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
● NV Ballot & AR Ballot: Abortion rights advocates in Nevada and Arkansas each got some favorable news Tuesday when they were cleared to collect signatures to place proposed amendments before voters. But both campaigns still face plenty of obstacles, and the challenges ahead of Arkansans for Limited Government are especially difficult.
In Nevada, a judge gave the green light to an amendment that would guarantee that the procedure can take place up until fetal viability. That same judge, however, rejected a more expansive proposal less than two months ago, and Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom is hoping the state Supreme Court will allow its original plan to go forward.
Down in Arkansas, ALG needs to overcome onerous new signature rules the GOP legislature put in place just last year to hurt progressives. If the campaign succeeds, though, it will be in for a tough battle to convince voters in this conservative state to approve its plan to guarantee abortion rights up to 18 weeks through a pregnancy.
Check out Jeff Singer's story for more on the state of play in both states―including what the polls say about the task ahead.
The Downballot
● We're going deep inside last year's momentous progressive victory in the battle for control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court on this week's episode of "The Downballot," where we're joined by Alejandro Verdin, who managed Judge Janet Protasiewicz's triumphant campaign. Verdin explains how he assembled a team that took the little-known Protasiewicz from third place in the polls to a runaway first-place finish in the primary and then on to a landslide win in the general election.
Verdin tells us why Protasiewicz broke with the staid traditions of campaigning for judicial office and was so outspoken on the issues that voters cared about—particularly gerrymandering and abortion. Plus: the never-before-revealed easter egg trolling their conservative opponent that the campaign inserted into their ads.
Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard also recap Tuesday's elections in New Hampshire—no, not those elections. We're talking about two special elections for the state House, of course! Then it's on to Louisiana, where the Davids explain how the state's unique all-party primaries will come to a (partial) end, and how a Republican congressman might get revenge on his party for making him walk the plank in redistricting.
Subscribe to "The Downballot" on Apple Podcasts to make sure you never miss a show. You'll find a transcript of this week's episode right here by noon Eastern time. New episodes every Thursday morning!
4Q Fundraising
- CA-41: Ken Calvert (R-inc): $780,000 raised, $2.5 million cash on hand
- OR-03: Eddy Morales (D): $226,000 raised (in seven weeks)
Senate
● NJ-Sen: Former Rep. Tom Malinowski announced Wednesday that he would support Rep. Andy Kim in the June 4 Democratic primary rather than run himself. On the Republican side, Melinda Ciattarelli, who is the estranged wife of 2021 gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli, also announced she would stay out of the race.
Governors
● MO-Gov: The Republican firm Remington Research, working once again for the political tip-sheet Missouri Scout, is out with the first poll we've seen from anyone since the fall, and it continues to find Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft leading in the Aug. 6 GOP primary for Missouri's open governorship.
Ashcroft outpaces Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe 34-20, as state Sen. Bill Eigel takes 4% and a 42% plurality remain undecided. That's only a small shift from Ashcroft's 32-15 advantage in Remington's September survey, while Eigel remains similarly situated with 5%. Despite trailing in these polls, though, Kehoe ended 2023 with a large financial advantage over the frontrunner.
● VA-Gov: Christoper Newport University is out with the first poll we've seen of next year's Democratic primary for governor, which shows Rep. Abigail Spanberger defeating Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney in a 52-8 blowout. The school tells us it sampled 456 voters for this portion of its survey.
House
● CA-20: Secretary of State Shirley Weber has asked a California appeals court to direct a lower court to vacate its ruling allowing Assemblyman Vince Fong to simultaneously run for both the legislature and Congress. Weber, a Democrat, specifically requested the court issue an order by April 12, the date on which she says she will certify the results of the March 5 top-two primary.
Weber previously appealed the lower court decision that allowed Fong, a Republican, to run for reelection to the Assembly and to seek the seat in Congress left open by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the same time. However, Weber says that there is insufficient time for the normal appeals process to play out.
Weber has argued that longstanding precedent prohibits Fong from running for both posts. "For 110 years," she wrote in her submission to the appeals court, "it has been understood in California that candidates for office can only run for one office at a time."
● CO-04: House Minority Leader Mike Lynch announced Wednesday that he was stepping down as head of the GOP caucus following two attempts to oust him earlier in the week.
"I would like this to serve as a message to my fellow members to be careful and not get behind the wheel when impaired," said Lynch, whose position deteriorated days after the Associated Press revealed that he'd been arrested in 2022 both on "suspicion of drunken driving and possessing a firearm while intoxicated," and that he's still serving prohibition after pleading guilty to a count of "driving while ability impaired."
But Lynch, who is competing in the busy June 25 primary to replace retiring GOP Rep. Ken Buck, wasn't so humble just two days prior. "The media were upset they didn't know about it a year and a half ago, so they took it to me," he told a conservative radio host Monday, describing the AP's report as a "hit job."
● FL-01: ABC's Will Steakin reports that the House Ethics Committee has "ramp[ed] up" its investigation into GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz, which it reopened in July, by speaking to new witnesses over the last several weeks. The committee initially deferred its inquiry after the Justice Department began its own 2021 investigation into Gaetz over alleged sex trafficking of a minor and other accusations, but that investigation ended in February without charges for the congressman.
Steakin says that, in addition to asking about "possible lobbying violations," the committee is contacting people involved in the DOJ's inquiry. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
● FL Redistricting: Florida's staunchly conservative Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal by plaintiffs seeking to restore a predominantly Black congressional district in North Florida that the GOP dismantled after the latest census to create a new Republican seat. However, the court's drawn-out timeline, which includes an unspecified date for oral arguments, almost certainly means there won't be a new map for 2024 regardless of how the justices ultimately rule.
Last year, both parties reached a deal under which GOP defendants conceded that dismantling the 5th District had violated Florida's constitution and would instead argue that the provisions of the state constitution violate federal law. The agreement also included an expedited appeal directly to the state Supreme Court. However, an intermediate appellate court also dominated by conservatives stepped in and reversed the lower court's decision last month, helping to delay the case from reaching the high court.
● LA-06: Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields announced Tuesday that he'd run for Louisiana's new second majority Black district, but not everyone is happy at the idea of him returning to Congress after a 28-year absence.
- A once-promising career. Fields' 1992 win made him only the second African American to represent Louisiana in Congress since Reconstruction, and the 29-year-old was the body's youngest member when he took office. However, he left office four years later after the courts redrew his seat not once but twice.
- "If I had done something wrong or illegal, they would have indicted me." The FBI recorded Fields in 1997 meeting with former Gov. Edwin Edwards and placing $20,000 in cash into his pockets. Fields was never charged, but the story has continued to surface throughout his career.
- The living politician who "likes to sleep in a casket." Several other Democrats are eyeing this race, including a former state senator who was the subject of one of the strangest profiles we've ever read.
Jeff Singer has far more on this emerging race, including the mystery of a vanished Wikipedia section.
● NC-06: The Raleigh News & Observer's Under the Dome newsletter reports that the radical anti-tax Club for Growth has launched an opening $370,000 ad buy against former GOP Rep. Mark Walker, a development that comes the same week it endorsed his intra-party rival Bo Hines in the March 5 primary.
The spot begins by trashing Walker's failed 2022 Senate bid and abortive 2024 gubernatorial campaign, with the narrator continuing, "Now, Walker's begging for his old job. The job he didn't do." The ad goes after the former congressman for missing votes and then wanting to return to the House, then dismisses Walker as "a panhandler in pinstripes." It does not mention Hines or Donald Trump's endorsed candidate, lobbyist Addison McDowell.
● NE-01: State Sen. Carol Blood, who was the Democrats' nominee for governor in 2022, announced this week that she would take on GOP Rep. Mike Flood in a constituency that includes Lincoln and rural eastern Nebraska. Donald Trump carried the district 54-43, while analyst Drew Savicki says that Blood lost it 56-41 when she squared off against now-Gov. Jim Pillen in 2022.
Flood won this seat in a June 2022 special election by outpacing another Democratic member of Nebraska's unique unicameral legislature, Patty Pansing Brooks, by a surprisingly modest 53-47 margin. (Bizarrely, the special was held under the district lines drawn after the 2020 census even though the winner would fill out the remainder of the term that scandal-ridden Rep. Jeff Fortenberry had won under the old map.) Flood, though, won a rematch with Pansing Brooks by a convincing 58-42 spread that November.
● SC-03: State Sen. Richard Cash announced Saturday that he was endorsing state Rep. Stewart Jones in the GOP primary rather than running himself to replace fellow Republican Jeff Duncan, who is retiring. (Duncan defeated Cash in a tight 2010 runoff.)
● WI-03: Former La Crosse County Board chair Tara Johnson announced last week that she was ending her campaign to take on Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden, a move she says reflected her concerns that a crowded Aug. 13 Democratic primary would divert resources from the general election. Two notable Democrats remain in the race, state Rep. Katrina Shankland and businesswoman Rebecca Cooke.
Legislatures
● NH State House: Republicans won a pair of special elections for New Hampshire's closely divided state House on Tuesday, flipping one seat and holding another. However, they almost certainly received a major turnout boost at the top of the ticket, with a competitive GOP primary for president and no comparable contest on the Democratic side.
Republican Michael Murphy picked up Coös County's 6th District by defeating Democrat Edith Tucker 54-46 for a seat that Joe Biden carried by a 55-43 margin. Republican Sean Durkin, meanwhile, defended another Coös County constituency, the 1st District, winning 60-40 over Democrat Cathleen Fountain; Donald Trump took this seat 53-45 in 2020.
But both Democrats overperformed compared to the presidential primary turnout. In the 6th District, 62% of all voters cast ballots in the GOP primary while just 38% did so in the Democratic primary, where Biden wasn't on the ballot after the DNC stripped the state of its convention delegates for holding its election out of turn. In the 1st, the presidential primary split favored Republicans 72-28.
And while some votes in the Republican primary were cast by Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents looking to boost Nikki Haley, it's still very likely that turnout among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents was much greater on Tuesday night.
Following these two special elections, Republicans hold a 200-195 edge in the 400-person House, with independents holding another three seats. The two remaining vacant seats are safely blue constituencies last held by Democrats that will be filled in special elections on March 12.
● WI Redistricting: Wisconsin's Republican-run legislature made a late effort to prevent the liberal majority on the state Supreme Court from imposing new legislative districts by passing maps for the state Senate and Assembly that the Associated Press said "largely mirror" those proposed by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, but with alterations that would reduce the number of seats with two Republican incumbents. Evers, though, quickly declared that he would veto the proposals.
"Moving legislative district lines so GOP-gerrymandered incumbents get to keep their seats is just more gerrymandering," Evers said in explaining his decision, and Republicans don't have the numbers to override him. Indeed, while the GOP holds a two-thirds supermajority in the 33-member state Senate, four Republicans joined all 10 Democrats in voting against the maps. The Assembly passed the proposals along party lines, but Republicans there are two seats short of a veto-proof supermajority.
Mayors & County Leaders
● Baltimore, MD Mayor: Former prosecutor Thiru Vignarajah announced this week that he would oppose Mayor Brandon Scott in the May 14 Democratic nomination contest, which makes this his fourth citywide primary campaign in as many cycles. Vignarajah unsuccessfully ran for state's attorney in 2018 and 2022, with a 2020 mayoral race sandwiched in between. His best showing came in 2022 when he lost to Ivan Bates by a 41-30 margin as indicted incumbent Marilyn Mosby took third with 29%. Vignarajah joins former Mayor Sheila Dixon in this new campaign.
● Bridgeport, CT Mayor: Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim beat former city official John Gomes 56-44 in Tuesday's court-ordered Democratic primary revote, but it remains to be seen if they'll square off again in the Feb. 27 general election.
"[T]he option's on the table," said Gomes, who is the nominee of the state's Independent Party. Republican David Herz and unaffiliated candidate Lamond Daniels also have spots in the general election, though they're unlikely to pose a threat in this dark blue city.
The general election would, however, get canceled if all three challengers were to drop out by Feb. 1, something that remains a possibility. Herz said Wednesday that he and Daniels could sign a "conditional withdrawal" vowing to leave the race if Gomes also does, but Daniels only responded that he'd decide whether to press forward "soon."
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