its ad blitz late last week attacking Rep. Jamaal Bowman and supporting his challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, Jewish Insider reported it would spend $2 million for a week-long run.
● PA-03: Democratic Rep. Dwight Evans said Thursday that he was "recovering from a minor stroke, and I want to emphasize the word minor."
"It was minor enough that I didn’t even realize what had happened for a few days," the congressman continued in a statement. "The main impact seems to be some difficulty with one leg, which will probably impact my walking for some time, but not my long-term ability to serve the people of Philadelphia."
Evans says he anticipates staying in a rehabilitation facility for a week and "currently expect[s] to be back voting in Washington in about six weeks from now."
● TN-05: Republican Rep. Andy Ogles has amended his campaign finance reports to say he loaned his campaign $20,000, rather than the $320,000 he'd previously claimed, reports NewsChannel 5's Phil Williams.
During his first bid for the House in 2022, when he faced a competitive primary for Tennessee's freshly gerrymandered 5th District, Ogles said he'd loaned himself that larger sum. Last year, however, Williams pointed out that the congressman's personal financial disclosures showed he lacked the wealth to make a loan of that size. (On those forms, Ogles did not even list any bank accounts.)
Ogles never sought to explain himself until the day after Williams' latest story, when he issued a statement saying that, at the start of his campaign in 2022, he had "pledged $320,000 to use toward my own campaign efforts if needed." He went on, "While we only needed to transfer $20,000, unfortunately, the full amount of my pledge was mistakenly included on my campaign's FEC reports."
That explanation left Williams wanting. He pointed out in response that Ogles' amended reports now show he had just $2,000 in cash three weeks before the GOP primary in 2022, while his original said he had more than $280,000 in the bank. "How do you look at your bank accounts and 'mistakenly include' cash you don't have?" Williams asked rhetorically.
Thanks to these inflated figures, though, Ogles made it seem as though he was keeping pace with his top primary rivals. With help from groups like the far-right Club for Growth, Ogles went on to defeat his nearest opponent by a 35-25 margin and comfortably won the general election.
Williams has repeatedly exposed Ogles for a wide range of inconsistencies during his short tenure in Congress, including an apparently fabricated life story and an episode where Ogles raised close to $25,000 for a children's burial garden that was never constructed.
Ogles faces a challenge in the Aug. 1 GOP primary from Davidson County Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston. Ogles previously reported having $450,000 on hand for that race, but according to his latest amendments, he has less than $100,000 in his coffers.
Prosecutors & Sheriffs
● Multnomah County, OR District Attorney: The Associated Press on Wednesday projected that prosecutor Nathan Vasquez had unseated his boss, Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt, in Tuesday's nonpartisan general election. Vasquez leads Schmidt 54-46 with an estimated 86% of the vote tabulated in Oregon's most populous county as of Thursday morning.
Schmidt, a Democrat who was elected as a criminal justice reformer in 2020, took office early after his predecessor, Rod Underhill, resigned with several months left in his term. Schmidt's tenure was quickly defined by the COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying national rise in crime, a situation that former Multnomah County Board of Commissioners Chair Deborah Kafoury likened to "a shit sandwich."
Vasquez, who left the Republican Party in 2017 to enroll with the Independent Party of Oregon, campaigned against Schmidt in this dark blue county by arguing that the incumbent had done a poor job addressing crime and homelessness in Portland. Schmidt defended his record and highlighted Vasquez's past support for the policies he went on to attack, but it wasn't enough.
Poll Pile
- AZ-Sen: Noble Predictive Insights (R): Ruben Gallego (D): 46, Kari Lake (R): 36 (44-41 Trump in two-way, 43-36 Trump with third-party candidates) (Feb.: 47-37 Gallego)
- AZ-Sen: Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University: Gallego (D): 48, Lake (R): 39 (45-43 Biden in two-way, 43-39 Trump with third-party candidates)
- NV-Sen: Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University: Jacky Rosen (D-inc): 48, Sam Brown (R): 37 (51-43 Trump in two-way, 46-40 Trump with third-party candidates)
- NC-Gov: High Point University: Mark Robinson (R): 39, Josh Stein (D): 34 (44-42 Trump) (March: 37-34 Stein)
Noble also takes a look at the GOP's July 30 primary for Arizona's Senate seat and finds Lake leading Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb 46-21.
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